Sloppy Civilisation

With no GNN session this week due to Valentine's Day, Andrew and I took advantage of Sally working through the (early) evening to squeeze in a quick two-hander. I realise that doesn't sound how I meant it, but I'm not going to change it now. We're grown-ups. 

I made my way to Andrew's with a couple of old, but perhaps underplayed, games in the bag - Mord Im Arosa and Portobello Market. We started with the former. Andrew lists this game as one of his favourites, and though I have a soft spot for it's unique silliness I do believe his preferences are framed by the ample Sean Connery/soft spoken Swede impressions it affords, as we tried various implementations of the phrase 'Sloppy Investigation'. As it turned out, I was by far the sloppier, and Andrew beat me convincingly:

Andrew 19
Sam 13

Don't go to the Mord this summer.

Time for a change. We'd only played Portobello Market 2 or 3 times and I think the general GNN impression was of the arched eyebrow variety - no open derision, but not a lot of enthusiasm either. It does play more tactically with two, I think; you can plan your moves with only one other person to ruin them for you, and it also plays quicker with two as there's less thinking time. But it's still one of those games that allies a simple rule set with deceptive strategic depth, and having started well only to fall back behind Andrew, I managed to jump past him with a sneaky trigger-the-game-end move:

Sam 161
Andrew 147

Andrew suspects those DVDs may not be kosher

One that merits further plays, I feel, though accusations of abstractery must be admitted to.

There was still time before I had to dash back so we broke out another of Andrew's faves (and my nemeses, along with Trans America): Roll Through the Ages: the game of dice-based stuff, where you balance the virtues of extra cities with the fact the buggers need feeding. I did pretty well, for me, but my beautifully advanced civilisation - with monuments and everything - was undone by serial disasters as I neglected to provide any food. How can the people starve? They're only made of wood!

Andrew 18
Sam 9

No knowledge will be handed out unless you have an amphora

With our gaming fix sated, and Andrew winning 2-1 on the night, I headed off into the ether...