See you Next Tuesday

It was a night full of the sounds of distant fireworks from many locations and I walked to Joe's wondering if this is what a war zone sounded like.

Joining me at Joe's, apart from the host, were Katy, Ian, Sam, Martin and Adam T. We started with a little conversation where Martin reminded us of Katy's use of the c-word in his birthday card. She insisted that she wrote that he wasn't a c-word and, besides, she had been under a lot of pressure to write something witty. Martin suggested some kind of code like… C U Next Tuesday. On saying that, we realised that we had been saying See you next Tuesday to each other for nine years. What kind of subliminal messages have we been giving out?

Talking of subliminal messages, our first game was Decrypto with the Laser Disc expansion. Martin, Adam, Joe and Katy faced off against Ian, Sam and I.

In this version of the game, a card drawn from a deck will give a category (famous people, cities, etc) to which at least one of the clues must belong. And if you are able to make all three fit, then you get a laser disc. Collect two and you can use them to guess one of your opponents' words.

This new variant was warmly welcomed by Martin who, on his first round, got a laser disc by having all clues relate to a living celebrity. Then Joe also got a laser disc. By now they had two, but no idea of any of our words. Adam was told not to bother trying for a laser disc. "Don't try to be too flash," was Martin's (unintentional?) pun. But Adam is a proud gamer and if they could do it, so could he. And he did. And he supplied chocolate cake as well. Pity you don't get points for generosity in Decrypto.

On our side, we didn't bother trying to get all three and when we did, we got a miscommunication both times. As such the game finished on round five, delicately poised. We had two miscommunications and two interceptions. They had one of each. It was down to the laser discs. If we could guess a word and they couldn't, we would score an unlikely win.

We correctly got our confident guess (Jack Black plus sponge pudding plus recorder equals School) but then they worked out one of our words at the last minute (runny egg plus Venice plus cold equals Water) and they prevailed.

Katy, Joe, Martin, Adam: piece of cake.
Sam, Ian, Andrew: oh, crumbs.

Then we split into two groups. Martin, Joe, Adam and Sam played Die Crew. But that "die" is the German definite article, not the English exhortation that someone end their life. Ian, Katy and I were remarkably quick (by our standards) to choose Senators as our entertainment.

Oddly, the four-player group decamped to the card table while the three-player game had the whole kitchen table to itself. I heard Martin describe Die Crew as "a mission based co-operative trick-taking game" to which one wit replied "What? Another one?" I know little about it except for getting a yellow five to Joe became very important at one point.

After they played for a while, they were faced with a dilemma. When to stop? The game had another 40+ missions. Should they keep going and head for the moon or try something different? Joe was keen to play Sigma File and after some discussion, they did just that. The moon would have to wait.

Meanwhile, in Senators, it was a ding dong battle. I sped off into an early lead by cashing in a 7-8-9 combo and bought several senators. Then Katy made the running, building up an insurmountable lead mid game but then Ian used Consuls to take points from her and, in one move where he gained four senators, overhaul her. The third war had passed and Katy was desperately holding onto an office card before she cashed in, paying off two extortion attempts by selling a senator, putting her temporarily into last place.

But temporary became permanent when she turned over the next card to find the fourth war. No chance to cash in and she finished in last place.

Ian 16
Andrew 12
Katy 11

After this, I suggested No Thanks. Katy insisted she was terrible and I assured her she can't be worse than me. Ian kept quiet, perhaps not wanting to seem over confident. I started off by picking up the 33, hoping for lots more cards in the thirties that I could milk for coins, but none came out. Not one.

Katy 53
Ian 55
Andrew 101

By this time, Sigma File was ending, with Sam the winner (“I went heavy on Bruno,” he explained) but apart from that, I know very little.

Then they began a game of Cartographers, even going so far as to sharpen their pencils first.

We three never saw the end of that game. We played a game of Las Vegas during which Ian mostly texted and I took a call in round two, much to Katy’s disgust.

Andrew $410,000
Katy $260,000
Ian $240,000

After this, Ian had to go and, frankly, after last week’s midnight finish both Katy and I were keen to finish early. Cartographers was still in full swing so we decided to pack up and leave. We set off at a refreshingly early half past ten, looking forward to an early night.

Except, soon after Katy and I parted, I realised my phone was still at Joe’s. I turned around and ran back to Joe’s house and got there just as Adam was leaving. I soon found my phone and turned down their kind offer of another game, so tired and sweaty that I really needed an early night now. But I was there long enough to hear Sam refer to the game Startups as “Breadsticks” just because he was looking at some while he described it to Martin.

Sam texted me the scores later.

Cartographers:
Martin 100
Adam 95
Sam 84
Joe 73

Startups:
Sam 3
Joe 1
Martin 0

But I finally got home at the usual post-games night time. At least I had my phone. Now it’s all downhill to the games weekend! Woo hoo!