Five's Companies. Four: No Thanks.

With the Games Weekend still visible in the rear-view mirror, it was inevitable that someone would find Tuesday night had come around too soon. But it was a shock to find it was Andrew, GNN stalwart and  linchpin. Everyone has their limits I suppose.

Instead Steve, Anja and myself joined Adam and Hannah in a wind-blown Easton for the final Tuesday of the season, if not the final games night (Joe's is open to takers this evening).

After some indecision over whether the migraine-recoveree Hannah would join us, that involved Ys being emptied onto the table, we eventually became a quintet and Batavia was chosen. New to me, and a distant relative to everyone else (Steve had memories of Quentin wiping the floor with everyone on it's GNN debut) the game is about sailing companies - owned by particular countries - represented by old and in some cases confusingly misrepresentative flags - establishing trade routes across the Middle East and the Orient. Players don't represent the companies (or the countries) but a kind of abstract capitalist, encouraging the companies to various destinations in order to establish a sharehold in a particular product - tea, cotton, ginger, bath mats etc.

Mmmm... smells like pirates

Throw into the mix some perversely moral pirates, who always attack the most powerful fleet on the sea, and you have a fairly confusing game. All of us at one point or another were confounded by the rules, though perhaps the least confounded was Adam, who saw the destructive potential in the pirates early on and sent them after Anja, then going on to manage his resources to engineer a strong win. I'm still not sure how he did it - there's a balance to strike between your cash, your ship cards (that move the ships) and making sure you have the strongest hand in a particular company that all seemed at least partly luck-dependent to me. Both Anja and Hannah spent valuable turns forced to pick up ship cards (and therefore were unable to do anything on the board) and my early lead was overhauled by Adam and, briefly, Steve, as my card management floundered at the bidding stage.

Oh yeah, there's bidding too. All in all a slightly muddled game to my eyes. But clearly there are strategies to be found, as the winning player will testify.

Adam 54
Sam 41
Steve 37
Anja 27
Hannah 22

As we'd started a little late it was nearing half past ten, so as Hannah retired to bed the rest of us rounded off the evening with a game of No Thanks, which newbie Steve won as my high-card strategy blew up in my face.

Steve 29
Adam 31
Anja 45
Sam 49

A text from Andrew on the way home told me if Adam had won No Thanks he would have gained the Perfect 5 (ie a five-game winning streak) on the form table! So that holy grail remains out there, tangible and yet beyond reach, like the deciding pepper share in Batavia that neither myself or Steve could grab for ourselves.*

Despite that Adam is the man to beat on the form table. So glad I got my boasting about SeptCon in at the start of the evening, when it still meant something...


*actually nothing like that. I haven't had much sleep.

						Points
Adam	2	1	1	1	1	6
Joe	2	2	1	2	3	10
Sam	4	2	2	2	1	11
Steve	1	3	3	3	2	12
Andrew	3	4	2	1	3	13
Anja	3	4	3	3	2	15
Hannah	5	4	3	4	1	17
Dan	1	5	5	5	5	21
Quentin	4	3	5	5	5	22

New Horizons

Like Adam playing Hansa Teutonica, the domain of GNN slowly creeps across town. Tonight we met at a new venue: Steve and Anja's house. There were six of us: the aforementioned hosts, myself, Sam, Adam and Hannah.

First we were given a tour of the house and of the garden, with its signature feature: a two-foot drop from the patio doors to the ground below. Nothing that a step or two won't solve, though.

At first there was the usual over-polite "No, what do you want to play?" discussion. In the end we decided on Sam, Anja and Hannah playing Stone Age, and Adam, Steve and I playing Batavia. It was my first attempt at this game, and Steve and Adam also needed a rules refresher.

In this game, each player trades commodities with different countries' territories in the Indian sub-continent by playing the most cards of a particular nation than any of your opponents. The countries are depicted by flags, and Britain is, confusingly, looks similar to a flag used by the British during our rule over America, but is (according to Wikipedia) the flag of the British East India Company. So that's okay.

Also, there are some pirates who turn up every now and again and take away some cards. They don't seem to do a huge amount of damage, but they do stop the table top from getting too crowded.

It's a nice game, with definite possibilities for deeper strategies once you're familiar with the rules. Our inexperience showed painfully at the end of the game when one commodity has not been traded at all, and eleven points went begging for anyone smart enough to buy just one of them.

However, Adam won by simply picking up the highest scoring commodities. Obvious, when you think about it.

Adam 54
Steve 38
Andrew 36

I'll leave it to one of the others to fill in the details about Stone Age, and why they were laughing so much. We watched the closing stages and I noted with approval that Hannah ended the game with no resources left over. I like a gamer who's frugal with their imaginary supplies. But Sam won it in the end with a wide range of multipliers.

