The Gary Lineker of Marrakech

I arrived at 8 o'clock and watched Martin, Andy, Katy and Ian play No Thanks. I watched enough to see Ian try to send a 6 card around twice. "I'm tired," he sighed. He still came in second, though. Katy was stiffed by a last minute 35.

Andy -37

Ian -43

Martin -54

Katy -85

Next we played The Crew: Mission Deep Sea. This was on playingcards.io and it was very nicely designed. "You can tell it's not one if mine, can't you?" Said Martin. But it wasn't just a rethemed version of the original Crew, he went on to assure us. The missions are more interesting too.

Having said that, though, our very first mission was "win the first trick" which was so basic that we just assumed we'd completed it and went straight onto mission two. 

We sailed on pretty serenely, with the only hitch when I misremembered the rules and dubbed myself captain despite not having the four of trumps. It was Ian who did, but I must have been louder in my assertion and drowned him out. Ian's mike was muffled for much of the evening, which at least gave him an appropriate subnautical feel.

Happily it didn't matter in this instance who was commander. In fact, if anything, we'd made it harder for ourselves.

We finished after mission five and Katy signed off, explaining that her internet was showing signs of imminent collapse. We began playing Cubirds. This set collecting game involves putting birds on wires that match other birds on the same wire in order to pick up the birds in-between the two matching birds. Once you have enough birds of a certain type in your hand you can fly away as a flock, keeping one or two cards as a means of scoring.

It was nice. Quite genteel, really.

Andy 1

Andrew 0

Ian 0

Martin 0

Finally, Ian said he was amenable to one more before he hit the sack, so we played Marrakech. And what a historical game it was. Andy started with a curious strategy of scattering his carpets far and wide. This paid dividends as later on he was able to join them together to make one huge carpet. One that I kept landing on. You see, Martin, in his attempt at getting points, kept steering Assam/Andy back to his carpet which was next to Andy’s carpet thus leaving Assam/me in an impossible situation. This has happened before, but not to such a devastating effect. I was knocked out of the game (player elimination? At GNN?!) and watched the rest of them have fun without me, eventually covering over my last piece of carpet ensuring I scored no points at all.

Andy 64

Ian 40

Martin 38

Andrew 0

I refused to give Andy any credit, though, insisting it was all Martin’s doing. This gave rise to the blog title and my claim that Andy was the Gary Lineker of Marrakech - tapping in from six yards after someone else had done all the hard work. I should have been more gracious in defeat, but if I’d been like that, I wouldn’t have a blog title.

At this point, Ian had to go to bed and I needed a lie down too. Next week is the one year anniversary of GNN going into lockdown. I don’t think anything is planned, though since that would clash with Katy’s birthday. Either way, see you all then.