It was interesting to watch, but are there hidden strategies still to be uncovered? It seemed to reward literally writing the word, while any attempt at cryptical clueing fell flat. Ian tried to clue two of his words with one, admitting he’d “tried to So Clover it.” While Sam went all Rebus on the group. One of his clues looked like “OIST” which I noted may be the noise you make when you pick up something heavy. But it was actually a clue for “FLOOR” - it was the word “1st” with a button next to it, ie. first floor.
Joe 17
Adam 14
Jo 11
Ian 11
Sam 9
Adam tried to encapsulate it’s qualities by saying “It’s like a cross between a word game and…” “a break down.” Sam helpfully suggested.
By now Martin was here, and then a ghost from the past breezed in. Mark, who once appeared in this blog on a semi-regular basis, was visiting from Devon. How nice to see him again. With eight of us, we split into two. Sam, Mark, Ian and myself played Rebirth while Jo, Joe, Adam and Martin played Eternals Deck.
I didn’t notice much of Eternals Deck except for its lovely cloth board and the look of disappointment when, halfway through the game, Jo explained to their colleagues that they were playing the easy version of the beginners stage. But, they all won!
As for Rebirth, after a rules explanation to Mark (that I needed too, frankly) we set off rebuilding a post apocalyptic Scotland with our farms, castles and zeppelins. Mid-game, Sam and Mark started chaining together farms for big returns. Ian and I tussled in the housing market and I also focused on castles.
Mark expressed surprise at the score, saying he'd only really got the hang of it 70% of the way through the game and that before then he'd been copying us.
I guess that makes it a shared victory?
Mark 141
Sam 132
Andrew 113
Ian 109
After this we rearranged. Both Adam and I were in the market for something shortish and Martin suggested Greed. We agreed (no pun intended) and were joined by Jo. The remaining four brought out The Gang, a clever cross between Texas Hold ‘Em and The Mind. I’ve played this before with six players and little success, but this time the sounds of cheers wafted across the table as they succeeded round after round in an atmosphere of co-operative bon homie.
Greed, as you can gather, is far less communal. There was a lot of PvP action as we took out each others thugs and holdings, but at the start both Jo and Adam complained about the opening hand they’d created for themselves, which were far too forward thinking so left them with few options in the short term.
I, on the other hand, barely looked more than two turns ahead such that apart from an early flourish where I picked up some cash, I was reacting to what other players were doing. Adam had abandoned whatever plan he’d started with and gone aggressive, playing a lot of spoiling cards. Jo, though, smartly got themselves into a winning position, playing a double-your-money card and then another card netting $45,000 which turned into $90,000.
Jo 170,000
Martin 120,000
Andrew 85,000
Adam 10,000
With that, I was gone. Handing over to Sam for part two. Thanks all.
* * *
Adam also left now, and we were down to six. Martin promptly brought out Things in Rings and attempted
to explain it whilst the rest of us attempted to understand it. At least I did anyway - having slightly indulged things by now I mostly spent my time proclaiming my bafflement.
As far as I could comprehend it's kind of like a wordy version of Zendo, where instead of figuring out the spatial rule to a bunch of pyramids, we're trying to deduce the conceptual rules for each circle in a Venn diagram, and there are three qualities: the context (eg can be dangerous) an attribute (eg larger than a person) and the text of the word itself (eg it starts with a vowel, which happened to be the one we figured out first).
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