Shortest evening of the year

Today I was stretching modern technology to its limits. NASA may boast about being able to put a rover down on the surface of Mars, but that's peanuts trying to juggle an old smart phone, my current phone and a kindle fire while trying to play games online/cook supper/get drunk.

Joining me on this evening was Ian, Martin and Andy. We were expecting Adam T but early on we got an email from him saying he'd just woken up and he had to eat. 

We began with Marrakech, and we initially stayed strictly to the three right hand columns, sending poor Assam round in circles. Martin was so taken with this new "variant" that he was disappointed when I broke out from this area and set off across the rest of the board. 

This evening's notable moment was when Andy made a carpet several squares upwards, with two squares either side at the bottom. This prompted Martin to remark that he didn't want to land on Andy's giant cock.

In the end it was between me and Martin. The final player was Andy who tried to cover up bits of carpet so as to end the game in a draw, but didn't take into account the tie breaker, so I took the win by a single coin.

Andrew 50
Martin 50
Ian 28
Andy 24

Next up we played Kingdom Builder. Something for my kindle fire to really get its teeth into and it did okay, unless I tried full screen mode, when it wouldn't render the whole board properly.  Martin built a sprawling spider of a village whose spindly legs connected castles to villages for points. Ian, though, ended up mostly stuck in one corner, unable to make any connections at all.

Martin 60
Andy 57
Andrew 53
Ian 30

Finally, we chose Buttons as our nightcap. It's a fun game, I think. I'm still to crack the winning strategy, though. Martin opted out in a winning position meaning Ian had to push his luck, just as he'd had to do last time. He couldn't manage it and Martin took a slender win by just 98 points.

Martin 106
Andy 8
Ian 6
Andrew 5

And so we were done. One of the shortest games nights on records, not even reaching ten o’clock, but still a lot of fun.