Not Your Average Joe

Joe and I arrived a little late to proceedings last night to find that, a quarter of an hour in, no games had been played. And such was our collective dithering that it was another fifteen minutes before we finally started a game. Everyone was distracted, to be fair - by Adam's hair:

And by Joe's new role as a latter-day emperor of Rome. Not only was he lolling horizontally sul letto, he was also (not pictured) eating a peach.

Having been rocked by these seismic changes, we rejected Joe's thematically-apt suggestion of Colosseum in favour of Texas Showdown. For those who've not played, or forgotten, or who just like reading stuff, this is a trick-taker where you don't want to win tricks. The suit led (eg yellow) must be followed if possible, but if someone can't follow they play a different suit (eg green) and now anyone still to play can lay yellow or green. The highest number of the commonest suit takes the trick.

I began badly, picking up five tricks on the first round - as soon as anyone hits twelve the current round will be the last - but staged a recovery of sorts, winning none at all in the next two rounds. Martin, Ian and Adam all cursed their cards at various stages, and Martin was first over the dozen line before I joined him. Adam tripped even further, leaving Ian and Emperor Berger with a shared win.

1 Joe/Ian 10

2 Martin/Sam 13

3 Adam 14

We moved on to feistier fare with the train/station-laying conundrum that is Northern Pacific: if the train goes to your station, it pays out. If it doesn't; it doesn't. But on your turn you can either build a station, or move the train - not both. So there's a dilemma and every station runs the risk of not paying when it ends up as a repurposed B+B instead. The simple rules are neat, but the protracted down-time meant I felt this one works better in the room. Waiting for turns was pronounced enough that non-players started fiddling with all the bits. This was one of the SFW versions:

Martin began well, but was swiftly overhauled by Joe, and then everyone else, as the mistake of leading after round one became clear. Despite leading after round 2, Joe seemed to escape a similar fate, and ran off with title of Railway Emperor:

Joe 21

Adam 20

Sam 19

Ian 18

Martin 17

With that, I was done. I think they were going to continue though, maybe long into the night? I'm sure we'll find out...