I couldn't Cairo less

 This Tuesday we all converged on Joe’s house for the weekly dose of games. When I arrived, Joe, Sam, Martin, Pete, Ian and Katy were all waiting for me and Adam H. Since Adam was a few minutes away yet, we playing a quick game of In Vino Morte. In this game, a player deals out cards that either have wine or poison on them, but only the dealer knows who is poisoned. Each player can swap their card without looking at it or “drink” (ie, turn it over to reveal its true nature).

In round one, only Katy and Joe swapped and when they showed their cards at the end of the round, they had the only two poison cards that had been dealt out. There was, as Joe commented, “a certain poetry in it.”

In the end, as we slowly eliminated players, it was down to me against Martin and I was dealing. 

I won! Martin drank the poison.

I remember people saying that I display some poker skills in the last round but I don’t recall what my strategy was.

Next we split into two groups. Tables were moved and beer was spilt as we rearranged the room so that both games had their own table.

Katy suggested Lords of Vegas, and it was early enough in the evening so that it was accepted. Pete, Ian and Joe joined Katy.

Adam, Sam, Martin and I went for something that may be described as less-luck-based but, knowing our history with flicking games, could be anything but. The game was Cairo and the idea is to roll a dice and move your boat up and down the Nile, and when it stops, you’re able to flick some of your (limited) supply of blocks from your ship and into scoring areas. 

It’s a simple majority wins rule with points for first and second place, but with the proviso that if you flick into an area and there are enough cubes already there, you can build a pyramid. You would do this because cubes at the top of the pyramid are worth more than those underneath.

I started badly, sending most of my cubes out of bounds (and out of the game) and this was, mostly, how my game played out. Martin, meanwhile, managed to knock his boat over twice losing him a cube each time as a forfeit. And this was after he’d explained that to do so was actually pretty difficult.

I did enjoy the new layout though. Having the opportunity to walk between tables gave Joe’s kitchen something of the air of a casino.

Talking of which, Lords of Vegas seemed to be a very swingy game. Joe began well, picking up points with his gold casino while two casino - green and brown - didn’t pay out at all, defying all odds. Then Ian went from having nothing to owning a 5-tile and 3-tile casino in one turn.

As for Cairo, despite me having lost 5 cubes, Sam ran out of cubes first. And when it came to adding up the final scores, Adam was a clear winner. He was first in 5 different scoring areas, a testimony to his flicking skills. He went further than the scoretrack allowed, while Martin only picked up points in one solitary area.

Adam 72

Andrew 36

Sam 34

Martin 14

As for LoV, I heard the phrase “Five 6s?! That’s mental Katy” float across the room, but otherwise they were still far from ending. We played two more games: Invaluable. 

Martin 45

Adam 43

Andrew 42

Sam 34

And then Llama Llama, which was over so quick, I didn't take any photos. Martin thrashed us, reaching the winning target of 100 in just two rounds.

Then we played a single round of Jungo- a game of playing increasingly powerful hands, which I won.

And on the other table, I heard Katy begging for the next card to be the Game End card. It was, and her very close victory was assured.

Katy 36

Joe 32

Ian 29

Pete 12

And with that, I set off. Thanks to all for another great evening.

*

After Andrew and Adam left us, we realised Pete had very little time before his train. But So Clover was out on the table so we hit upon the ruse of Pete leaving a Mystery Clover for us to solve, and taking a picture of it for cross-examination later. With myself, Katy Ian and Martin all providing sixes to start with, how would we fare with Pete's clues? 

Unfortunately, rather badly. Feline and animal both went with lion, animal also went with slug, and there were some portobello vibes to the extra card as well as our own confusion. We gave it a shot but when Martin referenced the photo Pete had sent, we'd only managed to place a single card correctly! But without Pete here to give us the second chance, we swiftly disregarded this and moved onto Joe's final clover, scoring another six to give us 30/30, or 31/36 if you want to be completist about it. We didn't. 

