Initially, there were eight of us. Adam, Hannah, Katy, Matt, Joe, Sam, Martin and me. With Ian expected later, we hesitated over anything too involved. Martin and Sam went for a short two-player game 13 Minutes, while the rest of us had a rip-roaring six-player game of Santo Domingo.
After a brief explanation of the very few rules to Adam and Hannah, we were off. My brilliant opening move was slightly ruined by it also being Katy's brilliant opening move: trading goods for points. Between us we’d lowered the exchange rate.
It's a cunning game, taking the theme of getting stuff to get other stuff and giving it an element of bluffing. I think we all said afterwards how much we liked it, with Joe perhaps enjoying it most.
Joe 30
Matt 29
Katy 23
Andrew 21
Adam 20
Hannah 14
As for 13Minutes, it was a convincing win for Martin, although Sam said the real victory was avoiding nuclear war.
Martin 10
Sam 4
So, as an eight, we decided to honour the newly crowned Spiel des Jahres, Kingdomino, with two consecutive games. We didn't play the same tiles - unfortunately that idea didn't occur to us until halfway through, but there was a tacit agreement that the two games were in competition.
It was Adam's first game and, despite my terrible position in clear last, I offered the birthday boy no sympathy when my last move was to take a piece I couldn't place just to stop Adam.
Joe 64
Martin 54
Adam 51
Andrew 31
On the big table it ended:
Sam 55
Matt 47
Katy 46
Hannah 36
Which makes Joe the best and me the worst. We ended with a spirited discussion about the pronunciation of Kingdomino. Was it "King Domino" or was it with the emphasis on the penultimate syllable, as if the English word Kingdom had taken the Italian suffix of -ino meaning "small" which would certainly be apt. Perhaps we will never know.
Ian was sure to arrive soon, so five of us chose Ticket To Ride: Pennsylvania map for our evening's entertainment while the other three planned to get through a quick game of Honshu before Ian got here.
As it was, though, Ian arrived while the rules to Honshu were being explained, so he had no choice but to join them, since TtR wouldn't expand to six.
Ticket To Ride is famous as a gateway game, but any sign of convivial competition were put to one side in a tense game. The map we chose had the added tactic of picking up shares in train companies, with end-of-game bonuses for those with most shares in certain companies.
Katy began in high spirits. Perhaps too high as both I and Hannah mocked her gleeful delight. This prompted a spell of silence from the good doctor. She later insisted she wasn't sulking, but wanted to see if she could play a game without speaking for five minutes. And she could. In fact, she lasted for seven minutes, beating her previous record of five minutes that she'd set two minutes previously.
Adam's usual tactic of collecting cards until you have half the deck in your hand was used to good effect, as he avoided time consuming short links and built expansively, picking up low scoring but unpopular shares as he did.
Katy went big on route cards. Alas, too big, since she picked up two more just before I noticed out loud that Adam could end the game in a few moves.
At this point everyone panicked. Well, I did. There was no way to complete both my high scoring routes in time, despite Hannah's noble tactic of building the link that would end the game if Adam had built it. Katy ended with -30 points. Meanwhile, Joe and I, the two early trailblazers, ended back near the caboose.
Adam 166
Hannah 122
Katy 118
Andrew 99
Joe 94
As for Honshu, it expanded across Adam & Hannah’s blue coffee table, until Ian’s and Sam’s cities were seperated by a wafer-thin corridor.
Martin 63
Sam 60
Ian 58
Matt 52
Then they played Polterfass, the game of passive aggressive beer distribution. I know little about this game, except for Martin getting a worst-case scenario when he settled on supplying 26 barrels of beer and his three opponents ordered 9, 9 and 8, leaving him with nothing.
Matt 75
Martin 61
Ian 45
Sam 36
By now we were together again. We chose 6nimmt as the finale of this week’s event. Hannah went to bed, so the remaining eight stood around the table, cursing every step of our zombie-laden way.
Sam went for a high early card in rounds two and three and got caught out both times. Ian commented that he thought it was seibennimmt when he ended up taking a row. And one round had a gap of about seventy between the two available places, offering a range of equally bad strategies. I went Dirk for one of my choices in round one, and I regretted it. Stupid Dirk.
Katy 26
Martin 45
Ian 52
Adam 55
Sam 57
Matt 63
Joe 72
Andrew 79
And so the evening ended, with the promise of thunderstorms in the air.
Thanks all. It was a good one! And happy birthday, Adam.
