The Luckiest Casino In The World

Our annual mass exodus from family responsibilities in favour of several days of gaming nonsense took place in a familiar cottage near Taunton - the same venue as last year and all our devices recognised the wifi without needing the password. Sam and I arrived first in the crisp air of a Friday morning in November. Technically we were half an hour early, but the cottage was unlocked and ready for us. We got settled and began our weekend by doing surprisingly well at the Guardian cryptic crossword. Joe, Adam, Ian and Katy were next to arrive at 12:20 and after some arranging and storing of food, we began.

Joe does a few reps before getting started

Sam, Katy, Ian and I began with the aptly named Startups. We played for three rounds, two of which involved Ian sighing in incomprehension followed by a third round where he won handsomely, wiping out all his minus points to date. Thanks to Oink Games usual 2pt, 1pt, -1pt for last place scoring system, it ended pretty evenly.

Sam 2
Andrew 2
Katy 2
Ian 0

Joe and Adam chose a two player war game, Undaunted. Joe won after an attritional battle for farmhouse 13B, apparently.

After this, Katy went for a walk - on her own since no one else seemed keen - while Sam and I went to Waitrose to buy our share of beer and nibbles. Once we were back the others were deep into a game of Artemis Project, which looked like a bit of a beast and came complete with a sort of meeple tower that you would pour meeples are random out onto cards. Jon won, beating Adam by a point.

Sam and I filled the time by playing Assembly, a two-player co-op puzzle game in which you have to open a sealed air lock by moving discs onto cards that have the same symbol. It was entertaining and we managed to open the door with the last turn of the game.

Katy returned and the three of us played Cartographers. I didn’t win, but my map - complete with mountain surrounded by a large lake - seemed to describe a land I’d quite like to visit.

Sam 79
Andrew 77
Katy 69

Now, you remember I began this post by talking about leaving responsibilities behind? Well, alas I found I had one that I couldn’t ignore, so I got back into my car and set off back to Bristol for the evening, promising to be back tomorrow morning. I was somewhat sad about this, but I had little choice.

So, until then, I hand over to Sam to talk us through the proceedings...


After Andrew left I took up temporary blogging duties, with the current situation Joe taking on Adam and Ian at Res Arcana ("Because Martin isn't here") and Steve, Jon and I attacking each other in Rise of Tribes. Katy was busy in the kitchen making a vegetable tagine.

Rise of Tribes began relatively peacefully, as humans perhaps once did, before following well-established pattern of descending into war. Steve and I surged ahead of Jon. Jon urged us to attack each other. We were both hesitant though, knowing that to do so would leave us open to Jon's mustering forces gathering on the other half of the map.

Something had to give, and in the end both Jon and I piled in on Steve (points leader at that point) as Jon's blue tribespeople seemed to proliferate all over the land. He made substantial comeback and a tense finale ensued with all of us potentially one move from victory. I couldn't manage it - Jon was poised to score three points at the start of his turn and win, but Steve was before him in turn order... and he wrapped things up:

Steve 15
Sam 14
Jon 12

Res Arcana ended around the same time, with Joe victorious:

Joe
Adam
Ian

I didn't hear much of what happened at the time, but the next day was assured by Adam that "Joe trounced us in three or four rounds" and by Joe that the game was "hilarious".

The early evening also hosted a staccato game of Tumblin' Dice, but it never ended. At least, not on the day.

After Katy's delicious tea, there were more games to be played. Jon coaxed Adam and Steve into his new acquisition Paladins of the West Kingdom, while I had something close to a mental breakdown trying to remember the rules to Treasure Island. I last played it only two months back but the nuances were totally lost on me and the weird layout of the rulebook meant we spent almost as long working out the (relatively simple) rules as we did playing the game.

Joe was Long John Silver, and hid the treasure somewhere on the island. Ian, Katy and I were pirates looking for it, spending the dwindling days searching before Joe Long John escapes captivity and claims it for himself. It was entertaining, but that might have been partly the ongoing purgatory for Steve and Adam in the nearby game of Paladins.

"I said it was chewy" Jon pointed out.
"You said it was simple!" - Adam
"It is simple. Put a wooden guy on the board!"

Steve worried that there would be an inquisition, and it wasn't entirely clear if he meant the game or not.

Meanwhile Katy found the treasure...

Katy: Rich!

...and we began a game of the long-dormant Alhambra. This used to feature almost every week in the the pre/early blog days, so regularly that between us Joe and I recalled every rule. I think. I built a long wall early on, and found - like Joe - that I was stuck with an alhambra that subsequently resisted the idea of expansion. But late-game we both recovered and my epic wall sealed the win:

Sam 108
Joe 98
Ian 89
Katy 76

Katy felt she should get an extra point for having her surname 'Wall' but we resisted this idea, as there was no structural integrity to it.

