Future Gamers

Another Isolation Tuesday was never going to stop GNN, although we did have unfortunate absentees with Andrew and Adam T late drop-outs. But there was still six of us - Katy, Ian, Martin, and myself kicked things off with a game of For Sale, which Adam H and Joe joined as spectators towards the finale.

For Sale was a strange beast. Several times people didn't bother bidding at all, which led to some inevitable over-bidding when everyone realised they still had loads of cash and the 29 and 30 came out. We entered the game's second stage with a sense of mystery over who was doing well that was, for me anyway, more pronounced than when you're in the room together. As it turned out though Ian and I were best real estate agents on this particular occasion. I won on a tie-breaker that I now forget.

Sam
Ian
Martin
Katy

With Joe and Adam now present, we moved swiftly on to Codenames. This was a real thriller - or as much of a thriller as Codenames can ever be. Joe was spymaster to his agents Adam and Ian, whereas I gave clues to Martin and Katy. Both teams made solid starts, successfully getting two clues each. Then things got a bit wonky, with Joe and I getting a little ambitious with our clueing as we tried to build up a lead. I linked port and pole with Amundsen, but Martin and Katy (after getting pole) not unreasonably picked hood and Canada. Joe's team had me abandon my clue of Queen for London and crown when they picked our London for something. I forget what.

It looked like our goose was cooked when we had four words left to get for the other team's two, but when Joe clued hops for field and Czech, he dramatically broke Codenames etiquette by making it clear that they shouldn't choose plane when Adam started talking about 'city hops'. Consumed by guilt, Joe then insisted they should choose plane, and - as plane was a bystander - we were handed an extremely tenuous lifeline. I clued prince for crown, and then Katy and Martin figured out back and contract for shingles, and wrapped things up by getting the missing Amundsen word - port! It was a back-from-the-dead victory.

Whew. After that we needed something a bit sillier and plumped for Incan Gold, replete with zombie ladies. This turned out to be even more dramatic, as Katy died twice but then came back from the dead by not dying after everyone else had bailed, picking up a huge haul of gems. But it wasn't enough to catch Martin, who after gathering a big haul early on, kept leaving at the optimum moment to build on his lead:

Adam ('OldHarry') was about to lurch from last to first though, with our next undertaking of Perudo. This was the game that brought home to Stan - lurking at my end - exactly how foul-mouthed everyone at GNN is. Particularly Katy and Martin. It is the type of game where saying "You bunch of cocks" barely gets noticed, to be fair. I was first out, followed swiftly by Joe - at one point dice leader with Martin - and then Katy and Martin went as well, leaving Ian to mull over Adam's bid of one five. "Dudo him!" I cried. "He hasn't got a single five!" Ian dudo-ed. Adam had a five and an ace.

The final game of the night - for me - was Wavelength. After our strong early showings with this game, we've been increasingly erratic, and last night was no different. Maybe we didn't help ourselves by being slightly peckish at this point - everyone wandered off to get a snack, apart from Joe, who said 10.30pm was too early for cereal. There was much debate, particularly between Martin and Joe, or Martin and Adam, and much chagrin from Adam when he felt we should have done better with 'HS2' on the local/global spectrum. He reminded us he'd won perudo. Martin invoked Michael Gove again, and again it didn't work. We kept missing the target entirely - in fairness, often not by much - and scored some measly 6 points or something. I didn't write it down. At this point I was flagging, in fact, and had to retire to bed. Everyone else was staying up for one more game, but I don't know what it was. Please say in the comments!