Martin felt the same so he and Andy arrived at my (Sam's) house for a bit of extra-hot GNN action.
We began with The Palaces of Carrara, the game that Martin kind of arrived at GNN towers clutching in his hand, until he won so many games of it that everybody refused to play him again. I had somehow missed this whole lose-to-Martin sequence (with Palaces, anyway) which I think had mostly taken place at Roll for the Soul, and I remained curious about the game. I had lost to Martin in plenty of games, but not this one yet.
However it only took about 45 minutes for Martin to rectify that, as he took myself and Andy to the cleaners in this crazy game of marble-production, marble-selling and building-stuff-from-marble:
Martin: clean 38
Andy: shabby 28
Me: dirty 17
The wheel of Martin's imminent success
I could go into the detail of this game but frankly I had no idea what I was doing, except to say that feeling your way into a game is a non-productive quality when it's actually a race to meet the variable winning-requirements. Martin blitzed us, but despite my near-total confusion I enjoyed it. I'd like to play it again.
Next up was Quantum - new to Andy and unfamiliar to Martin, who hadn't played in a while. I had indulged recently, and shot into an early lead. But only having one cube left to place meant Martin and Andy came after me, and I looked like I was going to be at least caught, if not overhauled, until a fortuitous card came up. I completed my Dominance and got my last cube down:
Sam: 0 cubes left
Martin: 1 cube left
Andy: 2 cubes left
Andy didn't like it, but he was thrown in at the deep end with two semi-experts and to be fair, some really shitty dice. At one stage it seemed like the only thing he could roll was a five.
Quantum of Solace
By this time it was half-ten and Andy decided to hit the road. Martin elected to take the bus - his commitment to gaming is something else - and we played Haggis. Both of us were rusty and drunk at this point, but my rustiness and drunkeness aligned itself to a decent set of cards, and in this canny trick-taking game I surged into an early lead that fate decreed me not to surrender:
Sam 100 points
Martin 48 points
Then Martin scarpered for the bus and I marvelled at winning two games in a row against Martin 'The Machine" Griffiths.... not only that, I have to thank him for the game-themed beer...
drink up!
| Points | ||||||
| Martin | 2 | 1 | 2 | 2 | 1 | 8 |
| Katy | 1 | 3 | 2 | 2 | 1 | 9 |
| Andrew | 2 | 1 | 4 | 1 | 1 | 9 |
| Jon | 2 | 2 | 2 | 2 | 1 | 9 |
| Sam | 1 | 3 | 2 | 2 | 2 | 10 |
| Matt | 4 | 1 | 2 | 1 | 2 | 10 |
| Ian | 1 | 3 | 3 | 3 | 2 | 12 |
| Andy | 3 | 2 | 2 | 4 | 1 | 12 |
| Hannah | 3 | 3 | 2 | 2 | 2 | 12 |
| Joe | 2 | 1 | 3 | 3 | 4 | 13 |
| Chris | 2 | 5 | 1 | 1 | 4 | 13 |
| Anja | 2 | 1 | 1 | 5 | 5 | 14 |
| Adam | 3 | 2 | 2 | 4 | 4 | 15 |
| Steve | 3 | 3 | 5 | 1 | 3 | 15 |
| Stanley | 3 | 2 | 4 | 1 | 5 | 15 |
Thanks for hosting Sam, another splendid night! I'm definitely holding you to wanting to play Carrara again :)
ReplyDeleteIf we played Palaces of Carrara without Martin, would anybody win?
ReplyDeleteI'm struggling to think when we'd play without him. Maybe if he fell over in a forest?
ReplyDelete