Thunderbirds are Gone

Friday. Andrew and Andy made it to my house (Sam) for some non-leaderboard games. Andrew missed the email about starting later, but that meant he got to watch some TV while I put the boys to bed.

When they were settled Andrew and I had some time before Andy arrived, so we played a quick game of Mr Jack Pocket, the simpler version of Mr Jack. The principle is the same; the detective tries to unmask Jack whilst Jack stays unmasked - but there are no special moves for the characters, and no escaping. Jack wins either by being in the dark 6 times or staying undetected til the end of the eight round. I managed the latter.

Whitechapel never looked so sinister

With Andy imminent we set up K2. We did have a look at the expansions but in the end it was pure laziness that made us go for the base game. Andy arrived with my beer - thanks Andy! - and after a brief refresher we set off from base camp. With Andrew's slowly-steady victory in the last game fresh in my mind, I hesitated slightly, but my innate sense of adventure and restless spirit took over me, and I surged ahead up the mountain, making it to just off the peak and setting up camp.

Andrew, yet to die

Unfortunately I then succumbed to the cold and expired. With Andy and Andrew now on the upper slopes it was looking like my expedition was ending in ignominy - thankfully for me one of Andrew's climbers bit the dust too, as Andy survived by the skin of his teeth. This is why it's much safer not to go climbing at all.

Andy 11
Sam 7
Andrew 5 (did make the summit at least, so died happy)

Andy had brought Thunderbirds with him, the co-operative game of trying to defeat the evil deeds of the Hood, a bad guy I can't help but picture in a hoodie. The quiz-show-ghost of Martin stepped forward: was it gold, or Kickstarter crap? Let's find out!

look at the size of that Thunderbird

The board is a map of the world and, similar to Pandemic, the players each have a role (one of the Tracys, or Lady Penelope) and they/we dash around trying to foil the Hood. Also like Pandemic, there is a deck of cards flipped over at the end of the round that is usually making a bad situation worse. We managed to see off quite a few disasters before The indefatigable Hood eventually won out, by sheer persistence really. You have to take your pointy-shaped hat off to him.

Dastardly

Motley

Verdict: it wasn't the ideal time for me to judge - I was flaking slightly and from my angle everything was upside down. I'm also not steeped in Thunderbirds history or theme, having only caught the show once or twice as a kid. To me it basically felt like a retheme of Pandemic, though - solid, but not particularly different. But it was fun to play whilst listening to the Thunderbirds theme tune...

Crablogger. What an embarrassing apocalypse.

Climb Every Mountain!

Thursday - Sam (me) was joined by Matt, Ian and Andrew. As Matt was running late the three of us started the evening off with a quick blast of Love Letter. We'd all won a round each when Matt arrived, and Andrew claimed the decider:

Andrew - 2 cubes
Ian/Sam - 1 cube

We debated what to play but with Andrew keen, Ian curious and Matt amenable we elected to play K2 - unlike Tuesday's gentle sortie, we went for the brutal(er) winter side of the board, replete with shitty weather. I left one climber behind and with the other surged to the summit. I'd erected a tent just off the peak and planned to return to it to see out the winter - but I'd reckoned without Matt and Ian following close behind me - as the top of the mountain only allows one climber per space, I was stuck, and eventually expired.

Chilly

How I laughed despotically when Matt and Ian's climbers suffered a similar fate!

How I didn't laugh when Matt's remaining climber reached the near-summit and survived until the spring!

But it wasn't enough. Andrew's softly-softly approach had kept both his climbers alive, and even though they were the least daring, being alive apparently counts for something in mountaineering:

Andrew 10
Matt 9
Ian/Sam 5

Gone... all gone

We'd blasted through the Himalayas in short order, and if a few people had to die for our fun it wasn't going to stop us jumping into our board game time machine and travel back to ancient Egypt, for Matt's first play of Ra. We had an almost Ra-free first round, where everyone had time to consider their bids without the pressure of the auction track imploding. Matt carefully made sure he had high bidding tiles for round two - were they too high? He did seem reluctant to play them. Andrew meanwhile cursed his luck - especially on round three which saw his low bidding tiles abetted by a surfeit of Ras. At least he got the highest-bidding-tiles bonus, having gotten rid of his low bids...

Sam 35
Ian 27
Matt 18
Andrew 11

It was still not yet half past nine, so having all already played it, we broke out Beowulf. The risk option in this game is really what makes it - even when you play the rules all wrong like we did. We weren't out of the bidding when a risk failed (as we should have been) and we picked up scratches when we should have been picking up wounds.