Sam 256
Hannah 228
Anja 143

While Stone Age was finishing, Adam optimistically set up Tinners' Trail, so that anyone who wanted to could jump right in. But by the time that Stone Age was over, and Steve had made the popcorn, there wasn't really time for anything so deep. Instead we chose Skull and Roses. Or, in this case, Picture Card and Non-picture Cards, since we were playing with a ordinary pack of cards.

Oh, how we wished Joe was here as we explained the rules to Anja, Hannah and Steve. In the end, we managed to get all the rules in the right order, and we were ready to begin. (There must be some secret to explaining rules. Joe, you should write something about it.)

1. Steve
2= Andrew
2= Adam
3= Hannah
3= Anja
4. Sam

After this, Adam and Hannah went home, leaving the four of us to play one last game of Picture Card and Non-picture Cards. Most of which we played with a cat reclining with supreme indifference across the table. I took victory with a daring bid of four when there were only four cards on the table. End with style, that's my motto. (For tonight, anyway.)

1. Andrew
2. Steve
3. Sam
4. Anja

Barely any change on the leaderboard as we enter the last month of the season.

						Points
Steve	2	1	2	1	1	7
Andrew	1	2	3	2	2	10
Adam	2	1	3	3	2	11
Joe	1	1	3	3	4	12
Hannah	3	2	3	5	1	14
Anja	4	3	3	2	2	14
Sam	3	4	1	4	4	16
Quentin	1	3	5	5	5	19
Jonny	2	2	5	5	5	19
Paul	3	1	5	5	5	19
Sally	3	5	5	5	5	23

New year, new start

Tonight was the grand opening and it saw an attendance of eight sat around Sam’s extending kitchen table. Current man-of-the-moment Quentin returned, and Hannah, Steve and Anja also swelled the ranks.

Before Steve and Anja arrived in their car (which was, apparently, on a meter which made me think it would suddenly cut out after a set time) the six of us managed to squeeze in a game of Tsuro. This sedate version of Tron’s Light-Cycles game was pretty tense, but soon saw my early demise at the hands of – who else – Quentin. Hannah couldn’t get out of a corner, so span off in fifth and then Joe took out Quentin in a crazed suicide pact, leaving Sam and Adam on the board. Unfortunately, Sam’s lone tile took him straight off the board allowing Adam a comfortable win.

1. Adam
2. Sam
3= Joe
3= Quentin
5. Hannah
6. Andrew

When Steve and Anja arrived, the group split into two groups of four. Quentin, Hannah, Anja and Steve played Batavia: a jolly game of trading with the exciting new market of the Indian sub-continent. Hopefully one of them can fill us in with the details later.

Joe, Adam, Sam and I played Chinatown. In this game, each player has to build up businesses which then bring in money. This game is reliant on negotiation and I’m simply too laid back to haggle. My first transaction with Sam brought forth insults and derision from Joe and Adam who insisted we do it again with a proper price this time.

Before long we started to get more into the swing of things. Sam built up some nice businesses early on, so Adam’s tactic seemed to be bleed Sam for whatever he could get. Joe was Mr Quiet, building his empires unnoticed. Although we thought he was in the lead, even we were surprised by the bonus he reaped in the last round with his newly completed businesses. I just muddled along, man. It’s only money, after all.

Joe $1,210,000
Sam $1,060,000
Adam $990,000
Andrew $650,000

The game on the other half on the table ended at almost the same time, with Quentin continuing his good run of form.

Quentin 62
Steve 39
Hannah 30
Anja 22

Quentin decided he had to dash, and so he bade is farewells. The seven of us split again into groups of three and four. Steve, Hannah and Joe played TransAmerica while Sam, Anja, Adam and myself chose Poison. The two games played out in near silence as the tension rose. In our game of Poison it was a close run thing from the start. However, in TransAmerica Steve ended the first round very early. Joe pointed out to our colour-blind comrade that he hadn’t picked up an orange card, and so one was quickly given to him from the remaining cards. Steve wasn’t down-hearted for long since he then linked to this last station with his next go, sending Joe and Hannah hurtling up the score-track towards the train shed of doom. After that, it was just a case of hanging on for grim life for Hannah and Joe as Steve ran out a comfortable winner in three rounds.

Steve 1
Hannah 13
Joe 15

In our game of Poison, Adam started badly but cleared the last round with no points at all. It wasn’t enough to close the gap on Sam, though.

Sam 13
Adam 14
Andrew 17
Anja 23

I wasn't going to add a leaderboard so soon, but since we managed to squeeze so much into one evening, I may as well...

						Points
Sam	1	2	2	5	5	15
Adam	2	3	1	5	5	16
Joe	3	1	3	5	5	17
Steve	1	2	5	5	5	18
Quentin	1	3	5	5	5	19
Hannah	2	3	5	5	5	20
Anja	4	4	5	5	5	23
Andrew	3	4	6	5	5	23