Ultra Mare!

At one stage this final pre-Novocon GNN looked like being just myself and Martin, perhaps with some shin-brushing courtesy of Charlie and heckling from increasingly unsmall children. Fortunately we were saved: Joe, Laura and Adam H all riding in late to make it the tricky-but-welcome five. 

With Martin's games cupboard currently boarded up by his builders, he arrived sans knapsack and with no agenda. Unusually, neither Joe or I had made many plans either, although Joe did mention he'd be up for a two-player of Obsession. But after Martin's archeological digging in the games alcove, he emerged with a title last seen back in July 2016: Oltre Mare. 

Martin's capacity to read rules and explain them whilst also dealing with side conversations and consume snacks was highlighted again, as he waved the dense text around happily saying that it was only four pages of rules. Brows furrowed at length and depth as he went through them, but I remembered the game as being fairly simple and fast-moving, and luckily that's how it proved. Despite the central board, replete with ships and tokens, it is predominantly a card game of trying to bank sets of goods into their stash and keep the pirates at bay. Players can trade on their turns for cards (or cash, which also serves as a scoretrack) and their last-played card to their stash defines both their hand limit, and how many cards they can play on their next turn. 

Some cards let you move your ships and collect the very-helpful tokens. But the boats, whilst beautifully constructed, were mainly noticeable for how hard it was to tell them apart, and the shared focus was mostly on the trading, especially after Martin offered 'a towel' which somehow seemed to lower the tone for a considerable period. When Laura spotted his boat at Venice, she sailed on by, not wanting to moor beside 'the towel guy'. I lied to Adam about how piratey my traded goods were, and felt a bit bad when I discovered he'd told the truth (you can't lie about what goods are on your cards, but you can about anything else)

Meantime we hit the halfway scoring and, despite a plethora of pirates, my bunch of sets pushed me into a decent lead on points/cash. Martin bemoaned his position at the back, although Adam pointed out he was only a few ducats ahead of him. As we pushed into the second half of the game things sped up exponentially, with trades being refused as plans came to fruition and boats hoovering up the last offerings on the board. Joe was delighted with Laura's trade of olives until he discovered they were riddled with pirates. He triggered the endgame and sailed past me into the lead - until the pirates dragged him back to level on points. But then Adam flipped his stash, arrayed like a snake of dastardly points-hauling across the table, and left us all in the dust:

Adam 68

Joe and Sam 53 each

Laura 51

Martin 42

Although we sped up considerably, overall we'd taken rather longer than the game's advertised 60 minutes, and Laura had time for a short game before she went. Before you could say Reiner the only game Martin had brought with him was out on the table, and we were all diving for treasure in a luck-pushing cross between Yahtzee and Las Vegas: Into the Blue. You've three rolls to dive down and need consecutive numbers. After your third roll you can place shells at <up to> the deepest level you rolled x the number of dice you rolled of that number. Most shells at a depth of X wins you the treasure there, but ties are broken by the next level up, leading to a semi-cascading thing of fluctuating fortunes. Get all the way to the bottom and you claim a treasure!

I felt more at the mercy of the dice than I do in Las Vegas. But maybe I'm just sour about not getting any of the (roll 1-2-3-4-5-6) treasures at the bottom, which come in a little chest. I found it hard to gauge the game state, but it was fun to chuck dice and curse people. 

Adam 23

Laura 21

Martin 18

Sam 16

Joe 14

We bid adieu to Laura (until Friday!) and finished off with four-player Spicy. There were a whole bunch of wrong challenges, a few right ones, and I managed a victory when I emptied my hand a second time to claim another +10 and the insta-win.

Lots of fun, thanks all. See you at the weekend!

Ultra Mare

Monday, and I (Sam) spent the day in Newport Asda whilst waiting for my passport to be renewed. Four hours in an Asda cafe was pushing it, but there was a heatwave outside and it was Newport. I was thinking I'd gen up on Copper Country, but the wifi at the Asda Newport cafe doesn't let you watch videos, it seems, so I was forced to focus on the depressing reality of... reality.

Come the evening, I didn't have time to gen up on Copper Country, because of a combination of lengthy rules and rapscallion children prevented it. Instead when Ian and Andrew arrived, we played another game that's sat in a cupboard for a few months unplayed: Oltre Mare. This game is Euro-y in many ways: it's a map of the Mediterranean; you're stocking up ships, and delivering goods.  The best trader wins.

to be honest, it's a card game really

But in other ways it's quite atypical of a Euro: the only cube to be pushed is along the score track, and you couldn't truly describe it as dry: trading with each other is pivotal, and the game has a delicate balance of managing your hand: the goods you want to deliver versus how many cards you're allowed in your hand, versus how many cards you can play on the next turn. Often you find yourself with a well-stocked hand but a hand limit of 4, and you're literally giving cards away to avoid punishment - for if you have too much stuff on your ship, the pirates come and get you.

Wheat

We all liked it. The first half of the game was quite slow, as we got up to speed, but after the interim scoring the second half of the game took about twenty minutes: a combination of familiarity and the big guns coming out. I didn't note the scores down, but Ian pipped me to a win by a single point (something like 64 to 63) with Andrew back around 59. A close thing.

A close thing, but a long first play, coming in around 1hr 40mins, so Andrew suggested lighter fare in the form of Pickonimo. The first round gave a portent of what was to come when all three of us went bust. Then I surged into a healthy lead, only to be pegged back by Andrew. Andrew surged into a healthier lead... but this time, he was not to be caught. Poor Ian was never in the running, going serially bust:

Andrew 9
Sam 6
Ian 1

Then we played Outfoxed. This is a kids game that is intriguing enough to merit a look by grown-ups; it's a co-operative where the players are working out which fox stole the pie. It's gonna be one of sixteen foxes, and on each turn you either look for clues or suspects, slowly revealing the sixteen foxes and eliminating them from your enquiries via the clues. The chance element is dice: if you don't roll what you set out to roll, the fox moves back towards his or her den, and it they make it home before you figure out the culprit, the players lose!

one we played earlier

It's rather fun. The fox was only halfway home, though, when we figured out who stole the pie: it was Maggie!

Then we ended with Push It, which I managed to clinch at the last from Ian:

Sam 11
Ian 10
Andrew 7