I forgot to take pics of everything but here are Joe and Ian's clovers - we particularly enjoyed Ian's downpour for drink/weather. 

It was nearing 11 and Katy announced she had to go, even getting as far as putting a coat on. But when Martin waved Jungo around she was tempted to stay. I was feeling like I should really head home too, but I was too tired to haul myself out of the chair so having announced I might go, I then said I was staying. Joe said he was tired and maybe he would ask us to leave, and then we played Jungo. 

tired

This is a simpler take on SCOUT - a card-shedder where you can't rearrange your cards, but can play sets of the same number (no runs) if they're sitting adjacent in your hand. What's more, when you beat something you can either discard the beaten cards or pick them up - so for example, if your two 3s beat two 2s, you can add the 2s to a solitary 2 in your mitts and make it into three 2s instead. Easy!

I enjoy this, but we did find in practice it sometimes led to two players flipping back and forth between progressively larger sets as everyone else picked up cards - when you can't or choose not to play - and found themselves spectators for periods. Still, fun though. Joe and Katy won a round each and we realised that with five, the game might run all the way past various bedtimes and called it there. 

Outside the car I'd seen dangling over the precipice on my way to Joe's earlier was now gone. Or maybe I just rode past it in a daze. 

Suspect Log

A night of inclement drama begin innocuously enough, although in the early running we unfortunately lost both Andrew and Mel. I arrived at Joe's first, followed by Katy, Jo, and Adam H, and after a little conversation Joe broke open his custom deck of In Vino Morte, the reductionist elimination game reminiscent of the poison scene in The Princess Bride. Will you drink, or not? Adam won two games in a row before Katy finally triumphed in a face-off with Jo, who had declared themselves 'too nice' to poison anyone, and was mostly true to it. Katy won, and I realised I hadn't snapped any pics. 

Andy M had arrived during this fiesta of death, and so with 20 minutes before Martin's arrival, we filled the space with Belratti. 

It's been a while since this Visual Clover game has been seen so we needed a rules refresher. Most of the game was spent ridiculing my pairing of maracas with a donut, even though - as I pointed out - the donut had pink glaze and sprinkles. But the art world is a fierce critic. Despite this however we - abetted with Martin, who arrived just in time to harangue us all for not connecting hat and scarf - scored impressively. I don't recall the rulebook's judgement, but it rated us highly. 

Then we split into two groups. Jo, Katy and Adam joined Joe for Free Ride USA, whilst Andy, Martin and I played Reiner Knizia's seafood punch-up, Nyakuza. 

In Nyakuza, more seafood - the tiles - become available every round, and players bid for the right to claim ownership, using transparent control markers. If you connect certain tiles (salmon and tuna, octopus and squid or a pair of crabs), and also have connected plot on land, you can build a seafood shack. The first person to build seven shacks is the winner. 

Even by Knizian standards, it's a fairly dastardly undertaking, with 'fishblocking' making its GNN lexicon debut. Martin cut off my imminently-rewarding mini-networks, and I returned the favour, denying him the privilege of building two shacks in one turn. As we cursed each other out, Katy called over from the USA that our game sounded great. I'm afraid I missed the nuances of Free Ride. In our seafood-obsessed gangster world, Andy won just moments after declaring that winning was impossible. But then he saw the octopus. 

Free Ride had a little way to go, so we - joined briefly by Katy - popped the sprues on Martin's new luck-pushing Arabian Nights-themed game, Ali Baba and the 40 Thieves. Here we're in a race to 80 coins, and we collect them by flipping card to move a shared marker along a track, and gathering the coins we land on. There are two catches - you can't flip your own cards, and if we collectively go over eleven, the active player busts and loses ten coins. 

It's a game with a lot of luck, but we found it came to life once we'd - somewhat belatedly, in mine and Andy's cases - grasped the rules and began a bit of table-talk. As you can either flip from the deck or other player's cards, conversation/bullshit sprang up about what we all might be hiding. Each player's three cards are arranged in ascending order, but even here you can be harpooned by the special cards - which usually bust you. 

