We Are Detectives

 When I arrived at Sam’s at eight, I found that the gamers already present (Sam, Joe, Laura, Martin, Ian and Katy) had just finished a round of Swat. It was suggested that I could just be dealt in and work out the rules as I go, especially since Martin was still on zero points, but I declined and watched. I absolutely would not have been able to work out what was going on. A number of cards, bad and good, are dealt out face up and when a player decides they want them, they slap the table. Like Ra, Joe explained, only more stressful. Martin made a decent comeback, but no one could catch Mr Consistency Ian. Although Sam almost did.

Ian 60

Sam 58

Martin 40

Laura 39

Joe 32

Katy 29

Then Katy left and won’t be seen again for a while as she goes on a cycling trip which is part of her Land’s End to John O’Groats journey (not being done all at once, of course).

The six of us then played The Detective Club, a game in a tin box. This is like Dixit except that there’s a word that the pictures have to relate to that everyone except one person knows - we are given the word on a little pad of paper, but the imposter gets a pad with nothing written on it. We chose two pictures (from a hand of six cards) and the word is revealed. At this point we have to explain our thinking behind our choices and then we decide who the imposter is.

In the first round this was made tricky by Martin turning to the wrong page on his pad, seeing nothing written, he assumed he was the imposter. Only after he chose his first picture did he see the word “message” on the back of the pad. This caused confusion and allowed the real imposter, Joe, to get away scott free. I don’t remember who the other imposters were but I have a clear memory of Ian mumbling some non-sequitors about why his picture meant “blockage” and also of Laura picking a card seemingly solely because she liked the spaghetti War Of The Worlds type monster on it. We stopped after three rounds.

Joe 11

Ian 6

Sam 4

Andrew 3

Martin 3

Laura 0

Now we split into two. Laura, Sam and Martin played Quirky Circuits which is, I’m told, like The Mind crossed with Robo Rally. I didn’t keep a track of how things went but Martin told me they’d completed all of the tracks they attempted.

Joe, Ian and I played Nidavellir. Ian had played it before on Board Game arena, but this was his first go with a physical set. And it was very physical in that it required quite a lot of setting up and fairly constant upkeep. The idea is to bid on cards and so collect sets of dwarves to score points. There is a theme. I think you’re building an army or something.

It was fun, once it got going and most of the icons are pretty straight forward. There was one card with so many icons it looked like someone had punched the keyboard while typing in Wingdings, so we ignored it.

Joe 293

Ian 269

Andrew 234

After Quirky Circuits ended Laura went home and Martin and Sam banged out a quick two-player Cross Clues. They were lucky to have “doctor” which linked nicely to Foot, Eye and Pig. I didn’t get all the clues but was impressed by “Achilles” for “Foot” and “Arrow” and “Barbeque” for “Zoo” and “Cook”.

Sam and Martin 19 points

Then I stayed up extra late, keen to play my first game of So Clover. I’d seen it often enough that I knew what was going on, but I had to be careful not to externalise my frustration when they guessed my clues somehow missing that “Tower” and “Bridge” go together quite well. Similarly we must have been completely discombobulated trying to get answers for Sam's clue "grey" that we missed the easy tap-in of "Guardian" and "magazine".

 But we did okay. 22 points in the end.

And then I left at almost quarter to eleven! They were setting up another game of So Clover and then played Cross Clues and Rosetta.

Thanks all. See you next Tuesday.