See you Next Tuesday

It was a night full of the sounds of distant fireworks from many locations and I walked to Joe's wondering if this is what a war zone sounded like.

Joining me at Joe's, apart from the host, were Katy, Ian, Sam, Martin and Adam T. We started with a little conversation where Martin reminded us of Katy's use of the c-word in his birthday card. She insisted that she wrote that he wasn't a c-word and, besides, she had been under a lot of pressure to write something witty. Martin suggested some kind of code like… C U Next Tuesday. On saying that, we realised that we had been saying See you next Tuesday to each other for nine years. What kind of subliminal messages have we been giving out?

Talking of subliminal messages, our first game was Decrypto with the Laser Disc expansion. Martin, Adam, Joe and Katy faced off against Ian, Sam and I.

In this version of the game, a card drawn from a deck will give a category (famous people, cities, etc) to which at least one of the clues must belong. And if you are able to make all three fit, then you get a laser disc. Collect two and you can use them to guess one of your opponents' words.

This new variant was warmly welcomed by Martin who, on his first round, got a laser disc by having all clues relate to a living celebrity. Then Joe also got a laser disc. By now they had two, but no idea of any of our words. Adam was told not to bother trying for a laser disc. "Don't try to be too flash," was Martin's (unintentional?) pun. But Adam is a proud gamer and if they could do it, so could he. And he did. And he supplied chocolate cake as well. Pity you don't get points for generosity in Decrypto.

On our side, we didn't bother trying to get all three and when we did, we got a miscommunication both times. As such the game finished on round five, delicately poised. We had two miscommunications and two interceptions. They had one of each. It was down to the laser discs. If we could guess a word and they couldn't, we would score an unlikely win.

We correctly got our confident guess (Jack Black plus sponge pudding plus recorder equals School) but then they worked out one of our words at the last minute (runny egg plus Venice plus cold equals Water) and they prevailed.

Katy, Joe, Martin, Adam: piece of cake.
Sam, Ian, Andrew: oh, crumbs.

Then we split into two groups. Martin, Joe, Adam and Sam played Die Crew. But that "die" is the German definite article, not the English exhortation that someone end their life. Ian, Katy and I were remarkably quick (by our standards) to choose Senators as our entertainment.

Oddly, the four-player group decamped to the card table while the three-player game had the whole kitchen table to itself. I heard Martin describe Die Crew as "a mission based co-operative trick-taking game" to which one wit replied "What? Another one?" I know little about it except for getting a yellow five to Joe became very important at one point.

After they played for a while, they were faced with a dilemma. When to stop? The game had another 40+ missions. Should they keep going and head for the moon or try something different? Joe was keen to play Sigma File and after some discussion, they did just that. The moon would have to wait.

Meanwhile, in Senators, it was a ding dong battle. I sped off into an early lead by cashing in a 7-8-9 combo and bought several senators. Then Katy made the running, building up an insurmountable lead mid game but then Ian used Consuls to take points from her and, in one move where he gained four senators, overhaul her. The third war had passed and Katy was desperately holding onto an office card before she cashed in, paying off two extortion attempts by selling a senator, putting her temporarily into last place.

But temporary became permanent when she turned over the next card to find the fourth war. No chance to cash in and she finished in last place.

Ian 16
Andrew 12
Katy 11

After this, I suggested No Thanks. Katy insisted she was terrible and I assured her she can't be worse than me. Ian kept quiet, perhaps not wanting to seem over confident. I started off by picking up the 33, hoping for lots more cards in the thirties that I could milk for coins, but none came out. Not one.

Katy 53
Ian 55
Andrew 101

By this time, Sigma File was ending, with Sam the winner (“I went heavy on Bruno,” he explained) but apart from that, I know very little.

Then they began a game of Cartographers, even going so far as to sharpen their pencils first.

We three never saw the end of that game. We played a game of Las Vegas during which Ian mostly texted and I took a call in round two, much to Katy’s disgust.

Andrew $410,000
Katy $260,000
Ian $240,000

After this, Ian had to go and, frankly, after last week’s midnight finish both Katy and I were keen to finish early. Cartographers was still in full swing so we decided to pack up and leave. We set off at a refreshingly early half past ten, looking forward to an early night.

Except, soon after Katy and I parted, I realised my phone was still at Joe’s. I turned around and ran back to Joe’s house and got there just as Adam was leaving. I soon found my phone and turned down their kind offer of another game, so tired and sweaty that I really needed an early night now. But I was there long enough to hear Sam refer to the game Startups as “Breadsticks” just because he was looking at some while he described it to Martin.

Sam texted me the scores later.

Cartographers:
Martin 100
Adam 95
Sam 84
Joe 73

Startups:
Sam 3
Joe 1
Martin 0

But I finally got home at the usual post-games night time. At least I had my phone. Now it’s all downhill to the games weekend! Woo hoo!

Bring Your Own Cestus

Tuesday arrived with yet more drama playing out in Parliament - I mention this because I hope one day we'll look back and laugh, but probably not - and so we grasped preoccupations of our own with which to spend the evening. Rovers having a match on meant Joe and Adam were struggling to find places to park, however, so there was a conversation between myself (Sam), Katy, Ian and Sally that lasted at least five minutes.

