Adit, Caesar!

Sam was hosting tonight, and sounded the all-clear at just gone 7.15pm. I immediately hopped in the car, and got there first. In no time at all we were joined by Adam and Andrew.
We hemmed and hawed over what to play — thinking we would be five for the first time in ages, I'd brought Santiago and Cuba (not to be confused with Santiago De Cuba), but after a peek in Sam's fine games cupboard, Taj Mahal and TransAmerica were added to the mix. At this point, Steve texted to say he wouldn't be joining us, and so we were down once more to the core four; Adam suggested we kick off with a bit of Ave Caesar.

We played three races, everyone but Adam winning one, so we ended with a three way tie for first with 12 points each, Adam lagging fourth with 9.
A disturbing pattern had begun to emerge, with the starting player in each race winning.

So what next? I suggested Tinners' Trail, which is perfect for four players, and a real GNN favourite. I'm surprised there isn't more love for TT on the Geek, it's a fantastic game. Just enough economics to be interesting without being overwhelming, lots of interesting, tense decisions, and some very clever mechanics like the diminishing returns on the investment track, and the elegant turn-order mechanism. Add to that lots of lovely wooden bits and a playing time of about an hour.  And it is one of the best value games out there too; you can pick it up online for £25. What's to not to not not like?

Well, there is a fair amount of that, I guess.

I hadn't played in a while, and it took me a while to get back in to the swing of it — I bid £12 for a mine as my first action of the game, which left me struggling to scrape together enough money to mine it. But it was worth the effort, because the copper price in round one was a whopping £10, giving Sam and I the chance to make some bold investments. Adam made a single £15 one, and Andrew eschewed investing at all in the first round.
From then on, it was the usual battle of steam pumps vs adits, ships vs trains, and Cornish pasties vs fourth place on the turn-order track. Round two saw Adam mine vast quantities of tin and copper from a dry mine, and it looked as though Sam and I had some serious competition. But he'd missed the big bucks on copper, which never regained the dizzying heights of the early game, and tin, true to form, remained a relatively stable but lowly £5 for the rest of the game. Andrew made the big money in round three, but decided to keep much of it rather than investing.

Sam, quietly contemplating — pasties, mining? Mining then pasties, then more mining!

Sam had made a bold move in round one, augmenting a mine he didn't even own with miners and steam ships. And then promptly buying it! He paid for it, but it was a very canny trick.
If I had a strategy, it was to not bother looking too closely at what the others were doing. I like games like that, it's hard enough trying to work out what I need to do, without factoring in three other trains-of-thought. But as Andrew pointed out, once the mines are bought, you can't sabotage them, so you might as well get on with what you want to do.

Round four — everybody please stand.

In the end, I pipped Sam to the win by a mere four points — it's only now that I realise how lucky I was. The investments come in £5 increments. so making sure you have no loose change at the end is important. By chance rather than planning, I ended up with £55; had I had £54, I would only have been able to invest £50, and Sam would have won (that may not be true actually, because pounds are only equivalent to points in round one . . . still.)

The final scores were:
Joe 108
Sam 104
Adam 100
Andrew 70

Andrew gives himself that 'disappointed' look he hates.

So we finished the night with a final game of Ave Caesar, to break the three-way tie for first place.
The disturbing trend we'd noticed earlier continued, with Adam starting first and finishing first.
At least we all got a go doing that. The final scores were:

Sam 16
Adam and Joe 15
Andrew 14

Not a good final game for Andrew, who went from joint winner to fourth place in that last race, compounding his fourth place in Tinners' Trail. But a lovely evening all round — thanks Sam. JB

[Ersby here, reporting from Leaderboard Central]

My poor showing sees me drop like a dead cow from a helicopter from second down to fifth. Meanwhile, the new rule (called Sam’s Law of Increasing Points, or "SLIP") comes into play. It’s still experimental, but I suggest that once a player has completed six games, his or her (okay, let’s be honest: his) points will go up by one for every week they don’t attend, as shown by an asterisk. It may be only one point per week, but it does stop people “parking the bus” at the top of the table. However, if they return for another evening, these fictional points are wiped from the slate and their points return to normal.

						Points
Sam	2	1	2	1	3	9
Quentin	1	1	1	2	1	9*
Joe	1	2	1	4	4	12
Adam	3	2	4	3	1	13
Andrew	4	3	3	2	2	14
Jonny	3	2	4	5	5	19
Dan	3	1	5	5	5	19
Steve	3	2	5	5	5	20
Andy	2	4	5	5	5	21
Sally	2	5	5	5	5	22