Two-Headed Beasts

On Friday Chris and I (Sam) met for some gentle two player-games whilst Ashton and Stan zoomed around the house on hoverboards, making beeping noises and throwing a bouncy ball at each other.

"Does that bother you?" I asked Chris. 

"To be honest, I hadn't noticed" he said. 

Chris hadn't noticed partly because after introducing him to the magic of Cross Clues, we'd gone for the not-usually-2-player space battle of Eclipse. 

Eclipse is engineered to push players towards each other geographically and aggressively. With 3 or more there are extra layers of tactical thinking and nuance to play. With two, it's much simpler, although the goals are still the same - you score points for territories, developed tech, and prowess (or even lack of prowess!) in battle. Chris and I started either side of the galaxy's centre, but had very different experiences. My exploration found lowly, unoccupied worlds, waiting for pink habitation. As a result I built an economy swiftly, whereas Chris found himself beset by The Ancients, hostile forces bent on - not unreasonably - hanging on to the last vestiges of their civilisations. 

Mid-game I felt comfortable - I was taking more actions than Chris and calmly spreading tendrils across the galaxy. But Chris used what little flex he had to arm his ships to a degree I think it's fair to call 'fucking nuts' and when the endgame arrived, the classic battle-for-the-centre wasn't enticing me in.

We had similar numbers, but Chris's firepower dwarfed mine. Instead of contesting such a long-odds battle, I branched off to explore - but made a catastrophic error: throwing two ships into the centre 'for fun' - they had such a slim chance of success, it was basically to have another punch-up. But although Chris had no actions left, he could still react: and swiftly moved into the perilously ill-defended hex I'd left behind. There was no return!

Chris 36

Sam 31

We moved back to terra-ferma for a crack at Rajas of the Ganges, where I attempted a small measure of revenge. For those unfamiliar, the terrifying-looking board disguises a really simple worker-placement game, where workers combine with dice.

Each player's goal is to build their Raja's palace - on a separate board - by paying for tiles to place there. The USP with Rajas is that tiles score in two different ways (cash and fame) and these currencies are tracked around the board: but going in different directions. Your goal is to get the two markers to pass each other. 

The last time I'd played Andrew had totally schooled me, so I copied his fame-heavy strategy as Chris built numerous markets and coined in the cash. The catch with the market route is that for every space the fame marker moves, the money marker needs to move twice for equivalence. I thought I might have run out of steam as Chris, in the last round, suddenly sprang up the track at terrifying velocity - but I held on for the win. 

Sam - Raja

Chris - Raja not

There was just time for another blast at Cross Clues...

Before we called it a night. But what a night it was - Chris' mad cat Daisy decided to start mewing at 3am outside my door and opening the door seemed to upset her even more. Chris found a bed for me away from the noise, but I was now neurotically wide-awake and remained so until around 5. I wouldn't have mentioned it all, except for the fact on Saturday night I had a date with Martin, Joe and Katy for...

DOPPELKOPF

Martin had been playing this partnership trick-taker online a lot and wanted to try it in the room, so the three of us signed up to experience it's unique charms. As trick-takers go, it's quite long (2 hours!) and also - even for a game genre that positively bubbles with unusual twists - kinda bonkers. The game can be played with a standard deck (or decks plural, actually) of cards, but thank God Martin had the bespoke deck: without it, we would have definitely struggled!

Although each round - usually - sees players establish temporary partnerships, the game is won and lost individually. The lowest card is a nine, and a ten is higher than a king, so the suits run from ace down:

Ace - Ten - King - Queen - Jack - Nine. 

But forget suits for a moment because over half the deck are actually trumps, and for the trump suit you - usually - ignore the standard suit on the card entirely. There are also two of every card, with - should duplicates be played in the same round - the earlier breaking ties. Most of the cards are also worth points (point values between 2 and 11, thankfully also printed on the cards) and the partnership that claims the most points wins the round. 

But when (all) the cards are first dealt, players don't actually know who they'll partner with initially. The Re partnership is determined by the players holding the two Queens of Spades Clubs (the 19 trumps) and the Kontra whoever isn't. If one player is dealt both queens, they can announce they need a 'marriage' and the first non-queen player to win a trick is the Re partner. Unless someone decides to play... solo!

The three jacks, ten of diamonds and king of diamonds are all actually trumps (gold circle)

Point values appear halfway down the cards. The non-gold values under the spades, hearts 

and clubs are their trump value in case they become trumps. I think. 

A full game of Doppelkopf takes 16 rounds, but every player must at least once play a round solo. When this happens, they choose from a smorgasboard of solo parameters: same rules as partnership, but swap out one 'trump' suit for a 'non-trump' suit? No trumps at all? Only queens are trump, or only jacks? The solo rules sometimes make things simpler, but the swapping of suits - in a game where some suited cards are trumps (and therefore not the standard suit on them) and some matching suited cards aren't, sent all of us tumbling into a pit of continuous confusion!

Apart from that, the basic rules of Doppelkopf came into focus reasonably quickly. But wait! There are numerous additional flourishes - pages of them on wikipedia, apparently - and we mixed in a few. A standard round is worth a point, but possibly more if it's a big win, and more still if the winners (or indeed losers) announce it ahead of time. Winning a hand of tens and aces is a doppelkopf: bonus point! Winning the (trump) ace of diamonds (the Fox!) from an opponent is worth an additional point. Winning the Jack of Spades - Charlie Miller - in the final round is an additional point. These various points, when the planets align, can accrue spectacularly: Martin and I both got seven points for a single round at one stage, as the Kontras looked on at the disaster playing out forlornly. 

Joe sank to minus 13 points at one stage, whereas as Katy and I lingered around the zero mark, Martin surged ahead to a dozen or so points. He assured us all that the points could easily swing back the other way - nobody believed him, though. Until they did. 

I have to confess I made a couple of left-field moves that came off more by luck than judgement, dumping a valuable club in order to be free of clubs and finding it went to my - then unknown - partner. Often in Doppelkopf though momentum seems to swing with earlier trick-winners falling away. This is no more pronounced than in the solo rounds, where Joe, Martin and I all failed to win, but Katy pulled it off with some aplomb. With 11 o'clock looming we took the decision to cap the game at 12 rounds instead of 16 - perhaps prompted by my yawning, although I was enjoying the game - and Martin and Joe were forced to play the last two rounds as their solos. Both were disasters, which helped push both myself and Katy past Martin into first and second. Joe, who seemed to be regularly harpooned by fate, was still stuck on minus 13 points. But as Martin pointed out, since the halfway point his haul of zero was considerably better than Martin's own, as he was belatedly hit by explainer's curse. 

Sam 9/ Katy 3/ Martin 1/ Joe -13

We finished off with the current nightcap de rigeur of Cross Clues, then called it a night. Thanks to Daisy, I could barely remember the last hour of the evening, but at least I slept ten hours. I'd like to play Doppelkopf again as well - it was kinda nuts, but sort of alluringly so...