Enjoy your temporary wetness

I rolled up to Laura's front door at eight and rang the doorbell. Then I texted Joe but he couldn't work out how to open the front door from the inside, and finally I went down the overgrown footpath to the gate at the end of Laura's back garden where I was let in and I startled a cat.

I sat down to discover that the other gamers there (Joe, Martin, Gareth, Katy and Laura) had already played The Numbers and Laura had won again. Katy didn’t seem impressed by the game.

We played Challengers. This game of deck-building is like a football manager game inasmuch as you put together a team as best you can and then watch the game unfurl. In round one there was a bit of controversy when it was discovered Gareth had beaten Laura with a B card when only A cards are in play. But a few minutes later we found out Laura also had a B card, so it was okay after all.

Joe started as a clear leader, going through the first six rounds unbeaten. He looked like he was definitely going through to the final. And Gareth, with his trophies and fans looked like he’d be the other finalist. But then Martin won the last three rounds (after losing each of the previous three by a single point) including a win against Joe and when we added up our points, the tally was

Joe 29

Martin27

Gareth 20

Katy 18

Laura 14

Andrew 12

The nail-biting final

So Martin and Joe faced off for the final and, thanks to Martin’s ability to keep his bench clear for more cards, he was able to win! What a comeback story. And his winning strategy? “I had lots of animals and a stable boy and then I got loads of vacuum cleaners.”

Then we stayed as a group of six for a co-operative game of Not That Movie. It’s a simple game of groupthink. First, two columns of cards are laid so. These have the names of real films, except they’re flipped so that once they’re laid out they make titles of new films.

I think a photo can explain it better than I can.

Then, once we have eight new film titles to look at, two “reviews” are drawn from a deck, one bad, one good, and we all had to secretly chose which of the titles these reviews refer to.

It proved tricky, even on those occasions when it seemed obvious. In one round the reviews referred to “ultraviolence” and “too complicated” so I thought The Dark List seemed like the only candidate, but Laura and Gareth disagreed. And why Katy didn’t think that The Silence Of The Dog wasn’t an introspective three-hour movie all shot in the same room, I’ve no idea. Mind you, I think everybody had “The Lady In The Shell” as the perfect film for those two reviews except that Laura’s other half was listening in and when she heard the reviews she said “Well, it’s obviously The Lady In The Shell” and there were scenes not dissimilar to LaLa Land getting the wrong Oscar as we had to replace it with a different film.

There was a scoring system and I think our rating was “good”. Laura didn’t seem to rate it, wondering where the cooperation was and Martin didn’t see the point of keeping score.

Then we split into two groups. Laura, Martin and Joe played Ra: The Pharaoh's Edition and Katy, Gareth and I played Azul. Despite not being a fan of Ra, Katy admitted she’d be happy to play that version. Halfway through that game, Joe must have won some floods at Martin’s expense because I distinctly heard Martin say “enjoy your temporary wetness” and not in a good way.

Joe 63

Martin 39

Laura 16

We gave ourselves a rules refresher on Azul, which seems amazing considering how often we used to play it. It was quite a nice game, with little attempt at ruining each others game although Katy did declare that “I’ve cock blocked myself on the bottom”

Andrew 59

Katy 49

Gareth 36

Now it was 10.30 but this would be my last chance to stay up late for weeks so I stayed for a six-player game of So Clover. Martin was first and his clues were pretty straightforward, even if “multigenerational” (for full/heritage) didn’t quite fit on the clover. Katy, too, had some simple definitions (snail/room = “shell”) and I started to have a sinking feeling. Laura went a little bit surreal with “octopus” as her clue for plastic/medusa but we still got it. Three down, three to go.

Gareth clued nicely, with human/rooster = cock. Then Joe’s caused a bit of difficulty. I was sure “gameboy” was the clue for vacation/console but that didn't fit with the rest of the clover. In the end we tried bucket/console out of desperation and it was right! He explained that it meant it in the sense of Bargain Bucket, since it’s the cheapest console.

Finally there was me, with my dissatisfyingly vague clues. “Silver”? “Yellow”? I didn’t have much hope. But then they got chalk=limb/marker and after that paper/beer=mats. Then it was just a case of which words fitted the last two clues best and they got it right! Pandemonium! Delirium! A chance to immortalize ourselves in the book of perfect results!

We were so excited I tried to take a group selfie

Or two..

And then five of us crammed into Joe’s car for a journey around Bristol as he gave lifts home for everyone! Thanks for hosting Laura. See you all next week.