Kingdamnino

I "arrived" at this week's games night a little late, but had earlier popped into the group chat long enough to learn that Martin, Ian, Katy and Sam were playing a game of Love Letter. I even watched a hand or two which was pretty entertaining. Once I'd returned, the game was over and I saw that Martin had gone from joint last on 2-2-0-0 to outright winner.

Martin 4
Ian 3
Sam 3
Katy 2

For my first game, Martin introduced us to a website that allowed you to recreate your favourite card games (or even your own creation) online. He had put together a game of Voodoo Prince. It lacked the artwork of the original but the game itself remained intact. Having everyone's cursor visible on screen as a smallish coloured circle was odd since it felt like I was playing against four little Tinkerbells, all drifting around mischievously. Also dealing cards was impossible, so instead it was necessary for everyone to take the required number of cards from the stack in a flurry of Hungry Hippos type activity.

We played a three round game, and Joe joined us midway through the game as a spectator.

Katy had a commanding lead after two rounds but that didn't stop her complaining when she went out third in round three. She cheered herself up by picking up the token we were using to signify the trump suit and waving it around, much to Martin's annoyance.

Katy 29
Martin 21
Sam 18
Andrew 17
Ian 17

After this, Joe joined us for a game of Fuji Flush, again devised by Martin on this new website. The only drawback was how difficult it was to keep track of how many cards people had left. I was first to get down to my last card, but Martin was soon after me and he was able to seal the deal. Don't know how anyone else did.

Martin 0 cards left
Andrew 1
Everyone else… more than that, I suppose

After the game ended the table descended into anarchy with people moving cards around willy nilly and everyone getting a new rude name. I for one will be very disappointed if this behaviour doesn't continue once we're back in the real world.

After this, we all decamped to another site to play Fake Artist Goes To New York. This has the advantage of no one being the clue-giver, so we were all involved all the time. Joe was the first fake but couldn’t guess “bike”, then Katy was next and was able to guess “hunting” (while disputing that it should be in the ‘recreation’ category) then I was last fake and unable to guess “dish rack”.

Katy struggled with the site on her tablet, saying she had difficulty getting to things in corners. Thus her tablet was dubbed the Samsung Round, a rare circular tablet that couldn’t even scroll, apparently.

Then Katy went to see a gig online for half an hour or so while the rest of us played Just One. Not the old fashioned version with webcams and pen and paper, but a slick web-based version. It worked well, except for not eliminating a duplicate due to a spelling error. We got a few amazing correct guesses with only two clues by Ian and Martin and we finished with 10 out of 13 and the traditional snide remark: “huh, colour me impressed. Was it a fluke?”

Then Sam left and the four of us played the world’s most controversial game of Kingdomino. It was all going smoothly until the last move when Martin had first choice and a prize 3-crown tile which would fit nicely onto his board but instead when he chose it, the website selected a different and completely useless tile which probably cost him the win. He was furious, as you can imagine.

Martin (green) had chosen the lowest tile, but been given the second one

Andrew 52
Ian 47
Joe 41
Martin 37 and fuming

Katy had come back by now, but Ian and Joe left so the three of us played two games of Hanabi to finish off. It works well online, although we were able to do our usual trick of giving clues in a happy or sad tone of voice. Both times, I was the first to ruin the game by discarding a pair of values. In game two poor old Martin only got one clue for most of the game, since his hand was all threes and fours - either couldn’t be used or weren’t worth protecting.

Game one: 20 out of 25
Game two 19 out of 25

Well, it looked like we were getting worse, so we finished up there and left the internet to look after itself. Thanks all!