Sam 87

Andy 40

Martin 32

Free Ride continued, so we bashed out a game of Moonrollers, a luck-pushing dice-chucker with a side-order of engine-building. 

Basically this is a Yahtzee-style game of committing dice to cards for points, whilst also harvesting hazard tokens for extra points. Everyone can contribute to the same card, but whomever completes it - while we all score - gets the card itself. As each card has a special ability, there's an incremental element of additional options creeping in. As soon as someone has all five colours, or three of one, the game ends. Andy did the latter, but fell foul of the twist in the tale: the player with the most hazard symbols, a la High Society, does not score their tokens. 

Sam 31

Martin 29

Andy 25

While we were finishing, so was a tightly contested game of Free Ride. There was some clarifications in the count-up, in that Adam and Katy both scored extra for their empty trains (I think). But naturally, Adam had won either way!

Adam 99

Katy 94

Jo 86

Joe 83

Andy now had to go on family business, so after Adam had for reasons that escaped me went and sang a song in mandarin in the kitchen, the remaining six combined into one group for another crack at Joe's design, Change Up. I took one of my famously unflattering group photos here, which I will forego in favour of detail.

Joe's addition of the option to pay to change the exchange rate on doubles didn't entice many people in -  but it did pay off when he rolled two twos. However, even with six players we managed to roll precious few sevens, I think only rotating the exchange values around twice the entire game. So a lot of us got away with saved white chips, and Joe took a designer curse right around the chops when he lost a big stack of them. 

Sam 6 reds, 1 white

Katy 6 reds

Adam 5 reds, 2 whites

Martin 4 reds, 5 whites (bad exchange rate at the end!)

Jo 3 reds

Joe 2 reds, 1 white

Now Adam left too as we pivoted to perennial GNN closer, So Clover, playing twice. There was an unusual lack of lamenting our words at the opener, so maybe not surprising that we managed a perfect 30/30, Joe perhaps prophetically getting the words suspect/log as a combo. 

Dramas unfolded in our second attempt though, firstly when everyone instantly decided playing again was a mistake upon seeing their words. Then Martin said he could smell a doggy smell, then so could Jo, then me and Katy and Joe all picked it up too as the scent made its literal way around the table. Joe made a quick inspection and found Sybil had obviously looked at the rain outside and decided that turding behind Martin's chair was the better option. Joe's thought process had to be parked as he dealt with the matter, and then - having opened the back door to the fresh evening air - we went again. 

Despite our chagrin, this was so nearly triumphant. 

We hit four sixes in a row and only came a mild cropper on the final clover - Joe's, who not unreasonably said his thinking time had been compromised by canine shenanigans, and we couldn't quite put stale with subway/perfume at first. But I'd say 28/30 is not to be sniffed sneered at. And on those bombshells, we wrapped up as best we could and said goodbyes, stepping out into the rainy Bristol night.

Fast asheep

At eight o’clock I rolled into Joe’s to find the already assembled gamers (Joe, Martin,Ian, Laura, Gareth, Sam) finishing off a game of In Vino Morte, which I think I heard someone say that Laura won, but I was too busy sorting out my drinks, so who knows?

Before that they played Cross Clues and got 24 points. The one that got away was a clue from Gareth for “Painting” and “Water” which was “colour”. Unfortunately one of the other words was “Blue” and that was enough to put them off the scent.

Finally, I sat down to play a game. While Martin enticed Sam, Laura and Gareth to play a game of Profiteers, a war game only in the sense it is set during a war. The players are simply trying to make as much money as possible, without caring who is actually winning.

Sam 33

Martin 26

Laura 6

Gareth 3

Ian, Gareth,Joe and I played the far more cuddly Sheepy Time, in which our sheep run around the board, leaping over a fence while avoiding a nightmare and the first to catch forty winks wins. It was fun in a push your luck kind of way, trying to stay one step ahead of the nightmare while also making sure you hit the right bonuses.

