It was games night, it was Tuesday, it was Sam's.
The evening began early with a quick game of Chu Han between Ian and Sam.
Shortly they were joined by Joe, Ian, Katy and Martin before I and then finally Pete arrived. We began with a game of Dice Pool Party. 12 dice of different colours and sizes are shaken in a dice arena shaped like a swimming pool. These dice are revealed for three seconds before being hidden again each player has to use whatever memory they have of those dice. Did the Purples score highly? Or the 1s, 2s and 3s combined?
In order to keep track on our scoresheets, we needed 7 pens. Cue such scrabbling around in the back of Sam's chair where the struts are little wooden troughs capable of holding all manner of things. Pens, you would hope, but Katy initially found a toothbrush, a candle and some nail clippers. “It's not looking good,” she sighed.
As for the game, I played pretty poorly, scoring below average in most categories I chose. Initially, Katy and Martin chose identical categories to score. But Martin displayed the better observational skills in the end.
Martin 207
Katy 196
Joe 170
Sam 167
Ian 166
Pete 165
Andrew 151
Then we split into two. Katy was keen to play River Dragons again after having tried it on Sunday with me and Sam. He, Katy and Ian set it up. Meanwhile, Pete, Martin, Joe and I set up Bomb Busters - the first mission of a new box! Who knew what excitement lay before us once we’d opened up the box containing the game’s next levels.
Well, some stickers, allowing us the chance to award each other “most hot-headed” or suchlike. As it turned out, none of us were in the running for that particular category since we spent a lot of time thinking over our choices. There were four bad wires out there and this round’s special rule is that one random safe wire is placed out of order on the far right on your rack. Pete was our captain and he kept us motivated with phrases like “I’m reasonably confident we’re not about to die” as we eventually succeeded in our mission!
Over on the other end of the table, River Dragon ended with a victory for Katy. This happened only a few minutes after Katy let fly with a high-decible expletive after Sam blocked her move. She declared that she won “quite convincingly" and wouldn’t be persuaded otherwise even when Sam pointed out he was just one card away from finishing too.
Then they played Farm Hand, that I know little about except for Ian saying “perfectly judged… I get 2 points” which seems like a fairly meagre return on a perfectly judged move.
Ian 17
Katy 8
Sam 7
Next we tried Trick & Snipers as a big group, which we played with a Skull Queen deck of cards. Very simple trick taker which involves winning tricks with a 7 in them or cleverly playing off-suit so that values add up to 13. These will get you a point and 2 points are enough to win.
Andrew 2
Pete 1
Everyone else 0
Katy expressed a concern that it was getting late, so for her finale we played Wriggle Roulette. This push-your-luck game is very dramatic and exciting - two qualities that I entirely failed to capture with my only photo of the game.
It involves pulling black eels from a bag, and everything is fine until the fifteenth red snake is pulled out. Then, the greediest player(s) lose everything and the round ends. Joe amazed us with his singular life as he told us three stories about eels. Surely an autobiography is required. As for the game, Martin pushed his luck a little too far and went bust in every round. I started so badly that people reminded me to collect my points from round two and I grimly admitted that I already had. Katy looked like a certain win, only to be pushed into fourth in the final round.
Joe 22
Andrew 22
Pete 21
Katy 20
Sam 11
It was fun and we will have to play again, if only because we only just remembered to play Eels on the stereo in the final stages of the game.
Katy left and the remaining six gamers got out Magical Athlete for a rousing end (for me, anyway) of the evening.
Magical Athlete is fun but it does feel a lot like watching a game rather than participating in it. The trick is to chose your athletes well and hope that their powers can exploit their opponents’s moves. It’s a fine line, though. For example, round two saw Joe win with Scoocher, an athlete that moved forward whenever someone else used their power. It was a commanding victory so, in round four when I had an athlete that could copy a previously used power, I chose Scoocher. But this time I was undone by Sam’s magical power of swapping places with another player so any lead I built up quickly evaporated.
Joe 16
Sam 10
Andrew 8
Pete 5
Martin 2
Ian 1
That was it for me, but the guys banged out a quick game of So Clover.
Thanks all. Another special evening.
