Keys are good! Keys are good!

 I arrived online and found Martin, Andy and Ian patiently waiting for me, having completed a game of No Thanks. When I checked the result, I couldn’t stop myself from pointing out how shit those scores were.

Ian 63

Martin 64

Andy 76

Then the four of us decided on a new game: Abyss. Nothing to do with James Cameron externalising a failed marriage into a CGI-laden blockbuster. No, instead this is a get-stuff-to-get-stuff kind of game. The basic mechanism seems to be (to me at least) that the more choice you ask for, the greater the options for your opponents to pick up something out of the stuff you leave behind. Cards you don’t buy end up in a pile that someone can take for free, if you ask to see three “locations” (end of game bonuses which you can get when you have three keys, hence the blog title) and those other two you don’t chose will become available for everyone. That kind of thing.

Martin talked us through the rules, which was made a lot easier when Andy worked out how to allow Martin to make his cursor visible, and his tinkerbell-esque green cursor darting around brought back memories of playingcards.io.

Halfway through the game Katy arrived, commented on how quiet we were and then left. And it was. Ian opined that the game would be better in real life to general agreement. Not to say it wasn’t bad, but a little pedestrian. Part of the problem is having to click “pass” on something you obviously don’t want and the game does allow you to set up automatic passing for cards of a certain colour/value but none of us felt confident enough to do that.

In the end, Martin bought up the seventh lord and triggered the end game.

Martin 76

Andy 75

Andrew 65

Ian 63

After this pretty substantial experience, we ended with Marrakech, with the “dick” variant where you leave the meeple pointing in the direction you want your opponent to go. This worked badly for Ian who found that Andy was repeatedly able to set him up so that he had no chance of escape. I felt a bit bad because I seemed to let Andy get into those positions, but didn’t admit to that at the time. I’m admitting to it now, though. Sorry Ian.

Andy 68

Martin 52

Andrew 30

Ian 12

And then we were done. Thanks all, it was fun.