How Orc Board

 I arrived at Joe’s around 8 and watched as Joe, Sam, Martin, Ian and Katy played The Wandering Castle. It is not, as you might hope, a re imagining of the film Howl's Moving Castle, rather it is a cross between Verflixxt and Mord Im Arosa that involves being the first to put all three meeples into a castle tower. To complicate matters, this tower moves, and there are other towers that players can move in order to trap other players’ pieces and, hopefully, make their opponent’s forget where their meeples are. “Where am I? Christ!” wailed Martin, perilously close to an existential crisis or sudden conversion to Christianity.

It was entertaining to watch, even though I didn’t know the rules. Martin’s last meeple made a last dash for the castle, only to be covered by a tower. He was able to uncover himself, leap into the castle and trigger the end of the game. Katy, Joe and Ian were also able to get their third meeple into the tower but only Ian matched Martin in the tie-breaker.

Ian and Martin, 3 meeples,  1 potion.

Joe and Katy, 3 meeples, no potions

Sam 2 meeples

Next up, we went back to Solvenia in a rousing six-player game of Ethnos. We dealt out the races, minotaurs, wizards, merfolk and Orcs. This meant we each got our own little Orc Board to track our progress. "How orcboard," I said, hilariously, and the blog title was born.

Mid game, Sam questioned a rule about Centurions, asking if you could play them singly and chain them together. Martin checked and found that you could, but only if you were able to put down a marker each time. Martin then decided that was exactly what he was going to do, leaving Sam regretting that he'd ever asked.

In round two, Joe had ten cards and had to play. I was expecting maybe half of them would be left on the table for us to choose, but instead he was able to play nine of the ten. A superb move. It sent him up the scoreboard but he had a pedestrian round three and Martin was able to catch him.

Martin 72

Joe 65

Katy 62

Sam 56

Andrew 54

Ian 48

Next we pondered our next game, Texas Showdown or So Clover? We decided to do both, starting with Texas Showdown. Sam started round one in confident mood, saying he thought he could get a zero. He ended the round in joint last, having picked up three.

Round two was similarly bad for Sam as he discovered a new curse: he always loses when Joe leads, which he did whenever Martin was able to nominate the leader. Joe, meanwhile, had gone two rounds clear, with a three point lead on his nearest rival (Katy, Ian and Martin).

The game continued until round five. Sam arrested his decline, going clear on rounds four and five and he finished in third. But no one could reduce Joe's mid-game lead enough to be a challenge.

Joe 5

Martin 7

Sam 8

Katy 9

Ian 10

Andrew 11

Alas, So Clover was cancelled as Joe had to go out and look for his father who'd wandered off by himself. So we excused ourselves and said goodbyes, squeezing past four bicycles chained up outside Joe's front door.

Thanks all, see you all next week.