Third Dan

The muggy Bristol heat almost made for an eighth player last night, with even Sybil subdued by humidity. But we were seven: Joe hosting, Martin, Adam T, Katy, Ian, myself (Sam) and newbie Dan who has just moved in around the corner from Joe, so - who knows? - may feature regularly for the year he plans on staying.

I was a little late and before I arrived they played Panic Lab. I know nothing about it other than the fact there is a Dobble-esque real-time pressure and therefore probably best I was late. Martin, apparently, was the least panicked when they finished.

Then, with Dan's arrival imminent, we split into two factions of Pax Pamir and Chinatown and set up whilst trying to recall all the Dans who have come and gone in the near-decade existence of GNN. There's been at least two. I thought there was three, but then I remembered one of them wasn't called Dan. Anyway: in Afghanistan it was Adam, Martin and myself. Across the other side of the world Joe, Katy and Ian explained Chinatown to now-present Dan. Or Joe did. "The rules are very simple" he assured him. "I just can't remember them."

We had no such issues in Pamir, having played it only last week. Adam and Martin aligned themselves with the Afghans whilst I went Russian. This gave me a bit of a workout keeping up with the pair of them placing armies and roads on the board - in order to score points I either needed the Russians dominant or nobody at all. The latter was more likely.

Normally when Pamir gets played there's one player who gets stuck in stasis - not having enough cash, or stuck with off-suit cards and taking underwhelming turns whilst waiting for the tide to change. Last night was the first time this seemed to happen to all of us simultaneously though; Adam cash-poor, Martin frustrated by the cards and me having to add cards to my court then instantly discard them several times.

On the other half of the table, there were no in-at-the-deep-end troubles for Dan - he seemed to be in his element, channeling the survival skills of the perpetually self-employed as he haggled for position in Chinatown. But beyond that I didn't pick up much of what was going on, as Pamir's inscrutability took all our attention.

When the first dominance card was activated (by the appearance of the second) nobody was dominant, so Adam and I shared non-dominant points: a massive 2 each with Martin back on zero. I was seconds away from a win as Martin - now aligned with the British - removed an Afghan road instead of a Russian one. But he changed his mind! Then as we inched towards the third dominance scoring, I changed allegiance to the Afghans and so did Martin. Suddenly we were all vying for dominance and I was in pole position. I gave the warlords a second gift, and wrapped the game up with the others unable to prevent me scoring:

Sam 7
Adam/Martin 2

Martin's face suggested he was marginally less enamoured of Pamir than last week, and both he and Adam said Pax Porfiriana is less abstracted. In fact Martin's complaint wasn't about the play but the lack of theme. As the winner, I was less bothered by that but I agreed with Adam's summary: It was too hot to play Pamir.

Chinatown was still in full-construction so we tried our luck, literally, at PUSH; Joe's recent purchase of card collection and implosion. I remembered Andrew's success and decided to bank as soon as my cards went into double figures, and despite some swingy dice-rolling, this tactic worked for me too:

Sam 74
Martin 61
Adam 56

To Martin's disbelief, they were still at it in Chinatown, so we played the (not hugely dissimilar to PUSH) L.A.M.A as well. Martin's evening went from bad to worse:

Sam 8
Adam 13
Martin 43

As we wrapped that up, the final roof tile was placed in Chinatown and the scaffolders left for good. When the dust of negotiation settled, the triumphant wheeler-dealer was Dan:

Dan 11,70000
Katy 11,10000
Joe 10,80000
Ian 10,40000

It had been an epic but everyone seemed happy to have lived through it. But with the time now pressing on somewhat, Ian departed for home and Adam T followed him out the door. We were left as a five and that was the perfect number for Martin's new addition to his games cupboard, QE.

I guess QE, unsnappy though it is, is still more snappy than quantitive easing, which is what it stands for. Players each represent a country (apart from me - I was the EU) trying to become the most profitable by bidding for industries. Over 15 turns (three rounds of five) an industry tile is flipped over that will score between 2-4 points, and represents an industry as well as a country. If you buy your own country tile, it's worth additional points to you. If you have diverse industries, that's good - but you can also score points by specialising. Your industries are gathered together in a bingo-like card in front of you, where your other scores are recorded as well.

One considerable catch with QE is that you can bid absolutely anything you like: from zero to fifty trillion and higher. But the player who has spent the most, like High Society, is an instant loser. This leads to a see-saw battle battle between bidding high enough to win and not so high as to promote yourself to status of most-profligate. And the other considerable catch is all bids are hidden from everyone except the auctioneer: when it's your turn, you start the bidding (everyone sees that) and then you get to see all bids and announce the winner, but without announcing the bid itself. Instead the bid is recorded on the industry tile and kept face-down. Everybody has the option of looking at the winning bid too, which is really helpful, but can only use this special power once in the entire game.

It amounted to a weird mix of group-think and second-guessing. Martin claimed the first two tiles to himself and got them, considering where we ended up, very cheaply. Dan started pushing the bids up as he claimed no less than three housing tiles. Katy also seemed to be doing well early on. I had a strong mid-game, but Joe was stuck on one tile and kept being outbid. Determined to get the final one, he hiked up the price to 10,000 and got the tile - but also shunted himself into last position by virtue of money-spent. Dan and I looked most productive, and I pipped him to the win:

Sam 41
Dan 36
Martin 31
Katy 28
Joe 18 and spent most!

Katy and I now plumped for Dead Man's Chest to finish the evening. Martin was against it, not least because the rules are always so oddly bewildering to us, and when I brought Dan to see Joe's game collection he also vehemently insisted I had "twice as many" games as Joe. We also mentioned the blog to Dan somewhere around this point, which was a real "Let's invite him to the club, Michael" moment: Dan realised that despite the relatively light baptism with Chinatown, perhaps wasn't all quite as it seemed.

Martin returned with some options but found Katy was already explaining the rules of Dead Man's Chest to Dan. We all chipped in with some extra clarifications at this point, none of which helped particularly. I suggested since Dan was to my right I start and he can watch us play, but I'm not sure this helped either. It is such a bizarre game, and Dan was unsurprised to go out first (I think), reflecting that "I should never have looked" after his second challenge on Katy. Martin was next to fall (I think), followed by Katy and leaving Joe and I to face off. I guessed his bluff, and - even more bizarre - picked up my fifth win of the night!

1 Sam
2 Joe
3 Katy
4 Martin
5 Dan

With the distant sound of thunder rumbling in from Clifton but the heat still as stifling as when we arrived, it was finally time to go. Another wonderful GNN evening, and hopefully we'll see Dan again. He seemed to be as coherent when he left as when he arrived.