I arrived at after eight at Mel’s to find eight gamers already squeezed into one room. I had already missed a game of Just One which ended with 7 right out of 7. "We bossed it," Martin informed me.
Meanwhile, as I arrived, Joe, Ben and Gareth had already started a game of Zendo and the rest were waiting for me before deciding on their next choice. In the event, Sam, Katy and Mel played Shinkansen which is, I guess, about building trains across Japan while Martin, Ian and I played Sheepy Time.
Our game was an odd one. The first two rounds were over quickly as the nightmare tore around the track like a demon possessed. Martin and I were able to pick up points while Ian languished in third. Then I provoked the ire of my opponents by using a dream tile’s special power to push both of them on to the same square as the nightmare, waking them up and taking all the points in that round for myself.
In round four, both Martin and I pass our pillows but daren't stop for fear of losing to the other. Then the nightmare suddenly shifted and ended the round before we could do anything.
In round five, I got past my pillow and, seeing the nightmare in the second half of the track, I finished. Then Martin also passed his pillow, went further than I did and finished too. This left Ian, who'd had no luck all game with a mountain to climb. And climb it he did. An astonishing feat of brinkmanship sent him round twice, maybe three times more, and he sped past his pillow by miles and clocked up an improbable win.
Ian 7 spaces past his pillow
Martin 3
Andrew 1
The group playing Zendo ("the facial hair table", according my notes) finished with each of them winning a simple rules round and then Ben suggested attempting a medium rules round, prompting an anguished wail of tortured indecision from Gareth. Ben won the medium rules round and I think Gareth enjoyed it. "Our brains are fried," summarised Joe.
Ben 2
Joe 1
Gareth 1
And Shinkansen ended shortly afterwards.
Sam 82
Katy 76
Mel 51
Then Mel made Katy a cherry coke float which I thought was the most 1950s thing I'd seen in years.
We rearranged ourselves into two new groups. Sam, Ian, Mel, Ben, Katy and Gareth played Texas Showdown while Joe, Martin and myself sat around the garden table and played The Crew Mission Deep Sea. We veered from hopeless incompetence to supreme capability, failing the first two attempts and then sailing past two rounds without even using the communication option. We ended on mission 21 which was a bit of an anti climax as we completed it in just three tricks.
Clearly impossible
I was too engrossed in our deep sea missions to follow much of Texas Showdown except for Katy musing "I'm sure I used to be good at this game."
Mel 3
Ben 6
Katy 9
Sam 10
Ian 10
Gareth 12
And with that, we were done. At least, most of us. Martin was keen for one more so perhaps him and the hosts continued into the wee small hours. Sorry that the blog is so self centred and that I arrived so late. I drove to Easton on total auto pilot and found myself on Stapleton Road thinking "oh shit".
Big thanks to Mel and Ben for hosting. Hope to see you all soon.
I introduced Mel and Ben to the wonders of The Mind. We reached level 5.
ReplyDeleteShinkansen Zero Kei was fun! It is possibly the definition of opaque, but basically you're building a train to try and match the cities on the board and trying to build hotels on the board that match the cities on your train. But there's three kinds of hotels so the players also control - or try to - their comparative value. Plus, there's the Olympics as well.
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