Paladins of the West Kingdom was continuing, so we played Mamma Mia. The highlight of which was probably Ian's Italian accent. Or Joe's. We all attempted to make pizzas that ended as ghosts of an idea, but come closing time I claimed the title of Chef with Best Memory/Luck..

Sam 6
Katy/Joe 5 each
Ian 4

Then we played Push It, with Katy and I taking on Ian and Joe. Katy said I should prepare myself for defeat, but actually we ran away with it!

Katy and Sam 11
Joe and Ian 3

The Paladins of the West Kingdom ended! It had been a three hour epic and at time of writing it's still unclear what level of PTSD they are currently undergoing.

Jon 53
Adam 44
Steve 39

Before we joined together for a game of Just One that defied the term 'co-operative' - so drunken, tired and post-Paladiny everyone was that the atmosphere was almost like a begrudging intervention, albeit one punctured by laughter. I don't recall what about now, as I was exhausted at this point and couldn't stop yawning. We didn't do very well.

All of us: 7 - must do better.

Adam, Ian and I all retired at this point, but Joe and Katy partook of further debilitating ingestments and initiated a drunken game of Midnight Party, at midnight. Joe was having some kind of psychotic episode and forgot all the rules, being concerned - he confessed the next day - that his heart might stop beating. Steve remembered them. Katy dealt with the psychosis better and pulled off a win:

Katy -18
Jon -33
Steve -36
Joe -57

And that was it for Friday, at least as far as gaming was concerned. There was still some nighttime weeing in the fields and Joe fell over on the way to his pod.


Meanwhile...

I (Andrew) returned to the cottage mid-morning on Saturday and recommenced blogging duties. The table was already straining under a game of Tales of the Arabian Nights (Joe, Katy and Ian) and a two-player Feast For Odin between Adam and Jon at the end. According to Sam’s notes, Katy was worried that she would still be in jail by the time the game was finished, and Joe found himself grief-stricken.

Adam beat Jon at feast For Odin, after which Jon said he had a headache.

Adam 119
Jon 100

Steve and Sam played Cartographers that ended 88-75 to Sam and then I arrived just in time to join the two of them in a game of Villagers which Steve didn't understand at all for the first couple of rounds. Sam had clearly learned a thing or two having been beaten when playing against his son.

Sam 103
Andrew 84
Steve 81

After this, while we paused and considered our options, Jon taught Sam Getaway Driver, a table top equivalent of all those car chases that used to amaze us when we were nine. He won, too.

Next Sam, Joe, Ian and I embarked upon an epic game: Ancient Civilizations Of The Inner Sea, despite us all having to deal with fatigue/hangovers of various strengths. It was Joe's first game and he surged into an early lead. This,of course meant everyone started picking on him. Then Ian made his move and Sam and I had our hands full with trying to pick on both of them.

We had agreed to only play two epochs, and as we were halfway through the second we were almost neck and neck: Sam 61, Joe 59, me 59, Ian 58. Then, in the final round, I clocked up fourteen points, barging into first position and not even the End Of Game Event could unseat me.

Andrew 76
Ian 72
Joe 68
Sam 67

There was guarded praise for the game from Joe while Sam admitted that it wasn't at its best on a drowsy afternoon. As if to demonstrate that point, Ian retreated to his room to try and sleep off his hangover.

Meanwhile, Jon introduced Katy and Steve to Roam.

Steve 26
Katy 25
Jon 21

While people lazed about, a group of gamers decided to try Sol. I was supposed to explain the rules but my memory of them was too unreliable. I stalled for time by setting up until Sam got to the table and he took over.

It was Jon's first game and he found himself cursed by two offset gates that no one wanted to use. As such, he suffered from an acute lack of energy. Steve refused to drink until five o'clock exactly, even going so far as to pour it a couple of minutes beforehand so he could be really precise.

Sam 29
Adam 29
Steve 25
Andrew 19
Jon 11

During this, a revived (perhaps) Ian and Katy played two games of Kribbeln. First, they drew and then Ian won.

Elsewhere,the ever-present Tumbin' Dice board attracted a new group of gamers. Adam entertained us all by flicking three dice in a row that all scored minus points. He was in second place when that happened.

