Handrags and Karambolags

As Andrew had missed Tuesday, he - fortunately for me - didn't need much enticing to join me on Thursday. I was originally scheduled for a works party, but I was so tired I could only drink red wine and learn the rules to a heavy euro.

Oh, except Ragusa is not actually that heavy at all. From the same designer as sleepy rocket Calimala, Ragusa features the similar actions-beget-actions dynamic as its predecessor, only here we are building the titular city, rather than trading silk. I'd played it through myself earlier in the year, so could explain the basics to Andrew - excluding my © classic overlooked rule - along with the special rule for two players, although with an audience of Stan - mainly interested in the snacks - and friend Katie - mainly interested in going out to the pub - it was a real rules-sweats situation and frankly I think I did pretty well to hold it together. Before you could say "Stan, don't eat all the crisps" we were away, and doing Ragusa-y things such as gathering wood/stone/ore/olives/grapes in order to build/make silver/oil/wine, contribute to the construction of the city wall and trade with merchants from the high seas.

Thematically it gets the big EURO rubber stamp, but like Calimala the non-interactive, ponderous air is largely absent. We did a bit of pondering, but neither Andrew and I are real zero-sum gamers and we played with a mostly exploratory air: I built a lot of walls, whereas Andrew traded with the traders and constructed the cathedral. In the fields, the gentle gathering is done in isolation, but in the city any house built in a particular location activates all previous houses there from all players, lending the decisions a fruity sense of reluctance. Once all houses are placed, the game ends, and - again, much like the earlier game - it really doesn't last long. Not with two, anyway. My longest-wall beat back Andrews most-trades, aided by a slightly fortuitous end-game scoring: it was something like

Sam 80
Andrew 68

And despite the rules, the crisps, some bedtime shenanigans and birthday requests from Stan, it was not even half past nine. We followed the deli-style meat of Ragusa with Karambolage, Haba's pre-Push It (we described it pushitty, which perhaps does it a disservice) game of flicking pucks into other pucks. In both games I sped into an early lead - in the first I made the somewhat panicked and ludicrous decision to stick on nine when Andrew was on seven. He wrapped that up pretty quickly:

Andrew 10
Sam 9

...and then won the second game too as the Considerable Yips descended on me and I repeatedly picked up nifty points only to chuck them away on easy shots! Andrew wasn't perfect either...

But he did well enough to claim a second win:

Andrew 10
Sam 4

And although the night was still relatively young, Andrew headed home in order to drink himself into a stupor - I presume - over the exit polls. Nice to play a relatively breezy Euro, and Karambolage is always fun!