A Commanding Presence

This week's GNN saw numbers fall to an almost non existent level of just three. And, with Ian expected later, I rolled into Martin's house at eight to the sight of a couple of Japanese two player games on the table.

We started with The Throne And The Grail, one of the games I bought for Martin the last time I was in Japan. This is a strange kind of bidding game. Strange enough that I immediately regret calling it a bidding game. Each player has a hand of five and they take turns playing those cards into the centre. But, instead of playing a card, you may pick up the five most recently played cards. Those go on the table in front of you and will make up your final tableau. The trouble is, once you have picked up, you can't pick up again that round but you have to keep playing cards into the centre. This means your opponent can get whatever is left. This may be a good thing or not.

The end of game scoring is simple majority on the four suits gets you points, as do the numbered cards (some positive, some negative) that score their face value.

The other way to instantly win is to have all three pieces of the Grail. When I saw I'd been dealt the third when Martin already had two in his tableau, I put on my best poker face to keep him in the dark. Didn't work, but I still managed to avoid giving him the piece for the instawin. Still lost, though.

I forgot to take a photo of the game, but I did photograph the message in the fortune cookie that I gave to Martin in recognition of his win.

Martin 24
Andrew 12

Then we played Khmer. A cunning game of making sure that the overall value of the cards in your hand is the same or less than the communal cards on the table. Each player gets six cards in their hand, value one to six (in the pack there are two of each and six sixes). Each player takes turns in playing a card to the centre or taking a card from the centre (which is then put face up in front of them, as it's a definite part of their final score) or you can discard a six. Or, of course, you can knock if you think your total is close enough to win.

Martin wiped the floor with me, but I enjoyed it a lot and we kept playing until Ian arrived.

Martin 6
Andrew 1

With the three of us together, the games usually end up being the combative, strategic area control type of thing and tonight was no different. Welcome back to Impulse, the tiny space epic played out in less than an hour.

In Impulse, everything is a card. The map is made of cards, the bombs, minerals, your defences, goods for trade, etc are all represented by the cards. A remarkably efficient design, albeit one heavily laden with rules.

But once we'd had our rules refreshed, we were off. I lost a cruiser early on to Martin's sabotage card. In fact, he threatened to just hop back and forth between his Command and Sabotage cards, hoping to pick us off one by one. It certainly pushed him quickly up to seven points.

However, the next time he tried it, he failed, and Ian's fleet sailed impassively by. And when Ian attacked back, he won! Martin suddenly looked weak. I, at this time, was mostly hiding in the corner, trading cards for points. Before long Ian and I had caught Martin up, and the scores were 9-9-8, with Ian in last on the score track but looking strong on the map.

Martin was stuck by his bad luck on the map. His third of the map was either command cards to move or sabotage cards to attack adjacent ships. It was a limited range of options. Ian made a mega-move that sent him from eight to fifteen points, but left him with few cards. I used some Draw commands to fill out my hand and Martin tried to sabotage Ian and failed again.

At the end of one of my turns, Ian was on 18, and bound to hit the game-winning score of 20 on his next turn. I was on 17, about to hit 18, so I needed two more points to win. I attacked Ian. But, it was an optimistic gamble. I had no reinforcements, and Ian won easily. Which gave him two points, and the victory.

Ian 20
Andrew 17
Martin 11

Next we played Azul. This game of tile taking is such an old familiar, it's hard to believe it's barely a year old.

After a low scoring round one for everyone, I find myself with three unfinished rows. I play cautiously and I'm pleased to only get -1 in penalties, but also just 4 points overall for that round.

During round three, Martin suffers an existential crisis, repeatedly muttering "What am I doing?" He is later gripped by indecision over where to place three blue tiles he picked up. In this row? Or this row? This literally went on for a minute. Maybe a minute and a half.

Round four ended with Martin leading 37-29-29. Round five was a dream for him, as he completed colours and columns for bonus points, while Ian had a nightmare final round.

Martin 75
Andrew 64
Ian 54

By now I made noises about heading off, but I convinced myself to stay by suggesting Eggs Of Ostrich as our night cap.

And I'm glad I did, since I ended the winner, thanks to an uncontested amber in round three. Notable events were mostly confined to round two, where we all played our Two Bag cards on three separate occasions.

Andrew 27
Martin 24
Ian 21

And so, with a victory each (not including the two player games, of course) we disbanded for the night. Thanks to Martin for hosting. Here's hoping for more next week, but the grip of the summer holidays has been tighter this year than it's ever been.