I was in the lead for most of the game but then Ian leapt back into contention in the final round, doing laps at an unholy rate. Joe, though, one by going furthest past his pillow. My first round was dismal and I didn't get anywhere near enough winks.

Joe, two spaces past his pillow

Ian, on his pillow

Andrew, nowhere near his pillow

With uncanny timing, the two games ended pretty much at the same time. After the usual cognitive dissonance of choosing a game, Gareth, Joe, Ian and I chose Hardback, the letter building game with a Dominion style deck-building mechanic. Draw five cards, buy extra cards with ink (but you must use those letters) and make the best word you can. Letters score either cash or points. Cash gets you better cards and points wins you the game. Sixty of them, to be exact.

At one point, Joe raised a few eyebrows when he announced he was paying an ink to draw another card from his deck. He made this plain, he said, so it didn't look like cheating in case the K (which he had just shuffled back into the newly-recycled discard pile) should come out. He then drew the K. This made it look like clever sleight of hand or an awkwardly accurate premonition.

Ian had his own moment of awkwardness when we realised halfway through the game that he’d been paying an ink to draw a card from the communal draw deck, not from his own. That did explain why his deck was so large.

However, it didn’t seem to help as he came in joint last with me. I would have been further behind were it not for a stroke of luck with my last word “FLOP” which got me 15 prestige points. Any hopes that I might pip the others to 60 were immediately dashed by Gareth who (having played PIXELS twice during the game) reached 60 points with his next word.

Gareth 60

Joe 53

Ian 51

Andrew 51

While we played that, Laura, Sam and Martin regrouped for another go at Quirky Circuits and they cleared two more tracks before Laura had to go, mindful of the changeable weather outside.

Sam and Martin then played Rosetta (twice?) and after we’d finished Hardback, as I was leaving, Martin finally guessed the word: Sacrifice. Then I set off into the evening, confident that my waterproofs would withstand the light drizzle, only for it to turn into a downspout before I got to the end of the road. After I’d left, I’m told, they played a tough game of So Clover.

Thanks Joe for hosting and thanks others for guesting. See you next week.

 

Rouge in the Cheeks

Last week the boys, Sally and I went to Katie and Mark's for a few days away from the big city. After the travails of hiring a car (power cuts at the car rental place, extra charges for not having a credit card, the bank suspecting fraud and declining payment) and then the travails of the M5 (five hours to reach south Devon!) we finally arrived, remembering that we'd not done our lateral flow tests before leaving. This is how all holidays start now...

Monday

Safely in the clear, we spent a while catching up before heading out with dog Nellie for a walk while the weather was reasonable. Nellie isn't pictured here, probably because she was running around or pulling plants out of the ground elsewhere. She's bonkers. 

In the evening the first of the games arrived. These were Love Letter (winners: Peppa and Stan) In Vino Morte (Peppa) before everyone else went to bed (bar Stan) and Mark, Peppa and I broke out the first of our attempts at Flamme Rouge. We plumped for a Tour, where finishing places carry over and scores are cumulative. On the first race, Peppa led from the front, picking up numerous exhaustion cards. She then blocked both Mark and I from overtaking, and afterwards I realised that we were definitely playing something slightly wrong, and we should have been able to overtake. Nonetheless, the scores stood, and Peppa was off to a flyer. 

Tuesday

Early in the morning - well, 10am - I led the boys and Lula off to Kingsbridge for a poke around the games shop, which has now moved from a tucked-away corner to a slightly smaller space, but on the high street itself. After ten minutes perusing the shelves we emerged with Dragomino and Decrypto (me; my Decrypto pad was exhausted and both stands broken) and High Risk (Lula). Sporting some other holiday goods (free books, nectarines, aubergine pickle) we returned to the house and Lula, Mark and I broke out High Risk. 

