Trouble comes in threes

Today was the first day of Spring and, bang on cue, the sweet Spring showers began. Despite an email from Adam saying he was unwell, and strong suspicions of a low turn-out, I set off into the rain.

Martin was the only one there at the start, and since I wanted to eat, we played a game that was low on meeples and cards: Decathlon! Adam may not enjoy this collection of 10 mini-games of luck, but Martin and I do. It was a close game right up until the final round, the 1500m, where sixes are subtracted from your overall score of all eight dice. Martin used up most of his re-rolls trying to get rid of a series of sixes right at the start, and ended the race with a score of 3. I rerolled only if I got ones or sixes, and came away a comfortable winner.

The Gonz turned up, wet from the rain, bringing a number of games, none of which were in their original boxes. We set up Oregon. Martin explained the rules to Gonz, and he said it sounded intriguing. Certainly, its Kingdom-Builder-style card aspect meant he felt right at home. The two of them managed to use buildings to unflip there “extra-go” and “joker” tiles, leaving me stranded far in last past, despite having lots of gold. Martin won.

During this game, the café turned the house lights down. Unfortunately, this meant we couldn’t really see the board clearly. Usually, we use a side lamp to illuminate us, but we were sitting too far from a power point to make that a viable option. They tried pointing the lamp towards us from across the cafe but that didn’t make much of a difference. In the end, after other customers starting called the staff Spoilsports, they turned the lights back on.

Then, if Oregon wasn’t Kingdom-Builder-ish enough, we decided to play Kingdom Builder. A similar pattern emerged, as the two practised players shot off into the distance, with me just entertaining myself with my massive empire. Sure, Martin may have won the game (only four points ahead of Gonz), but in the parallel universe where this actually took place and didn’t stop after Gonz ran out of pieces, my empire would have risen up and crushed Martin’s and Gonz’s tiny, splintered settlements one by one. At least, that’s what I’m telling myself.

Then Hanabi was suggested. I was worried, since my last experience with this game involved Gonz getting frustrated at my inability at working out the most logical consequences of his clues. Once I mentioned that, Gonz was even more keen to play, just to show me how wrong I was. And we did okay. We got to 21 points. Not bad at all.

But that was it for me. I left at that point, while Martin and Gonz pondered about a final two-player game of the evening. As I walked out I heard Gonz suggesting his new Street Fighter type game. I shall have to wait for the comments to find out what was chosen.