Jon 120
Andrew 100
Adam 91
Sam 74

And then, just before food, Kribbeln had turned into Push It, where Ian beat Katy 12-7. Joe supplied us all with pasta and tomato salad and following that, we split into two groups. One went down the epic path, embarking on a five-player game of Western Legends. The other three took a route past three different games until one of us gave up and went to bed.

Adam is delighted by the shape he made when peeling a satsuma

The three of us were Sam, Adam and me who broke out Orbit: The International Space Race. I failed to get any of my initial missions and, when the final scoring was announced, Sam admitted to an enormous amount of luck in how the missions he picked up during the game went together.

Sam 47
Adam 27
Andrew 17

Western Legends was played by Steve (who made full use of his American accent throughout), Katy, Ian, Joe and Jon. Joe explained the rules and it took so long that we were halfway through Orbit by the time they’d started. It was a rip-roaring event, judging by the amount of times Katy gleefully called out “Go to the cabaret!” The highlight was a game of poker where Katy saw her full house beaten by Jon’s four of a kind. How cruel.

Ian 25
Katy 23
Jon 22
Joe 16
Steve 11

Ian was so exhausted by this, that he went to bed.

On the other end of the table, Orbit was replaced by Kartel which is a simple game of criminal allegiances.

Andrew 12
Sam 9
Adam 9

And we followed that with Movable Type. “Let’s let Sam win a game,” said Adam when we’d agreed on it. But that turned into a cunning double bluff.

Adam 20 (“Lucky”)
Sam 17 (“Doughing”)
Andrew 15 (“Quiz”)

And now Adam, too, retired for the evening. “But what about Midnight Party?” Katy wailed. Sam and I passed the time until Western Legends ended with Passtally, a clever puzzle game of making links.

Andrew 35
Sam 34

But after Passtally and Western Legends finished, it was still nowhere near midnight. Hugo would have to wait. Instead we played A Fake Artist Goes to New York. I explained the rules to a sceptical Jon, and he didn’t really enjoy it - not his kind of game. I had fun, though. My first key word was Orchestra and it remains a bone of contention if Joe’s drawing of an orchestra pit was far too much of a clue or was brilliant in its execution. Sam, the fake artist, got enough of an idea that he was able to blend in (Katy was accused instead) but he wasn’t able to guess the actual word. Then Jon was found out in the second round, when he couldn’t join in with our hamburger picture.

Next, Sam and Steve retired and the remaining four of us finally dug up Hugo and dumped him on the table. Hugo was very fast up the stairs in each of the three rounds which didn’t suit Joe and his ability to roll ones. Katy finally found out that there were two Hugoes on the die, which explained how unlucky we were in rolling so many of them.

Jon -21
Katy -31
Andrew -54
Joe -54

So, with Midnight Party finished, you might think that was the end of it but there was one more game left in our lungs: Memoarrr. This simple memory game feels like it’s as much against yourself as any of your opponents. It was Jon’s first game and, despite a poor start, he came right back into it.

Jon 7
Andrew 4
Joe 3
Katy 1

What a way to end the evening and start the morning. We finally went to bed to catch some sleep.

On Sunday, I was up first at 7.30am. First, that is, unless you count Adam who’d had to leave his sub-Arctic room for the joys of a sofa. I pottered about quietly, read and did my Japanese homework while waiting for people to wake up.

And they did, making breakfast and slowly getting into gear. Katy informed everyone that there was no pain au chocolat, when there was actually one on her plate! The games began where they left off, with another game of Memoarrr.

Joe 6
Andrew 5
Ian 4

Then Jon, Joe and Katy embarked on Yokohama while at the other end of the table (and of the gaming spectrum) Steve and Sam faced off against each other in three games of Flick Fleet. Sam won the first game but then somehow managed to send his ship too close to the Neutron Star and quickly lost the second round. Steve won the decider in a nail biting finale.

Finally, Ian and I gathered up enough enthusiasm for another game, and decided on Tumblin’ Dice. It was pretty close until the last round which either shows how similar we are in terms of skill, or that Tumblin’ Dice is mostly luck. Ian pulled away in the last round, though, clocking up forty points to my feeble fifteen.

Ian 120
Andrew 98

Next, Adam emerged for his first game: Powerships, against Andrew, Steve, Ian and Sam. Adam found the perfect line to the finish and even landed perfectly on a hyperspace square to get him back even faster, with me, Steve and Ian coming in one move later.

Adam
Andrew
Steve
Ian
Sam

Yokohama finished after Katy insisted that she was enjoying herself even if it might look as if she weren’t.

