Ultra Mare!

At one stage this final pre-Novocon GNN looked like being just myself and Martin, perhaps with some shin-brushing courtesy of Charlie and heckling from increasingly unsmall children. Fortunately we were saved: Joe, Laura and Adam H all riding in late to make it the tricky-but-welcome five. 

With Martin's games cupboard currently boarded up by his builders, he arrived sans knapsack and with no agenda. Unusually, neither Joe or I had made many plans either, although Joe did mention he'd be up for a two-player of Obsession. But after Martin's archeological digging in the games alcove, he emerged with a title last seen back in July 2016: Oltre Mare. 

Martin's capacity to read rules and explain them whilst also dealing with side conversations and consume snacks was highlighted again, as he waved the dense text around happily saying that it was only four pages of rules. Brows furrowed at length and depth as he went through them, but I remembered the game as being fairly simple and fast-moving, and luckily that's how it proved. Despite the central board, replete with ships and tokens, it is predominantly a card game of trying to bank sets of goods into their stash and keep the pirates at bay. Players can trade on their turns for cards (or cash, which also serves as a scoretrack) and their last-played card to their stash defines both their hand limit, and how many cards they can play on their next turn. 

Some cards let you move your ships and collect the very-helpful tokens. But the boats, whilst beautifully constructed, were mainly noticeable for how hard it was to tell them apart, and the shared focus was mostly on the trading, especially after Martin offered 'a towel' which somehow seemed to lower the tone for a considerable period. When Laura spotted his boat at Venice, she sailed on by, not wanting to moor beside 'the towel guy'. I lied to Adam about how piratey my traded goods were, and felt a bit bad when I discovered he'd told the truth (you can't lie about what goods are on your cards, but you can about anything else)

Meantime we hit the halfway scoring and, despite a plethora of pirates, my bunch of sets pushed me into a decent lead on points/cash. Martin bemoaned his position at the back, although Adam pointed out he was only a few ducats ahead of him. As we pushed into the second half of the game things sped up exponentially, with trades being refused as plans came to fruition and boats hoovering up the last offerings on the board. Joe was delighted with Laura's trade of olives until he discovered they were riddled with pirates. He triggered the endgame and sailed past me into the lead - until the pirates dragged him back to level on points. But then Adam flipped his stash, arrayed like a snake of dastardly points-hauling across the table, and left us all in the dust:

Adam 68

Joe and Sam 53 each

Laura 51

Martin 42

Although we sped up considerably, overall we'd taken rather longer than the game's advertised 60 minutes, and Laura had time for a short game before she went. Before you could say Reiner the only game Martin had brought with him was out on the table, and we were all diving for treasure in a luck-pushing cross between Yahtzee and Las Vegas: Into the Blue. You've three rolls to dive down and need consecutive numbers. After your third roll you can place shells at <up to> the deepest level you rolled x the number of dice you rolled of that number. Most shells at a depth of X wins you the treasure there, but ties are broken by the next level up, leading to a semi-cascading thing of fluctuating fortunes. Get all the way to the bottom and you claim a treasure!

I felt more at the mercy of the dice than I do in Las Vegas. But maybe I'm just sour about not getting any of the (roll 1-2-3-4-5-6) treasures at the bottom, which come in a little chest. I found it hard to gauge the game state, but it was fun to chuck dice and curse people. 

Adam 23

Laura 21

Martin 18

Sam 16

Joe 14

We bid adieu to Laura (until Friday!) and finished off with four-player Spicy. There were a whole bunch of wrong challenges, a few right ones, and I managed a victory when I emptied my hand a second time to claim another +10 and the insta-win.

Lots of fun, thanks all. See you at the weekend!