Hot Cathedral Action

Walking along Joe's road, with the cardboard recycling bags neatly hanging up on railings, I arrived at his door and spent about thirty seconds trying to find the doorbell under the large Christmas wreath on his front door. 

After I went in I found I was the last expected attendee. Apart from me and Joe, there was Ian, Katy, Sam, Adam T and Martin. We began with Panda Royale,  the fun new dice game that Martin didn't seem keen on at all. 

Joe taught Katy and Martin the rules, getting couple of sums wrong as he did, and we were off. Our dice clattered loudly against Joe’s table as we progressed through the rounds. Martin didn't seem happy with our lassez faire attitude to some particular rules. Katy got confused by the different phases of each round, forgetting which order things happened in and got a little spiky when Martin cajoled her.

As for the game,  Adam when big on reds which didn't work out for him at first but soon hit the jackpot. Joe went for those big green dice and he had four in front of Katy did too, asking for a green D20, “and that's the first time I've said that,” she said. 

I kept getting very low yellow scores and so I always chose my dice last. As such, at one point I had one of each colour,  which is exactly what you don't want. 

The smart money went big on blues and trading dice. Ian did this and strode to a handsome win.

Ian 463

Joe 429

Sam 424

Katy 422

Adam 420

Martin 414

Andrew 387

It's only now when I type the scores out that I realise that we finished in order of name length. Martin still wasn't keen on it by the end, though.

Then Katy got out her bottle of ginger wine, causing a little flurry of cocktails as Sam made a whisky mac and Joe made a Rusty Nail (ginger wine and drambuie). Joe offered ice around. “It's frozen water,” he told us, helpfully. 

We split into two groups. Joe, Martin and Ian chose Rebirth. I questioned the use of zeppelins as score markers and was told this was set in the future which surprised me because, from a distance, it all looks a bit medieval. 

Sam's amazing customization work

Katy, Sam, Adam and myself played Rebel Princess, the trick-taker that poo-poohs the patriarchal society in which we live. Or something.

Katy took to it immediately, scoring an impressive zero points in rounds one and two. The rules regarding passing cards were a bit much, I felt. One round insisted we passed after every hand. But then in the final round,  we discovered that winning a trick (usually the last thing you want) in a particular suit actually reduces your score (which you definitely do want).

One strange thing - perhaps my brain was confused by all this passing anti-clockwise because when it was my turn to deal, I dealt anticlockwise too. Katy found it disturbing to watch. I blame the coriolis effect or something.

Sam played brilliantly in that final round, gathering a healthy crop of that suit, reducing his score enough to trigger a tie breaker. Which Katy jokingly suggested might be “most rounds with zero points”. Sam checked the rules and it turns out she was right. 

Katy 12 (wins on tie-breaker)

Sam 12

Andrew 16

Adam 24

On Rebirth, it ended with Ian strolling to another win thanks to some helpful bonus cards. 

Ian 209

Martin 187

Joe 169

We ended at the same time and after a little reshuffle later and I’m sat between Sam and Ian for another game of Rebirth. My first and, at this late hour of 9.15, I almost vetoed it but I was swayed by Ian’s happiness to play it twice. So I listened to Sam’s rules explanation with even more intent than usual, wanting to reduce any further questioning. I was distracted by the pieces, though, which smelled faintly of sawdust and I was transported back to the woodworking class at school.

As for the game, it was a typical Knizia of balancing gains for yourself with sub-optimal moves which, nevertheless, stop you opponents. Chain together tiles and surround castles for points. I wrote down “hot cathedral action” in my notebook but sadly forgot to note the context.

Andrew 167

Ian 166

Sam 154

At the other end of the table, Katy, Joe, Adam and Martin played a game of Fishing that I pretty much ignored and then left before it had finished but Sam sent me the scores later.

Martin 86

Joe 85

Adam 77

Katy 75

Without me, Ian and Sam played Agent Avenue twice with Sam winning both times.

Then they ended with two So Clovers. In Sam’s message to me, he tells me that Katy thinks taking speed is festive.

Looking at the clovers, I note that someone wrote “Speed” for “sea/fast”. A reference to Speed 2 perhaps?

28/36 or 38/36 if you include “festive” points, apparently.

Then Adam left and they went again for

27/30

Thanks all. Have a great festive season!