This is a super-simple luck-pusher of getting your guys to the top of the mountain first. Dice or rolled for movement; do you settle for what you have or roll your duds again and risk going bust? When you move, all movement is assigned to a single climber, and while the bivouac spaces can be shared, the smaller mountain spaces can't, so an arriving climber will shove the current occupant off ('like an asshole' - Mark) to the next available spot below. If you go bust, your highest climber falls in similar fashion - although climbers at the summit won't go anywhere, preventing the game from lasting forever. It's fun enough; not as elegant as K2, but not as long as Pickonimo. 

Then everyone refused to play Dragomino with me, so I played it twice myself. This is the little sibling of Kingdomino: there's no area scoring or multiplication and no claiming of next round's tiles. Instead you simply take one tile from the array and add it to your kingdom - I think the theme is exploring an island - and if any land types match, you 'find' a dragon egg there; taking a face-down egg from the supply and flipping it over. If it's a dragon, that's a point. If it's an empty egg, that's not, but you do take the Mother Dragon token which means you'll choose first in the next round (it's also worth a point at the end of the game).

I enjoyed this so much that at various points in the day I managed to get Stan, Peppa and Sally to all play with me (though I rarely won). The entire game takes ten minutes but despite the simplicity, it certainly doesn't play itself, with Peppa in particular on the lookout for taking tiles others might like. We also tried a small variant where the tiles with watering holes on allow you to take two eggs and choose between them instead of the standard one. 

In the afternoon we trundled down to the beach. Lula was the sole heroine in terms of actually getting in the sea, hurtling off the breakwater while the tide was high enough. The rest of us took turns digging an enormous hole and then inventing a game called Holeball where the hole was the goal and if you scored you went in it as keeper. Surprisingly good fun. I had slept really badly though so at one point I laid down under a towel and closed my eyes. And Joe and I walked out on the breakwater.

We buried Stan's legs in the hole before we left. 

In the evening there was more Dragomino and the little-seen Tomatomato, where you say all the syllables of 'tomato' (plus one rogue potato) in fast but random order. If you make a mistake, all the other players get to pick up a tile, and the winner is the player whose tiles can spell 'tomato' the most. 

My tactic was leaning in like an old man and moving my head along the line of tiles as though peering shortsightedly at a bus timetable, reading as I went. Old man wins!

There was three games of Spicy between Peppa and I, then as tired children and adults tottered off to bed, it was time for Flamme Rouge again. With a huge amount of flat before any hills, Mark and Peppa shot off early and I struggled to catch them. 

I was so far back I was picking up as many exhaustion cards as the leaders, and although I managed to catch them (my rouleur finished second) in the overall positions my team was a distant third as things stood. Noticing that the riders seem to have enormous butt cracks ("that's a seam" Mark pointed out) was scant consolation.

Wednesday

There was a trip planned to Adrenalin Quarry for the early evening, for much cavorting on massive inflatables atop freezing water, so I had to go and get myself a wetsuit. This was a bit like the car hire adventure all over again, as my card was declined and I didn't have the back-up with me, so had to call Sally and get her to transfer money on my laptop back at the house. Factor in the negligible Devon 3G signal and me holding my arms in the air halfway up a hill and you have a decent portrait of the level of chaos I have, day by day, being a scatterbrained halfwit of the highest order. Fortunately, we got there in the end, and I came away with a rather expensive new all-in-one outfit. 

Back at the house Peppa was up, and up for games. We cracked through another two Spicys (one win apiece) before Mark joined us for the next leg of our Flamme Rouge tour. My riders lurked near the back again for most of the race, but ended things a little less lamely this time - true, my sprinter limped in last, but my rouleur sped through the peloton for a win!

Then in a stunning turn of events Joe wanted to play Dragomino, and he beat me 7-4. After a little while we also tried out Pugs in Mugs, which is a fairly standard Exploding-Cats style thing, only a little gentler. Collect three matching coloured card to claim a pug in a mug, and claim all coloured pugs to win. It's okay. Not my kind of thing, even if there's a pug wearing a bra. 

Then we hurtled off to Adrenaline Quarry, where I had 45 minutes of hilarious fun, but felt my age for the last 40 of them. That was it for the games, except for a couple of rambunctious whirls around In Vino Morte as we waited for chips in Plymouth. Owing to Mark's planning and blessed providence, we were also well placed for the final of the UK fireworks championship as it exploded above the sea, not far from where we sat.

