Whittle down the will

Six gamers, two of whom had travelled thousands of miles since they last met a year ago, congregated at Joe's kitchen table for an evening of games: Joe, Sam, Martin, Ian, Katy and me.

We began with Maskmen, the curious game of emergent properties (of wrestlers). The Mountain Goats provided a thematic backdrop with a concept album (about wrestlers) while Katy and I were introduced to the game.

It is strange and difficult to judge, not just what to play but who is beating who. The very sparse scoring system meant that in a six player game, three would get no points at all ("I'm okay...for zero," said Martin) while a fourth would get minus one. Fine margins indeed.

It was Katy who unleashed her gimpish inner fighter to best effect.

Katy 4
Andrew 2
Joe 2
Martin 1
Ian 0
Sam -1

Next we stayed as a six for a game of Not Alone. In this game, one player is the native of an alien planet trying to capture the other players who have all been stranded on said planet and are waiting for the rescue ship to arrive.

Katy was tonight's alien and she did very well, stopping us from doing all of the necessaries to escape. In the first move she went to the river at the same time as me, Joe, Sam and Ian did. Luckily Martin saved us with a survival card that moved the alien to an adjacent place.

Of the survivors, Martin did the best, saving our bacon with survival cards on more than one occasion. The rest of us had our will whittled away completely at some point (maybe Sam avoided that, not sure) and in the end Katy was able to assimilate us by catching Joe again, with the rescue ship only two spaces away.

Then we split into two groups. Katy, Sam and Joe played Tiny Town which looked adorable but apparently is full of Take It Easy style analysis paralysis. Ian Martin and me chose Senators, a new card game of bidding and buying, with the peculiar rules that all losing players should stand up at the end and say "Hail, Caesar!" and also that there is no second place.

In the game you can start an auction (to try and buy resources or sell them and get money), cash in sets of three resources (for money), embezzle publicly visible cards from your opponents and all of this is so you can buy senators (points, basically). Most points wins.

I had very little money early on after I went a bit nuts in an auction round. I had plenty of resources, but no sets of three. Martin is able to get some money by cashing in and while Ian started well, he fell away towards the end. My blushes were saved by a bit of a mega move where I got five points for myself and knocked one point off Martin. Not enough to catch him, though.

However at the end of the game neither Ian or I stood up to hail our new leader and, to make things worse, I decided there was a second place after all.

Martin 13
Andrew 12
Ian 8

A nice game and one I'd like to try again.

While we played that, the other half of the table got through two games of Tiny Town.

Joe 31
Sam 24
Katy 22

The second began with Sam declaring early on that he had a plan, and he certainly did better than before, only losing to Joe on a tie break. Katy seemed to have trouble differentiating between certain buildings and icons.

Joe 31
Sam 31
Katy 16

At this point Ian set off on the long trek home while we remaining five play Nakanuki Paradise to a soundtrack of "nice" music as requested by Martin to the Google Assistant. The game was new to me and my notes read simply "crazy game" but it was a lot of fun, and it is like a concentrated version of Polterfass.

Martin 11
Andrew 9
Joe 8
Katy 8
Sam 6

And since it was now a little after eleven we all bade our farewells and set off home. Thanks to all, especially to Joe for hosting the second games events in four days! What a gent.