The Alms Race

Tonight's games night began with a real rarity: a crossword puzzle. Specifically the crossword that Joe had devised and posted on GNN. Sam and Martin were poring over Joe's clues and, with help from the quizmaster himself in times of difficulty, they finished it off. It was an impressive creation by Joe, although he was disappointed in himself for letting a couple of mistakes slip by.

As a quartet, we filled the time until Ian arrived with a game of Orongo. This game, like San Marco, has a name that prompts people to adopt Australian accents. This is despite, also like San Marco, the game has nothing to do with the land down under.

Instead, it is set on Easter Island, where each player is a tribe eager to build their statues (or moai) before the others. This is done by placing a trail of counters on the map, connecting suitable resources to a space on the coast. And the placing of these counters is decided by secret auction. The winner loses all of their seashells (putting them in the reef where, hopefully, they won't roll off the board) but places first and puts down three counters. Second place keeps their seashells and places two tiles. Third and beyond place just one. But if you bid no seashells at all you get to take whatever is in the reef, which is usually the winning bid.

Except if more than one player bids zero they share what is in the reef and Joe and I demonstrated our synchronicity by bidding zero together on several occasions. It would have been touching were it not so annoying.

Sam, meanwhile, began in a corner of the island that saw few resources being drawn early in the game. Martin built a statue with his very first move, and always looked good for the win. In fact, if he'd bid a little lower a couple of times, he could have wrapped up the game earlier. He still wrapped it up, though.

Martin 0 statues left
Sam 1
Andrew 1
Joe 2

It was a nice game, containing plenty of Reiner Knizia's finest ingredients. In fact, Martin brought a whole pile of Knizia games, leading me to remark wittily that it could be called a Reinerssance. Any pleasure I had from my pun was dashed by learning that several people, including Martin, had already used it in the past.

Ian arrived at the dying stages of Easter Island's flawed social system and next up was Chickwood Forest. This game has been offered as an option for some weeks and now, thanks to its ability to accommodate five players, it got its chance to shine.

After a rules explanation, where we learnt that you have to specialise in treasure chests, gain unique garments, and grab as much jewelry as possible. This is done by playing cards to one of six castles, some face up and some face down, and then choosing them. Are the face down cards evil (such as henchmen, bust chests or maybe even a kind of chest/garment you'd rather avoid) or are they rather good and just pretending to be evil? That's the dilemma.

At first, with all this talk about treasure, I said it was very "inchesting" which, for a short while, was the front runner for the blog title. Then we learnt about the part of the game where you get points for alms. At first, my quip of "two alms to hold you" had unseated "inchesting" but then Ian remarked that it was a bit of an "alms race" and the decision was made. Thanks Ian.

The almshouses were an interesting part of the game. The player with most cubes got most points, but ties were broken according to who was in last. So it was possible to ignore it for the first part of the game and then pepper the village with your cubes in the final stages.

This is what Joe did and this strategy, coupled with his collection of five green chests (worth 25 points), gave him the win.

Joe 70
Sam 67
Martin 64
Ian 52
Andrew 43

There were cautious murmurs of approval for the game. If I recall right, Martin called it "a perfect example of a modern eurogame," which is as non committal as you can get.

Next to the table was Voodoo Prince. This game, perfect for five, is usually played in a truncated manner at the very end of an evening. This time, though, it was given the full five rounds.

I got a bit of luck in round one, putting down the purple 15 thinking I was bound to win, only to see Ian had put down the purple 0: the only card that could have saved me. Then in round two, Joe tried to flush out the black cards by leading with high blacks in the first two tricks (and winning them) and then playing a low black in the third trick. Unfortunately for him, no one else had any black cards left and no one trumped him, so he got his third trick in the shortest possible time. At the end of the round we checked the undealt cards and saw how unlucky he was: there were four black cards in the ten unused cards.

Round three was very cagey and, at one point, everyone was on two tricks. Joe was able to redeem himself somewhat when he netted the maximum twelve points for that round. Then in round four, it ended with Martin versus Sam. Martin had the seven in the trump suit which would see him go from one to three tricks, thanks to the seven’s special power. But Sam had the 15 and 14 in the trump suit and Martin’s plan was foiled.

Round five was just a case of me waiting until enough points were available to win, and then bailing. Which I did.

Andrew 45
Martin 38
Sam 36
Ian 26
Joe 21


Lastly, we went out on Dead Man’s Chest. A remarkable game, as they usually are, in which I got my first Dead Man and we witnessed luck at its most peculiar: Joe bid 2-2 and handed to Sam. Sam shook the box, looked, shook the box again and handed it to martin, bidding 3-3. Martin challenged and it was 4-4. Amazing.

Ian out first, challenged Martin’s 1-1
Sam out, challenged Joe’s 6-1.
Martin out when I challenged his 6-5
I went out when a wrongly challenged Joe's 2-2.
Joe wins!

Thanks all for another great evening. Will the fun never stop?

This is a photo of fun not stopping.