Competition on the High Street

With several absentees due tonight, I (Sam) suggested an impromptu GNN last night (a Monday!) at my place, and Adam H and Katy joined me. As we were just a trio, and euro-sympathetic trio at that, we debated some lesser-seen titles (Rajas of the Ganges) before Katy alighted on IKI. I said it was a bit more complex than Rajas, and nobody batted an eyelid. We opened up the box and coos were heard at the various bits, so without further ado we set up and I did my best to cover the rules.

In IKI, players wander their Oyakata (big pieces) around the High Street, visiting the various shops. But they also populate those shops with their kobun (little pieces) who gain experience whenever someone other than their owner takes what they offer: food, wood, cash, and so on. They also get experience whenever the Oyakata completes a circuit of the street: when they can gain no more experience, they 'retire' and sit under your player board with their feet up. Your kobun can now be used as another character! 

What you're trying to do in IKI is a melange of euro-y things: build buildings, gather sets (fish/pipes/tobacco/character types) and occasionally get in each others' way as you jostle for position. Critical to everything are your firefighting skills: not only do they protect you from a fire that's predictable in its timing (but not it's direction) but they also establish turn order. 

Katy was bitten by the fire when two of her characters went up in flames. Then another starved. "They're all dying!" she cried. 
"I can't help feeling you're negligent" Adam remarked.

Whilst my characters inched me up the scoretrack, both of them were gathering the bits they needed to build the points-hauling buildings. Katy snuck ahead of Adam just as he was about to build. "Because I'm a bitch!" she trilled happily. As shopping trips go, it was an increasingly feisty affair. Although I built nothing at all, my swathe of point-scoring characters kept me competitive:

Sam 88 

Adam 88

Katy 74

I nabbed the win from Adam on a tiebreaker: my firefighting skills were better than his! 

We moved swiftly on to Biblios, combining some 'extreme' rules (swearing) with the basic (actual rules, including shuffling the auction pile! Sorry Andrew). I decided early on not to get involved in brown or blue and serially dumped cards, much to Katy's appalled disdain. Everyone seemed intent on devaluing the dice whenever they could. 

The ending was quite nuts, with all of us poised to win if we could only grab the red die - but nobody had a single card. In Extreme Biblios Adam would have won (brown die beats others) but we were playing mostly-correctly, and I was the one with gold in my hand!

Sam 4 (Mr Biblios)
Adam 4
Katy 3

Tectonic stuff. There was just time for some cheese pie and a blast at Cross Clues before we called it a night. Cross Clues was excellent as always, with some vague and frankly bad clues (many mine) somehow being correctly identified, and a last-minute-push dragged us to a half-decent score of 18. A delightful night: mildly-shit-stirring puzzling in IKI, Biblios as opaque as ever and Cross Clues just good solid word-associating silliness. Thanks both!