Working 8 to 3

At one stage it looked like there were going to be eight of us last night, but we lost Andrew and Adam T to illness and Katy to a massage. "Don't get a massage on games night!" Martin lamented, as another gamer failed to materialise. But by the time we heard the latest breaking fallen-member news, we were already knee-deep in fun. Martin had been first to arrive, with a big enough window to beat me at Panda Panda: taking the first round on his second turn. We were mid-second-round when Ian and longtime absentee Andy Bate arrived: I suggested we abandon it, but Martin thought we could finish the round, and promptly won. 

We weren't sure how long before Adam H arrived, so bashed out a quick Wanted Wombats. Martin won with $20k - Andy and myself didn't have a dime at this point. 

Then Adam H arrived! At this point we were still assuming Katy was coming so chose a shortish game in Skull Queen, the risk-taking pirate trick-taker, which Andy realised after it was set up that he had at home. A quick refresher and we were away, with Martin leading the early running with his knack of capitalising on the double-move cards, no matter who played them. "You dirty bastard" I told him, and Andy sagely reflected that some things never change. 

It was a tightly-fought contest, with everyone close enough behind Martin after round two to give him pause. And indeed, I drew level with him in the third and final round to tie on 68 points. However to my right Ian's pirates all finished at the tip of his board, hauling him in a whopping 32 and with it, the pirate crown:

Ian 79
Martin and Sam 68 each
Adam 63
Andy B 50

By this time, we'd heard that Katy's escapades had put her into a soporific state and she understandably didn't want to walk a mile to trade insults with a bunch of middle-aged farts. So Andy introduced us to the only game he'd brought with him, in an impressive show of restraint: 6 Nimmt! Baron Oxx. 

As with 6 Nimmt, you're trying not to take cards because they are points and points are bad. As with 6 Nimmt, we choose a card to reveal simultaneously and place them in ascending order. But after that, things are very different. 

The cards all have big ox heads on them of varying colours, and when you place your card you now ignore the numbers at the top entirely and can place your card in any row where the last-placed card has an ox head that matches one on your card. If your ox heads are all blue, you need a blue ox head. If you've different colours, you may have a choice. 

If your ox head doesn't match any colour, it's like placing a lower-than-visible number in the ancestral game: you take a row of your choice. If you're forced to place the six card, you also take that row. But there's another danger too: the sixth ox head of a matching colour also pressgangs the row into your unwanted points haul. There's four rounds of four cards each, lots of disaster-impelled chagrin, and after that you discover that Adam only took a single card the entire game. 

Adam 2
Ian 32
Andy 33
Sam 34
Martn 60

Some things really do never change, do they? 

Andy had time for one more short game so we all piled into the front room and argued over what it should be, with Adam Martin and I debating the merits of Tsuro before I suggested we ask Andy if he liked it. "It's okay" he said diplomatically. We played No Thanks. 

It was kind of nuts, with Ian running out of money and forced to take the 27 just before Adam - who had the 26 and 28 - picked it up. Despite this, Ian put together a crazy run of something like ten cards and I harpooned my chance of second place by sending the 34 around when Andy was out of cash, leaving me with the 33 and 35, and this paragraph being maybe one of the nerdiest ever to grace the pages of GNN. But even if I'd kept it, I still wouldn't have caught Ian. We debated whether it might be seen as a co-op victory, as we'd expended more than a breath or too giving him 'advice'. But as it wasn't intended to be helpful, I think this is Ian's win. 

Ian 16
Martin 40
Adam 45
Sam 60
Andy 69

Andy now had to go so we were down to a four. Adam suggested Steam Power and the rest of us were amenable, so we set up and I explained most of the rules to Martin, even getting them largely correct. At Martin's request, Ian kicked off so he could see what the three of us got up to on our first turns. And Ian displayed the inherent dickery of Steam Power as he carved a path across the middle of the board, creating an east-west supply chain that all of us would at some point use, gifting him an ongoing income for the next hour. 

Adam took to the northwest, delighting at the points-rich white-cube cities there, and Martin and I nestled beneath him. Ian seemed to spend so much time building track I wondered if he was leaving his contracts too late, but he knew what he was doing. As the factories emptied and opportunities dried up, Ian's hoarding of the entire northeast and it's desirable red cubes led him to a narrow win:

Ian 47

Adam 46

Sam 43

Martin 42

All fuel to the fire of Joe's turn-order-favouritism suspicions, as the points finish matched the turn order. There is a thread on BGG about this, but I can't be bothered to read/summarise it, sorry. 

Next up was Llama Llama, as my flirty mentions of FlipToons went unheeded. This uses the same deck as Panda Panda but when Martin explained it to me I said it sounded like Panda Panda with a migraine. I think Andrew has explained it previously on here but I - admittedly now onto the whisky - found it initially bamboozling, and naively went for a a huge score I was *never going to pull off. But once you're through the door, the game has an easy rhythm to it and I went from 3pts in round one to 48 in round two. But none of us could catch Martin, even though at one stage he ended a round with the *impossible hand and couldn't score it. 

Martin 102

Adam 72

Sam 70

Ian 42

Adam now announced he really had to go, and cycled off into the night leaving the three of us. We poured some more whisky and now did play FlipToons, to a dramatic finale.

There's some nonsense theme about casting an animated show but basically each round you deal six cards in a 2x3 grid and then calculate their fame, before spending said fame to either/both recruit new actors from the market or dismiss your underperforming actors who are getting you precious little fame. The catch of course is that as your deck grows, your inconsequential am-dram dudes may come out and your high class stars remain trapped inside it: so it's a deck-builder, and, unless you want to spend multiple actions putting actors out of work, a luck-pusher at the same time. 

As soon as any player hits 30 fame, there's one final round where the most flipped fame wins. Martin looked in the box seat here for the vast duration of the game, and indeed hit 30 points before Ian or I got particularly close. But in the finale Ian's actors let him down and Martin and I tied, causing a play-off. Martin's elephant - big ego - undid him here as it flipped his biggest point-scorer face-down, and I pipped him by a point. 

Sam

Martin

Ian

It was time for So Clover and whisky. We started with a 4 on my clover, dropped to a 3 on Ian's and then back up to a 4 on Martin's, which looked the worst night of your life, or maybe the best if you could remove Gordon Ramsey. A tricky end and not helped by me drunkenly wondering whether owls are birds or not (apparently they are). What can I say, it had been a night. But So Clover is always fun, regardless how of zoologically deranged you are. 

Dolphins aren't fish though, I'm pretty sure of that.