I've been through the desert in a house with no games

The first "normal" games night of 2020 was hosted by Joe even though, in preparation for some house renovations, almost all of his collection is currently kept elsewhere. He was joined by Ian, Adam T, Adam H (who both arrived together raising worries of an alliance of Adams), Sam, Martin, Katy and myself. Martin had an aptly named beer: Game Theory and then broke the (already fragile) fridge handle.

After a shocking fifteen minutes of chat, we split into two groups. Adam T, Katy, Sam and me played Gugong, while the other four played Babylonia. The size of the two games was such that the kitchen table couldn't hold both, so Babylonia was built on the card table instead. This means that I have little idea of what went on except that Ian won after the other three players left him alone. The scores weren’t recorded, but Martin said he lost “really badly”.

After this they played Was Sticht, which ended

Martin 3
Ian 2
Adam 2
Joe 1

As for Gugong, Sam explained the rules and (barring one that he remembered soon after we began) it looks like he got them all. The game is worker-placement with a difference: they’re cards, not workers. And the value of the card you play has to be higher than the one that’s already in the space for a particular action (1s beat 9s, though). If you want to place a lower card, then you have to pay two worker cubes and since this’ll often be your only option, then you need to be careful to always have a healthy stock of workers available.

With all this talk over actions and workers, you’d expect Adam H to be good at it and so it proved to be. He swiftly got into the jade business before it got too expensive. I dd the same, but far too late. In the closing stages it was Katy versus Adam, with Adam’s jade bonus pushing him into a comfortable win. Sam and I must’ve been distracted by something. Possibly Sam's bottle of red wine that kept getting kicked over as people walked by.

Adam 47
Katy 40
Sam 24
Andrew 23

At this point Ian and Adam T left and the remaining six played Letter Jam. I'm afraid, just like last time, I was the one to let the team down. I thought my word was CHIPS but instead it was CHIRP. So my grand finale where I use two of the communal letters to make SAPPHIC was ruined when I revealed what should have been an S only for it to be an R. Every one else got their word, though, which meant we got 79 points and 3 strawberries.

Finally, with Katy and Adam departing, we ended on The Mind Extreme. We started well but then lost three lives in round four. Then we got through round five clear, leaving us with the task of facing round six with only one life left.

Somehow we made it. With a little creative interpretation of the rules: we lost a life, but also at the end of the round you gain a life, so we called it evens.

We then failed in round seven but since we’d already broken the rules once, we tried round eight anyway. Twice. The first time was probably the worst round of The Mind ever: the last card on one of the piles was a 20.Then in our second attempt we expertly cleared the white pile, ending in an unlikely 44, 45, 46, 47, 48. The red pile, however, failed immediately.

Having filled ourselves with all the gaming goodness we could hold, it was time to retire to bed. Thanks for the evening everyone. A good start to the year.