Anja and Louie were our hosts last night as GNN headed east to the land of the Time Clock. Steve was away so it was Louie who let us in, after Joe and I arrived early enough that we sat in the car for five minutes pretending we were on a stake-out. Then Martin, and Adam arrived and we kicked off things as a ludological sextet, setting sail in Whale Riders.
Louie treated the game like a straightforward race, sending his whale careening down the coast before finally consenting to get some stuff for contracts. Although this made him an unlikely candidate for victor, it forced the pace of the game. injecting the laggards with a slight sense of panic. As blubber/watermelon got hoovered up, large amounts of storms appeared, making the perviously-bounteous offerings of wherever it is look suddenly rather barren, like aquatic Lidls raided for toilet paper and comestibles.
Louie made it back first with one contract realised and began buying pearls (points). I sailed in behind him just in time to snag the most rewarding pearl tiles, and this was enough for a win.
Sam 16
Martin/Joe 11 each
Adam 10
Louie 7
Anja 5
Anja revealed her starting contracts, which seemed to focus solely on huge amounts of blubber/watermelon. A not-ideal start for a newbie, but it sounded like Whale Riders wouldn't feature again soon anyway, with Louie pronouncing it 'boring'. Again I kicked myself for not bringing Robot Quest Arena! Sorry Louie.
Mel was about to arrive so we did some executive decision-making on her behalf, with Joe and Anja setting up Joe's new game Expeditions (Trans America crossed with... something else) and Adam, Martin and I trying our hands, yet again, at Cascadero.
I missed the rules explanation to Expeditions as by that time we were envoy-deep in Cascadero's Farmer side of the map. This side is pretty much identical to the basic side - visit cities, make connections - but has Babylonia-esque farms you can jump in when you're adjacent, triggering bonuses or points. I'd had an absolute pasting at the hands of Martin recently (twice) so just wanted to remain semi-competitive, and I think three is perhaps the ideal number for this game: not as long, slow or thinky as four but less tete-a-tete than a head to head. We sprawled, we bonused, we got in each other's way, we called each other dicks. It was fun.
Meanwhile Expeditions got expedited and, other than the final score, I'm afraid that's all I can say about the other end of the table. Cascadero does take a lot of brain space. We finished before they did with an incredibly tight set of scores:
Martin 36
Adam 35 (second on tie-breaker)
Sam 35
Martin had been concerned about my imminent point-scoring for networks, but as I had to spend all my late-game turns trundling up the orange track, imminent was all they remained. I triggered the end of the game with a slender lead: with their last turns both Adam and Martin overtook me!
We watched the finale of Expeditions/checked our phones.
This turned out to be a tight finish as well, with the tiebreaker unable to separate Joe and Anja:
Anja/Joe 20
Mel 16
Whilst I'm still no clearer on what exactly one does in expeditions bar a vague idea of getting those plastic arrows to certain destinations, everyone seemed happy with it. But at least three of us were starting to yawn heavily now, so we decided on one last game to finish the night, and Cabanga got bounced in favour of So Clover.
We were stunned - not sure why, really - to find that Anja and Mel had only played once or twice, but I guess on the other hand they lead more varied and interesting Tuesday night lives than the rest of us. Although having said that, when Martin asked Mel how she was she replied "I hate work and my appliances are driving me mad", so possibly not.
My clover was first up and unfortunately we had an imperfect start with a 4. Mel had spotted the connection I was going for but her softly spoken ways were drowned out by rowdy GNN regulars. But after that initial stumble we gave So Clover a more than decent shake of the stick, harvesting a few sixes from some nice clues (Joe gave us B52s for Love/Shark) and bookending them with another stumble on Anja's clover when some tricky combos (eg degree/ballroom) gave us a few self-generated red herrings. But overall a more than respectable 30/36 to round off the night.
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