Note the thematically empty crisp bowl

Oh well - a fun romp anyway, and one that we took a break from to sample Sally's home-baking. How Norse we felt - and must have looked - surveying the board in tense silence, eating raspberry muffins. I thought I might have won, had I not been hit with a double-wound from the dragon late on... but as it turned out, Andrew had the win sewn up either way...

Andrew 36
Matt 17
Ian/Sam 15

For the third time on the night Ian and I tied for last place!

We finished off with Pairs. This is already a classic at GNN and even my crappy Professor Elemental deck didn't ruin the game for us. Matt - at one stage at least nine points behind everyone - almost staged the greatest of all great Pair comebacks... but on the last round second place was enough for me, and when Ian and Andrew went bust I heaved a raspberry-scented sigh of relief.

Sam 23
Matt 21
Andrew 20
Ian 14

And that was that.

The Unbustable Engine

The odd thing about bank holiday weekends is that just as the quiet weekend finishes, you’re thrown straight into the scorching underbelly of competitive turmoil. Or "Martin’s house" as some people call it.

This week, there were seven of us: myself, Sam, Joe, Martin, Katy, Ian and Andy. We began in two groups, both playing games which involve spice trading. Ian, Andy and I played the very-very-imaginatively titled Spice Merchant, a simple card game where you can either put goods into a market or put goods in front of you. If the goods in the market match those in front of you then you win points! Hurrah! It sounds simple, but there’s the risk that another player may be trying to close the market quickly and ruin your plans. Plus, there’s the little matter of your secret trading choice. Perhaps this will save your day? Or perhaps not.

It was okay. I think it needs a couple of plays before the balance of when to do what becomes clear. For me, anyway.

Andy 27
Ian 25
Andrew 22

Joe, Martin, Katy and Sam where having a jolly old time with Safranito, a game that involves throwing chips across a board where they might end over a picture of a plate of spices. I didn’t understand much more than that.

1. Sam
2. Martin
3. Katy
4. Joe

But Spice Merchants is a much shorter game than Safranito so the three of us tried another new game: Villa Paletti. This is a dexterity game of tower building, with a winner at the end.

It was fun, but I was amazed how many rules they packed into such a simple game. I think it’s ripe for house variants. Anyway, we completed the tower, with Ian winner due to having more point-scoring columns on the top floor.

Ian 4
Andy 3
Andrew 1

Then we played Raj, while they finished off Safranito. It was the usual tale of cruel ties and tense bluffing, which Ian did best at.

Ian 73
Andrew 56
Andy 43

While we played Raj, the other four squeezed in two games of Villa Paletti. Both were shorter because the tower collapsed both times.

1. Katy
2. Martin
2. Joe
3. Sam

1. Sam
1. Martin
1. Katy
2. Joe

At this point we were all together again, so we divided into new groups. Joe, Andy and Katy played Was Sticht? and Sam, Martin, Ian and I tried yet another new game K2.

K2 is a mountaineering game where you can either move, acclimatize or build a tent as you try to scale the second highest mountain in the world. Weather is a major feature and most of the game was concerned with getting our mountaineers out of the areas where the cold hit hardest, like someone ducking into a coffee shop out of a sudden downpour.

It was simple but fun, perhaps helped by our choice of summer and good weather, which helped us keep all our meeples alive.

For the second time this evening, Ian proved himself a friend of high places. After winning Villa Paletti, he scaled K2 and scored a deserved win.

Ian 16
Martin 14
Sam 13
Andrew 12

Was Sticht? ended :

Andy 5
Katy 4
Joe 2

And once again we seven were free at the same time. Two rousing games of Pairs were played to finish the evening. This evening’s deadly foodstuff was blueberries. A pair of these proved fatal no less than four times (Ian, Sam and Joe twice).

Andy went through both games with only one bust hand, raising cries of “He’s unbustable!” He sailed to an easy win in game one

Andy 23
Katy 18
Andrew 16
Sam 16
Joe 10
Martin 9
Ian 0

But victory was taken from him by Martin. In the last round, if Martin had stuck, Andy would have won since Martin was beating Katy. But Martin was rather taken by our newly invented rule that getting a hand with each fruit or vegetable in it would automatically win the game. Since that was his only chance, he went for it. He didn’t get very far.

Katy 24
Andy 23
Ian 19
Sam 18
Joe 17
Martin 8
Andrew 4

What larks! And if that weren’t enough, Joe gave a quick demonstration of his own home-made dice tower for those who weren’t early enough to see it before.

What a shame such dedication and creativity isn’t rewarded on the Division.