The five of us were Martin, Katy, Sam, Joe and me with Joe expected a little late so we began as a four. First we banged out a quick Gold Fever. Its King-of-the-hill type strategy of attacking the leader meant that I ended the game with very few stones in my sack at all since I was never a threat. Sam won it, though, declaring “I’m going for it!” before pulling another gold nugget from his bag.
Sam 4
Martin 3
Katy 3
Andrew 2
Still no Joe, so we played L.A.M.A. Katy went clear in round two but, pivotally, Sam went clear in round four when the rest of us were laden with cards and he was able to put back a ten-point token.
Sam 20
Katy 23
Martin 38
Andrew 50
But still no Joe. Twice now the method of starting a game, expecting it to be interrupted by a knock on the door had failed. We debated what to play and Katy suggested Beowulf again, only to see it rejected again. Instead we went for a new game, King Chocolate. While we set up Joe finally arrived, a little frazzled after his ordeal in trying to find a parking space. He sat down at his allocated space and was introduced to the world of making chocolate.
In this game players place tiles in the shape of two conjoined hexagons that become areas representing different stages of chocolate productions from bean to chocolate via things like "nibs" and "liquor." It was pretty bemusing. With six stages of production but only four workers per player, the game required a certain amount of cooperation. We seemed unwilling to go down that path and did so only begrudgingly, especially if it benefited Martin and his vast liquor fields.
Katy initially gave herself a winning score but among widespread surprise, not least from herself, at her victory, she remembered a potential mistake when changing some currency and then she nobly took five points off her score, giving Sam his third win of the evening.
Sam 49
Katy 48
Joe 47
Martin 36
Andrew 27
Next up, we were in the mood for something silly and knockabout. Stinker was brought back to the table after too long away. I didn’t even remember the rules and I started slowly, scoring nothing for the first five cards. Katy’s new Nike slogan, “Love de shoe” was an early winner, as was her “Go arses” which was her way of telling people to leave. I got back into the groove, though, with my reason for being sent to the headmaster’s office: Tintin cosplay. This was hard for Martin to take since he’d made an answer using all of his tiles. Martin did okay, though, with quality answers like: tips to give a marathon runner - Move more haughtily.
Martin 40
Katy 40
Andrew 30
Sam 30
Joe 26
Next up we played co-operative Wavelength. We did better than before, and the card-winning answers were Dog/Cat name = Rover (from Joe, who admitted it was too easy), Un/hygenic + washing your hands for thirty seconds (Martin’s tweaking of health advice put us on the right track) and Gossip/News = Katie Price’s maternity dress (from me, and I suspect this was blind luck, although they did discuss it a lot).
Harmless or harmful: according to Katy, a pencil is pretty lethal.
Us: 18 points
Then, as we put it away, we marvelled at the best box fart in town.
Katy went back at this stage so the remaining four played Melee: a short war game with some very nice 16-bit graphics. Each player got a castle and then a limited number of moves and money to wage war on your neighbours. War is curious: the attacker reveals how much money they have in total and then they put some (or all) of that in a closed fist. The defender has to guess how much is in there. Get it right and they successfully defend. Get it wrong and they are vanquished.
It was, you know, fun. Joe and I attacked each other. Martin attacked Sam who successfully defended, but then lost to Martin’s knight. Not to be downhearted, he rallied and took the centre area which gave him another win.
Sam 3 provinces
Joe 2
Andrew 2
Martin 1
It was okay. Hard to tell, really, it was over so soon. But we were quite pooped and we bade our farewells for another week. Thanks for hosting Sam, see you all next week which will apparently involve cake.
Sorry my new ones were a bit underwhelming. I should have saved Melee for when we had time for two plays in a row - had forgotten the rules take as long as the game!
ReplyDeleteI’d like to play Melee again - I was a bit brain dead and my return journey also ended in a 15 minute attempt to find a parking space. The war guessing game is the heart if it, and that seems like a fun and neat little mechanic.
ReplyDeleteThanks for a great night as ever, even if my quoting of an off-colour bar sign nearly ended games night for good...
Two unusual games... I found both interesting but quite oddball as well. I think Melee just started a bit too late for me; I was really tired at that point. Great to play Stinker again.
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