Anything You Bandu I Bandu better

A cold Thursday night, and Katy was baby sitting Arthur at Adam and Hannah’s. Possibly without their knowing, Katy invited the GNN crowd around to keep her company but only I, Ian, could make it.

Being just the two of us it was a fairly quiet affair, but it made choosing games relatively easy as there was only a limited number of games that either of us felt we knew well enough. After my attempts to get Katy to play Railways of the World were met with reluctance, we instead chose Castles of Mad King Ludwig.

Whilst we both enjoy COMKL (as all the cool kids are calling it), we agreed that this particular game felt like it ended rather quickly; a bit anticlimactic. I couldn’t shake the feeling that we’d missed some rules, but as far as we could tell we played it all correctly.

I fell into the trap of chasing my bonus cards (bonus points for circular and downstair rooms), when instead I should have been looking elsewhere. Katy completed far more rooms than I, which gave her almost double the number of points I had. The results came in:

Katy 50

Ian 28

After that I suggested Hive, and after a quick read up of the rules we were away. I still think Hive (a game whose title can’t be contracted any further. “HV”, maybe?) is a rather clever game, with a tension that builds in an almost chess like manner.

This time, my own defenses were a bit slow to react to Katy’s attack, and I realized a little to late what she had planned. My own bugs were too far away to stop her circling my Queen.

Katy wins

Ian does not

Next, Deep Sea Adventure was mooted. Katy couldn’t recall if it worked well with two people, so we thought we’d find out. Turns out it works rather well, although it was a death-light game, with only Katy running out of air once in the three rounds.

I played fairly conservatively whilst Katy was a little more daring, being the only player to dive deep enough into the abyss to collect a three-dot tile. If the tiles had been shuffled differently she could have easily have won, but she did not.

Ian 38

Katy 34

It should be mentioned that Arthur had been sleeping quietly throughout the evening, to the point where we wondered if he’d somehow wandered off somewhere. But we felt confident enough that we’d notice a small child roaming around, and played on.

Push It was next. We used four pucks each, and rather arbitrarily decided to play to sixteen. We also played a possibly-not-official rule that if you had all four pucks closest to the jack, you would score four points. We also decided that knocking the jack off the table would result in minus two points.

The table surface proved challenging, having a high friction, so many of our shots came up short, whilst others went flying well past their mark. So, a usual game of Push It.

At one point I did manage to get all four pucks closest to the jack and in another round Katy knocked the jack off the table once, both of which helped give me the win.

Ian 16

Katy 10

There seemed to be time for one more game, so I suggested Bandu.

This game of Bandu is the main reason why we felt it was worth recording the night. My tower featured some rather impressive balancing, even if I do say so myself. Katy agreed, and at one point seemed more interested in seeing my tower succeed than winning herself!

But I’ll let the pictures speak for themselves. Behold.

The photos make it seem less impressive

Whoooaaaarra!

Somehow Katy’s tower (which I didn’t take any pictures of, though a fine construction it was) toppled before my unlikely creation succumbed to physics.

Ian wins

Katy does not

Around this point Arthur stirred, possibly awoken, though hopefully not, by the sound of wooden blocks clattering onto a table.