Inky Blinders

 I arrived at Joe's a little late but actually perfectly timed, as I was let in by Joe's daughters who had just popped out to get their cat.

Downstairs Ian, Joe, Martin and Gareth were playing Hot Lead. While I watched in bemusement, Katy arrived, followed shortly after by Adam in mirror shades.

Anyway, Hot Lead finished…

Martin 61

Gareth 90

Joe 55

Ian 29

Next up, all seven of us played Phantom Ink which is like Decrypto for dead people. We are spirit mediums trying to divine the object that a spirit (for example, Joe and Ian) knows. They both know a word (always a physical object) and the two teams of spirit mediums have to choose questions from a hand of seven cards that will help one team (and not their opponents) guess the word. The Decrypto ish part is that everyone has access to the same answers.

Martin, Katy, Ian and Gareth beat Joe, Adam and me twice.

It was a lot of fun. Although it wasn't as brain burny as Decrypto, it still involved a decent amount of lateral thinking and Joe would often ponder "There must be a good answer to this…" after we'd handed over our questions.

Then we split into two groups. Ian, Katy, Joe and I played Mille Fiori, a game now so well understood that we zip through it in about half the time we used to.

Gareth, Adam and Martin played Keltis: Das Orakal. I guess Reiner Knizia thought the world needed another Keltis game. Especially one with a German subtitle

Mille Fiori began with a brief discussion about whether being starting player in the first round is a disadvantage. Later, Katy was briefly in first but seemed disappointed that she hadn't used her finger to its best advantage. Soon after that Ian leapt into a big lead and Joe overtook Katy while she was in the toilet. 

As we both played our Knizias, there was a moment of curious synchronicity. Katy complained that her options were a choice of one point, one point or one point. Then Adam, playing keltis, complains about the same thing immediately after. We asked if he was making fun of Katy and he insisted he'd been completely oblivious to our banter.

Keltis ended…

Martin 73

Adam 72

Gareth 64

They watched the end of our game with Ian poised to finish the game. Gareth asked why there was such a disparity in the amount of counters we had left and I, in a distant last, joked that I was just more efficient than the other players, thus misleading Gareth into thinking I was in a massive lead.

But then my fortunes changed. After being in last for much of the game, I hit an "extra go cascade" and pass Katy and then hit another two high scoring options and went around the board in about three turns. My first win. Katy took solace in the fact that a tie between Ian and Joe meant she finished third.

Andrew 188

Joe 174

Ian 174

Katy 158

Then we played Doodle dash, the game of stupid pictures done quickly. The number of professional artists around the table (which included me, somehow) made Gareth and Katy cautious but there's no substitute for speed.

Katy's pyjamas 

My slippers 

More synchronicity, two identical restaurants 

I have no idea 

Talking of which, there was a couple of times when the die would not roll on the Stop side. I even had enough time to start shading my picture in.

Ian 9

Adam 7

Andrew 7

Martin 7

Katy 6

Gareth 5

Joe 4

It was a crazy blast and my last game of the night. I've no idea what happened next. Hopefully someone will elaborate in the comments.

Cheers all.