Flippedy Doo Dah

 The regular GNN meet continued in its perambulations around Bristol, this time landing in my flat. There were only three of us, since others seemed more keen on the Euro 2020 semi final, but my table cannot comfortably accommodate lots of people so it was probably for the best.

First, with Katy en route, Sam and I dusted off vague memories and played The Pyramid's Deadline, a roll and build game which sees the players racing to build the biggest mausoleum before the pharaoh snuffs it. I'm sure we forgot a few rules, despite reading through them. Not to worry, Sam won easily.

Sam scored lots

Andrew scored not lots

Katy turned up and we played another Japanese game Remember Our Trip. This curious game involves players tiles onto their player board, trying to match the shape and colour of various buildings. Once they have achieved that, the shape scores PLUS that building is added to a communal player board that represents the "real" memories (assuming that those squares haven't already been claimed by someone else's recollection).

It was interesting. I did keep wanting to slip into Hellfire Club mode and reminisce at length about our trip to Kyoto, but that's not what the game is about. It’s fun and a little mean as players try to remember things about the same part of the board first.

Sam 46

Andrew 44

Katy 30

Next up we broke out good old Divinare, the game of psychic ability. After a very brief rules refresher, we got down to business for a truncated three round game (because I wanted to play Troika). Sam sped off into an early lead, crediting his success to a lack of understanding of any strategy. Meanwhile Katy found her earlier optimism to be completely misplaced and as we began the final round, she had a grand total of minus one points. She did better in that final round, going from dismal last to respectable last.

Andrew 14

Sam 12

Katy 7

Finally, we played Troika, a token flipping set collecting game of space exploration. Katy quickly got into the swing of things and ended round one with 19 points. You can imagine her disappointment when she discovered that winning a round only gets you two points. Katy did need regular prompting to flip a tile first. These prompts became increasingly long and absurd (ie, "flippiddy dippidy!") as she . That didn't stop her though and Katy finally won a game, much to her relief since that meant her evening wasn’t a complete waste of time.

Katy 4

Sam 3

Andrew 2

And so that was that for another week. Next week will have less football to distract people, but maybe more virus to put people off. We shall see.