A Trick of the Rail

With Andrew off in Japan and Katy not yet returned to the fold, stalwarts Martin, Ian and myself (Sam) were joined at Joe's house by Steve, who made the trek from Easton through the skirts of Storm Freya. Because Ian wasn't arriving until later, the quartet began without him with a game of Byzanz. But before that happened Joe, Martin and I bashed out a quick game of Good Little Tricks, the trick-taker where winning a trick can be harmless, or can be terrible if said trick contains the final card of a suit - the trick winner collects all the cards of that suit and turns them into points.

Points are bad.

Joe 13
Sam 18
Martin 23

Steve rocked up as we wrapped up the second round, so it was Byzanz time. Martin ran Steve through the rules (see Andrew's previous post) and we were off!

Steve seemed perplexed but also seemed to be scoring a lot of fours. Martin scored a bunch of threes, but also traders. Joe tried the tactic that failed me last week and made it work. I bid high and failed again. I didn't even fail better.

Martin 26
Joe 24
Steve 23
Sam 21

Ian watched the last two rounds play out as he sank his first beer so fast he surprised everyone, including himself. Maybe it was Steve's exceedingly hot bombay mix, which had everyone sweating except Joe, who remained curiously unperturbed.

Then it was time for Martin's new game, Northern Pacific. This takes Mini-Rails' simplicity and aligns it with the brinkmanship of Medina: everyone collaborates on building a railroad across America, but can only take one of two options on their turn - build track, or invest in a station. The stations pay out when - if - the track reaches them, and up to three investments can be made in a single station, leading to agonising decisions as to when and where you lead the track, because taking it to Glasgow, say, will eliminate the possibility the train ever arrives in Butte. So if you've invested in Butte - bad luck.

When the train reaches the west coast the whole thing starts over, and after the route is built a third time the game ends with the richest player the winner. Despite some leader-targeting in the mid and late stages, the leader was Martin. I pipped Joe for second on the tie-breaker.

Martin 24
Sam 21
Joe 21
Steve 19
Ian 18

After a quick conflab we moved onto Las Vegas, with one of Joe's expansions mixed in: the big die that represents two dice when placed in a casino. This simple rule was slightly complicated by the spoiler dice (white) also having a big die that didn't represent two, and my big die for purple actually being blue. Echoes of the hostility from Northern Pacific were felt in the game, particularly when Steve disparaged statisticians.

But Joe mellowed the mood by getting us to imagine a beach where "all the pebbles are dice". To really picture the moment you also need to imagine Joe dreamily smiling, with both hands holding lots of dice. He was so immersed in the moment he didn't realise he'd won, until Martin pointed it out.

Joe $380k
Martin $370k
Sam $260k
Ian $210k
Steve $110k

At this point Steve bowed out, so now a quartet again we played a game of partnership trick-taker Yokai Septet, with Joe and Ian taking on me and Martin. This is a neat trick-taker where players are trying to win the '7' cards from seven suits which each have a 7 in, but in the lowest numbered suit the 7 is the highest card and in the highest numbered suit it's the lowest. Win four '7's to win the round, or win seven tricks (without winning four 7s) to lose it.

We didn't play more than a couple of rounds, but won one each, with mine and Martin's tricks proving slightly more valuable:

Martin and Sam 4
Joe and Ian 3

With the storm blowing lustily outside and the hour now past 11pm the curtains drew on another marvellous GNN night.