Bremen over with enthusiasm

 I arrived at 8, during a four player (Sam the host, Ian, Joe and Gareth)game of Kiitos. They cut it short for my benefit so I only got to see one word completed: "Codger" whose points went to Gareth.

Gareth 6

Sam 0

Ian -5

Joe -5

Since we were a fivesome we chose Hansa Teutonica as our main event. It’s a recent returnee to GNN and, after ten years, I needed a rules explanation and so did Ian and Gareth who were both new to the game.

We began in feisty mood, getting in each other’s way, hoping to have our counters bumped off routes so we’d be able to place two counters in adjacent routes. Gareth seemed to be a quick learner and made some shrewd moves but then, a few rounds later, he was still in last, with Joe a distant leader and Sam, Ian and I clustered around the mid-point between them.

We listened to Nick Lowe, who sounded like a number of different artists, and who Spotify believed only has a few songs. We were slowly getting to grips with Hansa Teutonica when Gareth completed the east-west route, pretty much in a straight line. We really should have stopped him earlier. This nabbed him a whole bunch of points and pushed him into joint first. Then my twin towns around a privilege action started scoring me pairs of points and I edged into the lead. In fact, the game ended when I reached 20 points, thanks to Joe completing a route with a town of mine on it.

But my lead was short-lived. Gareth’s bonuses pushed him further and further ahead, leaving us all with a sense of having been thoroughly schooled.

Gareth 51

Joe 37

Andrew 32

Sam 27

Ian 27

Next up was So Clover. Alas, we fell well short of perfection thanks to some unfortunate decoy cards. My clue for “feed/poison” was “Assassinate” but I was distraught when the decoy had “witness” on it, especially since it had a second word that kind of fitted another clue too.

Ian was also tripped up. His clue was “wattle” and we paired it with “rooster/mud” and just as we were congratulating him on such a clever clue, he reached over and removed the “mud” card. We got the right answer next go, but that was a cruel stroke of luck. Only Gareth and Sam got 6 out of 6, with Joe struggling with the pair “cream/needle” and finally he went for “vinyl”. Because of Cream, the band, see?

30 out of 36

Then Ian and I set off home while Gareth, Joe and Sam polished off a quick game of NMBR9

Sam 76

Joe 68

Gareth 38

And then finally, after Gareth had also departed, Sam and Joe played Kiitos again.

Sam 29

Joe -16

Thanks all. See you next Tuesday.