Felonious Monk

On Saturday night Andrew and I converged at my table for some gentle pre-Christmas fare. With Sally busy baking in the kitchen, we repaired to the table in the front room, however, and what with the Christmas tree and the speakers that don't cut out, it made for a nice festive surrounds.

Possibly we sabotaged the genteel appearance by eating crisps like demented seagulls, but you can't have everything.

We began with a four-player game of Facecards with the boys. Stan and Joe's faces were now mixed into the cards too (the game comes with blanks) and Stan successfully identified himself as a Squirrel. Joe turned up as a bird. The bird seemed to always know what my pair was, but rarely guessed them; content to point them out to other people. The Squirrel ran away with it:

Stanley 14
Andrew 10
Joe 7
Sam 7

As the boys retired to bed, Andrew chose our two-player starter, Rajas of the Ganges. For the uninitiated, this involves using workers and dice to build palaces and markets. The former bring you fame, the latter money, and both fame and money have markers moving in opposite directions around the outside of the board - your aim is to make them meet, and ideally, hurtle past each other at speed.

We chose very distinct paths - Andrew eschewing markets and me building a solitary palace the whole game. At various times it seemed like we'd both made mistakes - Andrew was spending actions picking up a single die, whilst I went from having heaps to none at all. My markets were churning out cash, but Andrew's seemingly unproductive turns would suddenly coalesce into huge leaps along the fame track. And as my dice ran out again, Andrew built two palaces to end the game:

Andrew: Raja!
Sam: Not Raja.

my markers (yellow) stare balefully at each other; 

Andrew's (on the far side) have passed

Our Euro glands pumping endorphins now, we went straight from Rajas to Heaven and Ale. With two players there's only three rounds to play, so the sense of time-running-out loomed up at us at the start of the second round. Like Rajas, there was a sense of maniacal racing. Unlike Rajas, getting ahead on the track wasn't necessarily the right thing to do. I kept taking things Andrew wanted - inadvertently, mostly - but struggled to make ends meet whilst Andrew set sail for the final round in a cash-rich position. However Andrew's genial allowance of me having a do-over (I scored the wrong monk, only realising on my next turn) may have been the difference between winning and losing:

Sam - 34
Andrew - 22

The last game of the night was NMBR9. Maybe it's not knocked Take It Easy off the top spot of the Cries Of Despair table, but it's still a wonderful game. It looked like I'd perhaps put all my eggs in a doomed basket...

really need that 1

But fortunately for me the 1 came out, and my literal platform proved to be a figurative one as well...

Sam 92
Andrew 71

A most delightful evening.