Bum Puppet

Today, the postman had pushed a whole load of mail through my letterbox for an entirely different house. Luckily, it was a house on Joe's street and so I set off to games with a little more intent than usual. So much so that I didn't notice Katy's other half, Rob, until I'd gone past and he'd said hello.

I arrived at Joe's where the host was already entertaining Adam T, Sam, Katy, Ian and Martin. Adam H got here soon after and we sorted out chairs and seating arrangements. I said that this was pointless since we'd surely swap places for games but it turned out we didn't need to. Half the table played the new Martin Wallace while the other half played a new Knizia. Wallace versus Knizia! What an occasion!

Sam, Adam T, Ian and Katy played Via Nebula, which seemed to be about clearing fog. But I didn't follow it much after Katy said “Let's play nice.”

And she did!

Katy 23

Ian 22

Adam 20

Sam 16

Sam said he liked it, despite “getting rinsed.”

Meanwhile, Martin, Joe, Adam T and I played Cascadero. When introducing it, Martin dismissively said it was some bullshit about kings but then we insisted that we needed to know the backstory and insisted he read it out. And he did. In character.

I can't remember it, though, except that we were ministers of industry, agriculture, textiles and money or something. The idea of the game is to put your envoys on the board so that they link up cities and push cubes up several bonus tracks to trigger extra moves/more points. Each minister has a particular bonus track that they must complete otherwise, in fine Knizia style, you are disqualified.

During this game, Joe pondered that whenever he saw a bonus track, he always wanted to bump up it. This was deliberately misheard fro comedy effect and gave us this week's blog title.

It was fine. I think we were far less shitty to each other than we could have been. Especially to Martin who got a juicy ten point bonus but Adam always seemed to be at his shoulder.

Although the end of the game was made notably more exciting by Joe's cat who decided to sit on Adam's lap and stare at the game as if it were easy prey just waiting for a pounce.

Martin 49

Adam T 44

Andrew 29

Joe 29 (but an incomplete bonus track)

It was good, although an odd ending. Options were sparse. Martin couldn't finish the game by reaching 50 points and we eventually ended when Adam ran out of meeples.

While we finished, the others played Little Tavern, with a little variant where they read out the flavour text on the card they drew and the others had to guess if they were goblin/witch/elf etc.

Ian 26

Sam 19

Katy 19

Adam H 19

Then, amazingly, Lords of Vegas was brought to the table! At 9.15! But it was chosen because it was Katy's last games night for a month, and they seeded the game over card a little earlier in the deck than normal, to shorten the game. 

Ian explained the rules to Adam T and I was a little surprised to see the dice-averse Adam H as one of the participants. “Do you usually win?” asked Adam T, seeing Katy’s excitement at playing. She insisted she didn’t (which, in fairness, is true) but next time I looked over, Katy had a very early three-tile casino on the Strip.

We played Spectral, a deduction game in which players secretly look at cards (in a 4x4 grid) and note the clues revealed in order to deduce where the most jewels may be. And to avoid the demons. It was okay. Sam seemed to struggle, although he said he felt confident heading into the closing stages, while I was confident of where to avoid but didn’t pick up enough gems to make an attempt on the lead.

Joe 48

Martin 38

Sam 27

Andrew 24

In Vegas, meanwhile, Adam paid $40m to sprawl into a new square and, in doing so, took over a seven-tile casino on the strip. Ian, meanwhile, was stuck on 3 points while Adam H had 12, Katy 16 and Adam T was on 20. His exclamations over disdain as his luck echoed around the room. Meanwhile, Adam H sprawled into a new plot and got himself a new seven-tile casino for “only” $40m.

After Spectral, we played Cabanga. Martin told me it was fun because you got to say “Cabanga” and I pointed out I could do that anyway. But it’s all about context, and saying “cabanga” meaning “fuck you” was more fun than just blurting it out like an idiot. 

Sam 4

Martin 4

Andrew 6

Joe 7

We only played two of the regulation three rounds because Lords of Vegas ended, with a possible lowest score for Ian.

Katy 44

Adam T 32

Adam H 26

Ian 6

The two Adams left and we ended on So Clover. With six of us, there was the chance of a legendary 36 out of 36. Joe actually exercised the rarely used rule of being able to reset your clover, after he admitted to just staring at “magnascope.” We began well, although we had a few close calls. Ian, in particular, had a mean decoy with “rifle” that fitted his clue of “killer” perfectly until we reconsidered that “white/colour” wasn’t a good fit for “wedding”.

With five out of five, it was all down to Joe, but alas it wasn’t to be. Despite his second chance at getting some workable words, we failed twice to get his clover right.

33 out of 36

No fame for us tonight. But lots of fun.  Thanks guys.