Jon 155
Katy 142 (“I still had a nice time!”)
Joe 133

We broke for lunch and finally those of us who hadn’t had a walk yet actually went outside. Admittedly, only down the road to the farmhouse to pick up some dishwasher tablets but, nevertheless, this counts as a walk.

Back in the cabin, four of us (Adam, Joe, Steve and Katy) loaded up the saddles once more and rode back into Western Legends. The other four (Jon, Ian, Sam and me) portrayed a different side of American history with Neta Tanka, which involves Native American tribes building the tallest totem pole or most teepees or best craft items. It was an interesting game with plenty of opportunities for screwage after a fairly docile beginning. Ian used The Nomad (an extra meeple that you can buy in order to use in the next round) to take all the meat from the board, leaving Sam bereft. But karma came back in a big way for Ian when he found his penultimate turn ruined by a lack of wood to cook meat. This left his plans in tatters and he ended in full “that’s me fucked, then” mode for the final round.

Jon 47
Sam 38
Andrew 37
Ian 34

In Western Legends, Katy managed to rob a bank, only to find she already had too much money and couldn’t take the $80 with her. She didn’t seem too enamoured with the game this time.

Adam 22 (most marshall points)
Joe 22
Steve 21
Katy 18

Then they banged out a quick No Thanks

Adam 32
Katy 52
Joe 59
Steve 76

Katy went to have a nap at this point while some of us rested. Jon, Ian and Adam had a game of Powerships. Jon came first and then Adam overshot the finish, went around the planet and still got back before Ian did.

Jon
Adam
Ian

Joe, Sam and Steve played Arabian Nights. Joe found himself grief-stricken again while Steve was an envious outlaw on a pilgrimage. Envious, perhaps, of Sam who ended the game first, blessed and respected. That was Steve’s last game of the weekend, and we set him off home with (hopefully) lots to talk about.

Katy came out at some point, looked at the clock and went straight back to bed again saying something about thinking it was one hour later.

Then we played Cartographer:

Adam 95
Ian 92
Andrew 81

Next we play Awkward Guests, an ingeniously designed game which allows multiple murder scenarios to be solved by selecting certain cards from a deck. Then it is up to the detectives to trade clues with each other to try and decide who had killed the victim.

Sam was first to guess, and typed it into the app, only to be greeted with the sound of a sad trombone. I was next, and got the same result. Then, after a while when it looked like no one was getting close, we all guessed again and the last person to guess got it right! Well done Adam.

Next, Katy got her wish for a game of Lords of Vegas. It was Jon’s first turn and he got thrown slightly in at the deep end. Katy and Adam quickly built up large casinos. Katy merging with mine and Adam merging with Jon. People sprawled into vacant lots, only to see them reclaimed later in the game.

Perhaps the craziest story is that of Katy’s eight-tile casino. Once it was impregnable: a seemingly seven-tile solid source of points. She was so confident that when she ran out of dice for new developments, she took on from there, despite my three dice lurking. Then a sprawl was discovered, giving Adam a vital entry and then Jon draw a card allowing him a piece of the action too. This eight-tile behemoth was rerolled several times and, amazingly, it usually ended in Adam’s favour. Even after I rolled everything, and went through four tie-breakers, each time with me as a potential winner, it still went to Adam. Then both Katy and I paid money to Jon to reroll it and Adam won again. Amazing scenes.

Of course, Katy still had options elsewhere, and she had no issues with scoring. Then game carried on much longer than usual and she found herself clocking up a record score, with Adam on his tail. The game over card was fourth from the end.

Katy 66
Adam 60
Andrew 49
Jon 26

The other game being played at that time was Rise of Tribes. Shamefully, I was so caught up in Vegas, I don’t know what happened there.

Ian 15
Sam 13
Joe 11

Followed by Memoarrr, this time the advanced version where the cards move around and stuff.

Sam 9
Joe 4
Ian 2

Lastly the three of them played Just One. As a three-player it worked well with the variant where the guesser can guess the clue in the event of both clue-givers writing the same one.

Then, with all of us in various states of over-excitement, we relaxed for a while and played Sausage & Mash to wind down.

Once we’d winded down, it was time to get tense again with Midnight Party. This time with everyone involved! Sam rolled nothing but Hugoes for all of round one, picking up -14 points in the process. He recovered well, though. But Katy won, beating a pretty close chasing pack.

Katy -10
Andrew -12
Joe -15
Sam -20
Jon -21
Adam -22
Ian -28

With that, it was our final trip to bed before Monday morning, which saw only one game being played among the breakfasting and packing: Passtally. Sam taught it to Adam and Jon and they puzzled over each other’s links before Sam realised that it was nowhere near ending and they had to get moving.