No shreddies

This week, five fifths of our most regular players arrived at Joe's house for our weekly battle of wits and cunning. The missing one sixth was Katy, but she had recently impressed us all with an email showing her playing Isle Of Skye while actually on the Isle Of Skye.

Meanwhile, we happy five (Joe, Ian, Martin, Sam and me) began with a new game called Irish Gauge that had quickly convinced us with its pretty illustrations and promise of a rule book with only two pages.

Thematically correct alcohol!

Since it was a hex based train game, I was more than keen to give it a shot, but slowly it dawned upon us that something was missing. Martin wondered if we were playing it wrong, not in terms of rules but in terms of strategy. And he had a point: we were approaching it in a very Railways Of The World manner, building up our networks and getting everything in place before triggering a scoring round. Should we have been quicker to get dividends, or more generous with our bids for shares?

Who knows. In this game, Sam wrestled for an almost exclusive ownership of the blue network, but it cost him dearly. Martin kept sole control of his network of orange, possibly because it was the worst on the board. Joe, though, was rolling in money. His yellow network paid out well and he bought an early share into my purple network, and seemed to do very well out of that too. His regretful sigh of "I don't think I understand share games," was met with little sympathy since he was the clear leader at the time.

Joe 133
Martin 111
Andrew 110
Sam 84
Ian 80

We ended with a feeling of disappointment, and we were unable to tell if it was us or the game that was at fault. Lots of mumbling about needing to give it one more try.

We followed this with a rousing game of Stinker. Three whole rounds! I made more notes this time and, assuming that the random nature of the game somehow gives it oujia board type abilities to see the future, I can safely say that...

A cure for insomnia is... Oddbins sale (Ian)
The app missing from your smartphone is... Nob Measurer (Joe).
A greeting you don't want your robot to give you is... Hi pedo (Martin)
The next big thing is... Slappy Bags (Sam)
Your mama is... A real hottie (Joe)
And the eventual undoing of man will be... Christmas Toffee (me)

Ian 53
Martin 28
Sam 25
Joe 22
Andrew 21

After this giddy encounter with over excitement, we kept up the pressure with Voodoo Prince. Ian started badly, winning a hand with a five, effectively giving him two tricks (remember, three tricks in a round and you're out) but he hung on long enough to pick up a decent score that round.

Then, in round two of three, Ian was then second to last to pick up his third trick, giving him maximum points. He was, by now, the man to beat. "We need to fuck Ian up," said Martin while yawning, sounding like a decadent dictator idly requesting the assassination of an enemy.

But it was all for naught. Ian got maximum points in round three as well.

Ian 31
Martin 21
Sam 19
Andrew 18
Joe 14

Next up was Zero Down, a game that simply eludes me. I assume there's a strategy, but I am entirely unaware of what it is. Joe, however, has a better grasp of the matter.

Apart from Joe's serene stroll to victory, the rest of us spent our time cursing the player who'd just picked up the card we needed.

Joe 5
Ian 13
Sam 24
Andrew 34
Martin 46

During this game, someone described their luck as being a car crash which we misheard (for comedy purposes) as "cock rash."

And also, between games, Joe informed us of some adverts he'd seen for a new product: fart filtering pants. The testimonials from apparently happy users made it very difficult for us to tell if the product was genuine or not. But these adverts gave rise to the phrase "no shreddies" which now adorns this blog post.

Ian left after Zero Down, but we remaining four had one more game in us: Memoarrr. It is a simple memory game that demonstrates with such clarity your lack of short term memory that you may start to suspect oncoming dementia.

It's so simple, 25 cards, in an array of 5 by 5 with one removed (the scoring cards go in its space) and all you have to do is remember what is where. And you have seven rounds to do it! Couldn't be simpler, but I struggled massively. Great fun and I was slightly amazed how quickly my memory vanished once the cards had all been turned face down again.

But it was great fun, despite my complete inability to get anywhere with it.

One round went all the way until the end... Didn't help me, though

Joe 6
Sam 5
Martin 4
Andrew 0

And with that, we were done. Time for us all to stumble home, full of the thrill of battle and alcohol.