pic from Joe's earlier in the week
That chance was with Memoarrr! and an audience of two: Stan and Little Joe (less little by the day) and they added a tingling of performance pressure as we tried to remember where our walruses, penguins and lava were. I began as I left off on Tuesday, winning three of the first four rounds, but this was largely down to the assistance of Dirk as thrice I went random and pulled it off. However Katy's resurgence in the endgame - to a soundtrack of wails from Big Joe - proved decisive, as her three treasure cards outscored my eventual four:
Katy 8
Sam 7
Joe 0
It was bedtime for the boys, and I had to shout down Stan's protests as he was keen to play Memoarrr. I felt a bit mean but his first week in secondary has been a big one. Whilst he read upstairs, Joe introduced me to the joys of Mhing, the Mah-Jong variant in card form.
As with Mah-Jong it's a game of set-collection, with the inherent risk that whatever card you discard may help someone else make a set or even complete their collections (they get to shout Mhing if so). We agreed to play for 45 mins and I was unexpectedly the winner, having scored a measly 32 points. Officially you play to 500!
Sam 32
Joe 22
Katy 4
Next up was Men at Work, one of the hits of the summer in the Morrison household with even Little Joe admitting he liked it. It's a very simple stacker where on every turn you add either a worker or a girder to a growing construction on the table, but each one with some caveat regarding placement. Workers might carry bricks or beams, girders might transport things or have to touch certain other colours on the site. You have three safety certificates (lives) to avoid losing, and a quarter-way through the game can start earning Worker of the Month certificates by placing the highest piece on the construction.
This was the most geometrically-sound game of Men at Work I've played - lots of workers came out early (we ran out) and nobody placed a girder at a nasty slant, meaning our construction, despite being the product of a demented architect, never collapsed. Katy was a clear winner and I think Joe and I tied for second. Can't remember now.
Katy: P500
Sam and Joe: P60
After a brief debate we decided to play something we all knew, and settled on the Quest for El Dorado. I gave Katy a brief refresher whilst Joe set up a fairly tricksy route, and then we were off.
While Katy and Joe made slow progress over the first board, I lingered at the back picking up new cards. My plan was to get two Urenhwoners (probably wrong spelling; my edition is German) and reduce my deck so they came around quickly. Katy picking to up the Kartographer (add two cards to your hand) gave me the idea of combining with those two, but while I was busy admiring my plans I was falling behind, and in my rush to catch up had to somewhat reduce the idea of deck-reduction.
Katy, despite having to wait two turns to navigate the final jungle, sailed into the mythical city with Joe and I far behind: I kartographed my way into second place on the next turn but poor Joe needed two more turns to make it over the line. It was nice of Katy to wait for us though.
Katy
Sam
Joe
Joe got up from the table in going-home-haver, but I managed to reseat him with the offer of NMBR9, in a slightly abstracted return to building things upwards from the tabletop. The scores were 73-71-70 (I think) but I now don't recall who won at all. It's both reassuring and terrifying to know this is despite being almost entirely sober.
And with that, another Thursday concluded.
I won NMBR9, surprisingly! I thought I was doing ok while we were playing, but when Sam corrected mine and Katy's belief that we were on level 3 when we we'd only reached level 2, I thought I was sunk. It's a really clever little thing, and one I don't play often enough, despite it being a real GNN regular.
ReplyDeleteI'm hopeless at El Dorado - always end up buying too many cards and not thinning my deck enough/at all. But I do enjoy it.
Fun to play Mhing - I know it's a bit old-school, but I like it a lot with three, and I seem to currently be in the mood for games which allow you to have a bit of conversation around the edges.
Men at Work hit a similar relaxed spot. It's very very cute - but I think I prefer the inventiveness of Junk Art/Bandu a bit more, where there's a bit more visual variety to the structures you build.
My utter cackness at Memoarrr worries me slightly - I don't seem able to hold on to anything but the merest fragments of what's on the front of those cards once they've been flipped. The rules suggest playing with the special powers once you're able to get all the cards flipped by round 7. Sam and Katy pretty much managed that last night, with very little help from me.
I don't like the sound of the octopus one, that allows you to switch it with an orthogonally adjacent card, altering the layout. But the one that lets you disallow the next player from flipping a particular card (walrus, poss?) could be (beastly) fun.
Nice to play some thursday games, thanks both!
Both of us seem to have memory issues!
Delete