Rebel without a corset

With Winter tapping on Autumn's shoulder, I walked as briskly as I could manage to Sam's kitchen. There I found Joe already seated,  putting away a game called Panda Royale. As Adam T, Adam H and Ian arrived, it never left the table top, hovering within easy reach. And so, when we had all settled down with drinks in front of us, it was chosen for its second time around tonight. 

It's a cleverly designed dice-rolling/drafting game where we all start with a  lowly yellow 6D die and, round by round, we pick up more coloured dice. Each colour has bonus. Purple dice instantly double their score, blue dice double only if you have a glittery blue dice too. Clear dice can be swapped for another player's die (usually blue glittery ones).

I chose red dice as my path to victory. These scored Value of dice x number of dice. There's a chance win big but, also, the lower half of the numbers all count as negative which is a risk. And so it was that once I rolled all minus points and saw my score turn sharply backwards. 

Adam H specialised in blues and the thieving clear dice. Sam did so too, but he usually got his clear dice from Adam when his glittery blue dice were stolen.

The rules were sparse so we devised our own method of deciding who was starting player, which we promptly forgot. 

In the end, Ian’s horde of Purples and Adam T's collection of blues got them a joint win. Was there a tie-breaker, we wondered. Maybe the roll of one last die? But then Sam said that there wasn't one. We were a little disappointed that the game designers had suddenly abandoned the dice-rolling mechanism at such an important juncture. 

Ian 451

Adam T 451

Adam H 446

Sam 376

Joe 314

Andrew 303

And the scores of the first game, before I arrived, were equally close.

Joe 481

Sam 480

Adam H, at this point, told us about a beer left at his house last week. Some sort of rose raspberry concoction. We assumed it was one of Martin's. Adam brought it back and offered it to anyone who was interested. It was put in Sam's fridge where, I believe, it is still there as I write.

Next up we chose Rebel Princess, a feminist trick-taking card game which is hard to find in the UK because (a) of its Spanish origins and (b) the difficulty of searching for it without returning results about Star Wars. 

Our own feminist trick-taker, Katy, was expected later but it played six and everyone seemed intrigued so we didn't wait. After all, Adam T insisted it would only take two minutes to explain. “... five minutes.” he corrected himself after a glance at the rules. 

It's feminist in the sense that every player has a power they can use and these are denoted by princesses from literature and maybe history. To make things more interesting, each round has an additional rule such as: split your hand in half, play the first half then pass the other half to the right and continue playing with your new cards.

Winning cards with suitors (one point per cards) or the frog card (5 points) was bad. The powers added a new dimension to the game. Ian demanded that Adam H begin his hand with a random card. Adam H did so but, before he revealed it, he took a chance and played his own power and reversed the card values such that low cards would win (which would be bad).

Had his clever plan worked? He revealed his card. A two. Disaster! He won the hand on his way to a less than stellar performance, saved from last place only by Adam T's explainers curse. 

Andrew 7

Sam 13

Ian 15

Joe 20

Adam H 23

Adam T 24

Then Katy arrived, and the seven of us split into two groups. Ian and the two Adams played Rebirth, the Ireland map. Ian went through the rules for the two ingenues. I didn't pay much mind to the game, except when Joe balanced a shell from a pistachio nut on one of the meeples. Such fun.

It ended (after I'd left for the night)

Adam H 264

Adam T 233

Ian 212

Me, Joe, Sam and Katy played Fishing. Another trick-taking card game with (aptly enough) hidden depths. The basic premise couldn't be simpler. Win tricks and each card, at the end of the round, scores one point.

But the cards you win are recycled back into your hand. Therefore, if you do badly in one round, you'll only have a few cards. In this case, you can draw up to the required hand size from a stack of cards that are more powerful than those cards you start with, and they get more overpowered as the game goes on.

The game raises an interesting dilemma. Do you deliberately do badly in one of the eight rounds in order to pick up some OP cards from the deck and win the next round or two? It's such a clever mechanic. 

Katy played particularly aggressively and, perhaps swayed by our recent brush with feminism, the rest of us derided her toxic masculinity. 

I was stung in the final round, picking up -6 in special cards allowing Katy to scrape a win. She'd been twenty points ahead mid-game and just about hung on while we whittled her lead away. 

Katy 84

Andrew 82

Sam 78

Joe 78

I dashed out with almost indecent haste and then the trio I left behind played Misfits. 

Katy won

And then they played So Clover. I was sent a photo but no score. But let's be honest,  you can't put a value on fun.

Thanks all. See you next week.