Somebody's Poisoned the Waterhole!

Thursday! Adam's suggestion of A Feast for Odin gained short shrift, as both Andrew and I wanted to play a game we had a chance of winning. He tried little one-two by proposing Caverna instead, but we were too smart for that.

But would we be smart enough to beat him at Africana? It's been many moons since Michael Schacht's game of colonial exploitation has seen the table, and - theme to one side - it was nice to revisit it.

It was new to Adam and Stanley, however, so we needed a rules run-through. For the uninitiated, Africana sees you as one of the European powers dashing around the continent in the great carve-up, going on expeditions and adventures. Your options are almost Ticket to Ride-simple: pick up cards, play cards (to move your guy) or go to 'the book' and start an adventure. The books are in the north and south hemisphere, and whichever one you go to, completing the adventure requires some travelling to the opposite hemisphere. As Adam said, it's the game with the "world's largest carbon footprint". Expeditions get you points (and money). Use money to start Adventures, which also get points, but also also combine in set-scorey ways for Extra Points.

You always have the smiling Assistant who helps you move, and you can get more assistants - from the book - to help you move even more, but the more Assistants you have, the more points it costs you; maybe in the game's token nod to the idea that ultimately, you're being judged by God, or History, or maybe Twitter.

It's a game like Ticket to Ride in that many turns are spent picking up cards, before completing a killer turn - Stan, Adam and Andrew (in particular!) all pulled these off. I didn't and could feel my exploitative adventurer guy almost festering in Leopold, as Expedition cards were swooped up around his ears. Adam was convinced it was going to be Stanley's day as his multiple assistants saw him hardly ever picking up cards at all, but instead scurrying around Africa like a boy intent on victory. But his Adventure cards didn't combine in the most alluring ways, leaving Andrew able to return to France the most exploitative player of all!

Andrew 44
Adam 40
Sam 30 / Stanley 30

Stan now retired to bed and we debated our next move before settling on Take It Easy. Sticking to GNN's long tradition of 'calling' the tiles with a theme, I settled on board game designers. Andrew did Japanese words, and Adam computer games. But all three rounds had diabolical aspects to the tiles themselves, as Andrew and I both flipped lots of '1' tiles and with Adam's final draw, almost any other tile would have helped us more than what he turned over. Adam and I scored pretty miserably, whereas Andrew claimed his second win of the night:

Andrew 476
Sam 409
Adam 385

We finished the evening with Kariba, Knizia's waterhole-themed frolic of animal fright: scare animals away to claim them as points. Rather than suggest three rounds for a game, Kariba's rules propose 'three games, and then compare points' which I rather like from a commitment perspective. But we followed that suggestion anyway.

Andrew led after the first game, but in the second Adam swooped in with three mice to scare off all 8 elephants and from that moment it was trying to figure out a way to catch him. I'm not totally ashamed to say we combined to prevent him doing the same thing in the third game, as I played one mouse and shouted "go on, Andrew!" - which he did.

But it was in vain:

Adam 54
Sam 47
Andrew 46

"I like this game!" said Adam. It is a sneaky little thing. Somewhat like Adam. But the hour was fairly late by now, so we all snuck off to bed...*

*don't be silly