Orbital Problems

A Saturday evening of games kicked off with Andrew and I watching the tail end of the FA Cup. Once upon a time the cup final would have felt like a seismic event to us, but in these days of country-financed football clubs and billionaire playthings, the sheen has worn off and rather than watch the post-match trophy-lifting and back-patting, we played Kingdomino. I forgot to take any photos, but Adam arrived as we hit the home straight and I took a reasonably convincing win. We set up Caldera Park and Ian arrived to join us, kicking off the night proper with a quartet of gamers, surrounded by washing. 

I don't actually remember who won Caldera Park. I think it was Andrew by a hair, as Ian fell foul of particularly bad weather and I of misplaced confidence. It was something like 

Andrew 183

Adam 182

Sam 135

Ian 120

There followed a flurry of game propositions where we finally alighted on Hansa Teutonica. And what an epic this was, as we serially irked each other via the medium of desk enhancements, like competitive IKEAing. 

Adam looked to be building a decent network as again Ian lagged. Andrew was stuck on two actions for long enough that I stopped worrying about him. A dreadful mistake, as misplaced confidence© once again bit me on the arse. Andrew's network plus his east-west connections sent him soaring to a convincing win. Ian staged a good recovery too, whilst Adam was probably over-targeted, his reputation preceding him:

Andrew 46

Sam 40

Ian 39

Adam 37

Great to play this again, I really think it merits more table-time on a Tuesday. But if we thought we had tamed Adam, oh boy did we have another think coming. After chips - which Adam charitably went to get - we set up Orbit: The International Space Race. This hasn't been seen in a while but the rules are hardly complex. What makes the game tricky is the constant planet movement and the forward-planning aspect that tacticians like Ian and dice-chucking fuckwits like me do not shine at. 

Perversely though, I got off to a good start. Whilst Adam complained that we were all doing his achievements, and thus depriving him of points, I pulled off all of mine and had some security and time to pick up missions. Weirdly, Adam was doing this too - despite having rockets that moved incredibly slowly, he seemed to spend a prodigious amount of turns picking up cards and making quietly and worryingly approving noises at them. Meantime my cards said things like Return from Neptune, Ride a Comet, or Make A Rocket From Twigs. Worse, Andrew and Ian started barreling up the track too, eating into my early lead, as Adam's murmurs of appreciation continued.

Suddenly Adam started scoring. While his rockets were still ponderous in the extreme, his planning department was pissing all over ours and in three turns he scored 21 points. I picked up another Mission card I couldn't do and then the game ended. Ian and Andrew had a couple of Missions each, I had about 6. Adam flipped over something in the region of 20, and most of them scored (when they don't score, they cost you points instead). 

Adam 62
Andrew 40
Sam 39
Ian 18

"I'm never playing this with you again!" I cried accusingly.
"That's what you said last time" said Adam. 

Andrew had to leave, and approaching 10pm, we'd been playing for five hours so the three of us wrapped up with So Clover. After a good start with Ian's clover (a six) things fell apart with mine and Adam's. I couldn't think of a clue for black/frame and ended up writing Van Gogh. One of Adam's clues was Trump, and Ian and I found numerous things that could have gone there, including capital/medusa. We were half-right. A paltry 12/18 in the end, and an underwhelming finale in points terms but, as always, a nice closer.