Then it was time to go home. Firstly Katie and Mark's home, and this was an adventure in itself with wrong turns, cantankerous GPS systems and eventually, everyone bar myself (-driving) asleep. And the next day, home home, with no final games to play, but a stop off at Hound Tor on the journey back.

Many fond memories, Katie's olive bread, Mark's margaritas, and some great games!

The Silly Olympics

It was a balmy August night as I returned home from the park with the boys, cutting things a little fine that we bumped into both Ian and Adam on the way. Katy swiftly followed and after catching up, we realised we had time for a short game before Joe joined us at 8pm. That game was Cabo, the unicorn-themed something or other that is mostly about remembering your cards and, in my case, remembering you're supposed to remember other people's cards as well. Katy and I failed miserably on most counts, as we careened off on a point-scoring spree in a game where points are bad. Adam steered a more conservative path, but it was again Ian who took the plaudits, with an impressively unabundant score:

Ian 30-something / Adam 60-something / Katy 90-something / Sam 112

didn't take a pic of Cabo

Joe had arrived during our final round and as he graciously took and remained on the Stool of Discomfort, we tried our hand at Snakesss. This is a guessing, deduction and bullshitting game where - not hugely unlike Insider - the snakes (always 2 in a 5-player game) know the answer to a somewhat niche quiz question, and are trying to steer the humans into guessing incorrectly. One of the 'human' team is actually The Mongoose of Truth, who reveals their identity at the start of the round: they don't know the answer either, but at least the human players know they're not a snake, so can be trusted. 

crisps are optional

The dynamic probably changes with more players, but with 5 of us it felt less like a question of figuring out who the snakes were, and more what they were trying to do. The first round snakes had no chance because Adam knew what a truel was, and indeed demonstrated it was some impressive recall. After that, suspicion was rife, and the snakes did well if they stayed unmasked. On the other hand, the humans realised that if everyone was in agreement on what the answer might be, it was probably wrong... Not to take anything away from Adam's impressive win, but I do think the game might be weighted against whoever gets dealt snakes cards the most? 

Adam 13 / Ian 10 / Joe 9 / Sam 8 / Katy 6

Next up was the lesser-spotted Magical Athlete, where a third of the game is spent bidding for the athletes in question, before they all run a series of races with bonkers special powers, most notably Katy's demon that caused her to cry "Demon!" before every single turn for the entire duration of the opening race.

dice tower optional

 It didn't work out for her, though. We all finished first or second at least once, so when the final race took place everyone had a chance of winning the contest overall. But like the Olympics, for every victory, there are a clutch of tearful defeats. I still feel the best athlete was Adam's spy: no superpower at all, just honest hard work.

Joe 8 / Katy 5 / Ian and Adam 4 each / Sam 3  

rubbish ninja

"It's a good game to break out once every three years" said Joe. But if it's a slightly protracted experience, it's stupidly funny one too. And we stayed in that vein with Perudo, risking the wrath of Stan (who had just gone to bed) by shaking and slamming cups like a bunch of plastic vikings. Katy was first out, followed by Joe and then Adam. That left Ian with a single die and me with two. I couldn't cock this up, could I?

Ian wins

Joe still believes

We stayed in the silly realm for four plays of In Vino Morte, another new one to Adam but possibly the simplest game there is after Win Lose or Banana. Your card is either a wine or a poison: drink it now (ie reveal it) or swap it, and reveal at the end of the round. Poisoned players are knocked out of the game, and the last player standing wins. This was Katy in game one and myself in game two, then in game three Ian pulled off a spectacular by poisoning everyone but himself. 

you're poison (ed)

In game four, Joe announced he was going to do the same as Ian. I took him at his word and swapped his card with mine. Ian drank and died. Adam swapped with Joe's new card (my old one). Katy - sadly for me - also took Joe at his word and swapped her card with mine (Joe's old one). We all revealed, and we all died - except Katy.