"Will you be joining us tonight?" Katy asked, but Sally declined. She had children to wrangle into bed, an event they always resist with increasingly demented strategies.

By the time all the willing gamers were finally sat at the table, it was nearing 8 o'clock, and we kicked off with a six-player Bring Your Own Book. Adam had brought his own (Thomas Pynchon) so from our bookshelves we mixed in Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Carson McCullers, Zadie Smith, Nick Hornby, and the British Gardeners Guide to Insects.

Joe won this with "How much have you drunk?"

Adam grabbed an early lead with his answer to what one might see on a bumper sticker: I'm driving along the freeway looking for Volkswagens to destroy. Ian requested a name for a Battleship and most of us found suitably aggressive-sounding monikers, but Katy took the point with Puddles. 

Step five in Katy taking over the world was Vibrate, vibrate, and vibrate again (although I still liked my suggestion of several bird calls). My craft beer was called Fuck you, leave me alone and at the end of a good half-hour of Stinker-like nonsense, Adam took the win. 

With the hour closer to 9 than 8, the day's talk of Pax Pamir dissipated with Martin, Adam and Katy trying out Martin's latest Knizian Fix: Clash of the Gladiators. I - along with Joe and Ian - was fixated on our dubiously-motived scramble around Africana, so didn't pick up much about the game aside from the fact there was a lot of swearing going on. When I asked if the game was any good, Martin replied "Yes! Adam just twatted a lion"

Meantime Ian's eerie predictions of his own demise looked like coming true in Africana as we both found ourselves in the northern hemisphere when all the expeditions started in the south - where Joe was. He led the early running, and my optimism aligned aligned to Ian's when I paid no less than eight coins to keep turning the pages of the book (what is the book?) in order to find myself another assistant. 

I love the simplicity of Africana though, even if fate can occasionally crap on you from a height: twice I had a large hand of cards but was unable to use them to any effect. Ian and I thought Joe had the game stitched up, but thanks to my expedition cards I managed an unlikely win. And Ian was closer than we all expected...

Sam 36
Joe 32
Ian 28

At the other end of the table, after some talk about 'fucking the bear' ("Can you fuck it nicely?" Katy asked) Clash of the Gladiators had also finished:

Adam 20
Katy 18
Martin 17

Gladiators: Ready!

The verdict was broadly positive, so hopefully we'll see it again. They'd also squeezed in a game of Hats...

Martin 42
Adam 36
Katy 34

And after Adam retired for the evening, Katy and Martin played a round of Maskmen:

Martin 2
Katy 1

After Africana, Ian elected to depart as well, leaving us as a four. We decided on Polterfass as a nice 10pm game, and began rolling barrels like our livelihoods depended on it. Thank God they actually don't, though, because as always in Polterfass I repeatedly shot myself in the foot, even allowing Katy - 30 points behind me at one stage - to overhaul me. The battle for first was always between Martin and Joe, and Martin's cause was harpooned when we collectively bid for all of his beer. The smirk was wiped from my face when the same thing happened to me moments later - but the round of the night was the final one, where Katy scored a whopping 21 beers and Joe staggered drunkenly over the victory line. Katy caught Martin for joint second.

Joe 84
Martin / Katy 47
Sam 37

I asked if there was a tie-breaker and everyone scathingly cried "What, for second place?" as though I was pedantically foot-noting. I don't know, it's not the same without Andrew here... I forgot to take photos of Polterfass, but here is the box from a funny angle.

The last game of the night was a newbie - Startups, from Oink games - purveyors of interesting decisions and graphically-pleasing bits in small boxes. I wondered if it was a bit late to be learning any rules but Martin batted my feebleness aside, even though he admitted Oink rulebooks were usually "a bit weird".

Point rewards left; Monopoly tokens right

The game is a bit weird too.  A deck of cards represents several startup companies, and during play you're building a tableau of these cards in front of you. At the end of the round what you're aiming for is the most of the company cards you've collected - anyone who has less of that type of card has to pay you, and most money wins the round. It's classic Oink scoring - 2points for first, 1point for second, -1point for last place.

On your turn you pick up a card, and play a card - but inevitably there are catches. The card you pick up can be a free face-up card from the collective dumping ground (the market), or the top card from the deck if you want to pay a coin to any face-up cards in the market. You can then play a card into either the market, or your tableau. Having the most of a type of card gets you the monopoly token - now you don't have to pay to any matching cards in the market - but you're not allowed to pick them up either!

What this makes for is a jostle for positioning on various companies and the desire to avoid having certain cards means you may - as I did, twice - end up spending far too much money avoiding them. A final twist: when the deck runs out the three cards in your hand get added to your tableau, and (unless there are ties) coins are paid to all the monopoly holders before points are scored.

I finished the first two round in third, but collapsed to ignominy in the final round. The others fared a little better - Martin went from a shocking opening round to grabbing the win:

Martin 3
Katy 2
Joe 2
Sam -1

This time there was a decider - Katy won the tie-breaker to claim second. We all liked Startups - very, very Oinky and I think a bit less procedural feeling than Flotsam Fight - closer to Maskmen in how hard it is to get a handle on - in a good way.

But with the hour now 11 o'clock, it was time to head home to bed. Until next time... thank you all, it was special.