How to win 2 Win

 My first games night in over a month and I strode towards Joe's with such purpose that I walked straight past it and had to turn back.
In Joe's kitchen were the six friendly faces of Joe, Jo, Martin, Ian, Adam H and Sam. They had done that old familiar trick of starting a game, safe in the knowledge that this would magically cause another gamer to arrive at the door. And it worked, but they kept playing while I sorted myself out. 

The game was Win 2. A card game where you play two cards from your hand to make a two digit number. The player who plays the highest gets a new card to add to their hand. The trouble is, in each round you have to play a higher number than before. The winner is the player who lasts longest.

Sam started cagey, keeping his numbers low such that by round three he was still only on 19.while Joe had 66. But by round 7, his cards had forced him to advance to 98, meaning he really needed to draw two nines to avoid defeat. He didn't, but equally Joe, Martin and Adam also couldn't progress. That left Jo and Ian and Jo found they couldn't play again. Ian, last man standing had won and did a little showboating by putting down 99 as a final hand.

Ian wins

Next we split into two. Jo, Martin, Sam and I played Better Letters while Adam, Joe and Ian chose Renature.

Better Letters is a word game which is played on a grid of cards which describe a rule that a word has to obey, such as “Must start with a P” or “must have two syllables”. The players have one minute to come up with a word that meets as many rules as they can, tracing a path across the grid. Each square gives points, especially if you're the only player who uses it.

I got lucky in my first round as the very ordinary word FLOATS landed on some unused tiles and picked up 5 points while other longer and more inventive words didn't score as high. And that's kind of the interesting part: the notion that long words would score highest isn't always true. For example, my FIREFIGHTING was outscored by Sam's MUNCH.

It was fun, although the games one minute time limit seemed punishing, but at least it kept things moving. And it was fun. I know Adam won't believe it, since he seemed to physically recoil when the game was described to him, but the agony of trying to come up with a word that maybe fits just one more rule is quite a challenge. 

Jo 45
Martin 31
Sam 29
Andrew 27

After this, Renature was still half and hour from completion so we left them to their curious incantations of “badger, badger, badger” and we played The Crew: Journey To The Centre Of The Earth. 

This new member of The Crew family had a twist. Each round had a score allocated to it, either according to difficulty or by how well you do. And overall success is measured on a little track which we make our way down, trying to reach the destination before another meeple does.


We thought this new format worked well, and it meant that there was no risk of getting stuck on one hand, getting frustrated at playing the same rules over and over.

There was one round in which each player secretly wrote down how many tricks they would win. In that round, at least, the camaraderie among us was replaced by something more dickish.

But we achieved our goals and got to the destination before the automatic meeple did.

Success!!

Also at this point Renature ended,  with Joe sadly adding up what his points might have been if things had turned out differently:

Adam 82

Ian 53

Joe 40

At this point I left. Nice to be back after all these weeks. I'll let Sam take over…

Post-Andrew, we were still at six and as Martin said to the room, the night was young. There was some low-level debate before we all realised we were happy to play Phantom Ink. At least initially. Joe and Martin became the spirits (ie clue-givers) and the rest of us the Media (ie idiots). Martin was paired with Jo and I whilst Joe teamed up with Ian and Adam. 

Jo and I asked Martin if the word was (associated with) a Greek or Roman figure of mythology, who would it be. Martin wrote DEM and I honestly didn't have a clue, but Jo figured out it was Demeter. Then Joe's first clue was AG before he was silencioed, leading us to think of agriculture. Jo suggested Bread, and we went for an early guess. Wrong! Martin gave us the first of many meaningful looks. 

Fortunately the other team were struggling too, and we were all - even Martin - baffled by Joe's DISS, even after he added an O to the end. Jo and I were still on a wheat theory but more guesses proved wayward, conjuring only an air of jadedness from our spirit, like he'd done a long week at the clueing office and didn't need this shit on a Friday. Ian and Adam went wrong again too and Jo and I were left with our two theories: the long-mooted wheat, or Jo's recent theory of jam. I was allowed to choose and guessed wheat - it was jam! The other team won. My biggest contribution was selecting defeat from victory. Or maybe just being generally baffled. 

Next was So Clover. I bashed out my clues feeling reasonably okay about three of them, but the fourth hit the rocks and we kicked off with a 4. We followed that with three sixes, however, before we reached Joe's, who had - with some ambition, it seemed, clued apple and scrumpers next to each other. Amongst his cards were the words fruit and orchard. We were initially flummoxed, but when we looked closer and tried some things out, we were still flummoxed as well. "Joe!" Martin castigated him. Joe chortled. In fairness though it did make sense in the end - we'd maybe just ported a little spirit confusion over from the previous game. 

Both Ian and started making moves to go, and Adam did go, but Martin suggested Slow Co-ver, his invention of last week where there's a single clover and you're all trying to come up with the same clues. We did very well! The scoring is still under discussion but Ian and I combined, and then there was a trio of hits, and a couple more and we were so enamoured we played again. At this point Jo stopped, reaching peak clue for the evening, and merely watched as the scene played out before them. It was another minor triumph. Tweak the scoring, pdf the rules, stick it on BGG and before you can say 'solo mode' it'll have it's very own just an activity thread. 

Until next week!