With all five players either indecisive or excessively polite, there was some discussion before the first game was chosen, which turned out to be Mammut, Joe's purchase from the aforementioned game-nirvana. It had been played over the weekend, but was new to me, and Jonny as well. However Joe's powers of explanation remain undiminished by heavy use, and soon we were arguing over the spoils of a day's hunting like proper cavemen - the first of two games themed on long-dead peoples. For some reason the neanderthal grunting this game encourages seems not to wear thin - at least, not to five guffawing morons. *
Anyway, though the game is relatively simple to learn the computation involved is too heavy for my puny brain, so I was quite surprised to finish second, and even more so to witness Adam finishing joint-last. What devious mind dreamed this bewilderment up?
Joe 42
Sam 40
Jonny 39
Adam/Andrew 35
We moved on to the evening's second game, which after a mercifully brief conflab turned out to be Ra, Reiner Knizia's classic of interpreting classical Eygyptian politics into a crazed game of bidding and nervously hedging one's bets. At the end of round two I felt I had a chance of first place, but a glance over at Joe's enormous collection of monuments told me the fight would be for second.
Which I just managed - tying with Andrew, who had managed to specialise in Nile tiles to the extent he scored 11pts for them in rounds 2 and 3 - as Joe 'the knowledge' Berger tied up a second win on the night, and Adam narrowly beat Jonny into third place:
Joe 43
Sam/Andrew 40
Adam 19
Jonny 17
It was half-ten by now so we decided to call it a night, our gaming thirst sufficiently sated.
*actually I believe Jonny is exempt from this, having not grunted and only laughed politely
| Points | ||||||
| Joe | 1 | 1 | 3 | 1 | 3 | 9 |
| Sam | 2 | 2 | 1 | 2 | 2 | 9 |
| Adam | 3 | 4 | 2 | 3 | 1 | 13 |
| Steve | 1 | 2 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 18 |
| Quentin | 1 | 3 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 19 |
| Andrew | 2 | 4 | 3 | 4 | 6 | 19 |
| Hannah | 2 | 3 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 20 |
| Jonny | 4 | 3 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 22 |
| Anja | 4 | 4 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 23 |
Well, that was a nice evening. As Joe said at the time, it was like a little hit to stop us from going cold turkey. I enjoyed pretending to be a caveman with an appreciation of alt-folk Americana. And I was lucky in Ra to get a long Nile right from the start. If only I'd got that last civ tile...
ReplyDeleteYes, lovely, thanks Sam. Andrew, I'm impressed that your Nile strategy nearly paid off, I thought it would do for you.
ReplyDeleteI enjoyed Mammut too - I think the grunting should be in the rules. Like during the sharing, from the moment the tiles come out of the bag to the moment everyone's got tiles, you are not allowed to speak. You may grunt, point, use your cheeks to make percussive noises etc, but you may not use actual words.
I like that idea. Especially if Sally or Charlotte should walk in mid-game and discover a bunch of monosyllabic idiots, slave to the rules of an absent deity. It would be like their worst fears realised.
ReplyDelete