After this incredible drama, Adam took his leave of us and headed home. The four of us tried our hand at Telestrations: Upside Drawn, which is a simple matter of identifying what is being drawn. The catch is that the guesser is also the player drawing: a team-mate moves the drawing surface around under their pen to create the picture. It's weird, and kind of funny, but also difficult. Katy and I won, but this was as much to do with listening to Joe and Ian's guesses as it was decoding our alien scrawls.

chauffeur!

Katy and Sam - chief telestrators!

And after the high-octane creativity of Telestrations, we were done for another evening. Thanks all.

Have a Knizia. Have a-knother Knizia

I arrived at Joe's studio after seven to find the evening in full swing. Joe, Andy, Sam, Katy and Anja were playing a boisterous game of Money, the first of many Reiner Knizia games to grace the table tonight. Before I’d even got my coat off, Katy told me she’d been winning but wasn’t anymore. I sat down to watch and was so comfortable that I didn't get up to answer the door despite me being the only one not participating. It ended

Katy 1420
Anja 1400
Sam 1380
Joe 1360
Andy 1350

A close game, but I especially enjoyed Joe saying “that’s what I want” when picking up his selection of cards. Money: that’s what I want. Get it?

Never mind. During this game, Martin arrived and introduced us to In Vino Morte. Very simple. Everyone is dealt a card face down which is either wine or poison. The dealer chooses who gets what. Then they can either drink and reveal the card instantly or, if they think the dealer slipped them a mickey, they can swap with someone else who hasn’t revealed yet. Once everyone has made a decision, everyone reveals what they’ve got. Continue until one is left alive.

We played twice. Sam seemed to have struck upon a clever bluff when he dealt to me, Martin and himself by saying “oh no, I fucked up” leaving us wondering how you could fuck it up. Anyway, I won that won by taking Martin’s card in the final round and giving him my poison. Round two, it ended with Katy versus Martin and Katy drank straight away and won.

We split into two. Joe, Katy and Andy played Tajuto. All I know about this was it took a long time for anyone to score any points.

Joe 13
Katy 8
Andy 8

The rest of us played Babylonia for another Kniz fix. I put down five farmers early on and leapt into the lead. Anja swooped in and grabbed farm tiles and then she was in the lead. Sam went big in cities and got the city bonus tile and before long he was in the lead. Martin cursed me for scoring a city that got Sam nine points when he could have completed it without it scoring at all. I was pleased with beating 100 points, but I looked forlornly at my 18 point move which would never be played since the penultimate city was scored and the game ended.

Sam 152
Martin 147
Anja 116
Andrew 110

Then two quick games of In Vino Morte where the final rounds were Martin beating me and then me beating Anja. Four games and I’d been in the final three times. Finally, a game other than Fuji Flush that I seem to be good at.

Anja left for home at this point so two new groups emerged. Tajuto with Joe, Sam and Martin and Downfall of Pompeii with Andy, Katy and me.

Pompeii began with the usual rules check regarding the set up. Then we populated and depopulated the doomed Roman city with abandon. I got what meeples I could to safety pretty early on, but couldn’t draw the necessary lava tiles to stop the other two.

Katy 13
Andy 11
Andrew 10

I didn’t follow Tajuto at all, apart from noting down that Joe’s heavy sigh of “Fucking finally!” at one point of the game.I guess his point scoring came even later than before.

Sam 15
Martin 14
Joe 4

Then they played Letter Press, which is a reworked Moveable Type or something.

Joe 25 (“Wrecking”)
Martin 19 (“Quizzed”)
Sam 17 (“Whites”)

And we played Keltis, the card game. This now means I’ve played all three types of Keltis. I feel like I should have a badge.

Andy 24
Katy 19
Andrew 18

Then, with the eleventh hour approaching and an offer of a lift from Sam, Katy and I jumped ship and everyone else called it a day, too. Thanks everyone. It was a gem.