Night of the Grinding Gears

A monumental night in many ways. At parliament, Boris Johnson was being defeated by his own party. At my house, Stan was preparing for his first day at secondary school. And at Joe's, Martin and Adam - according to the host - were waving their dragons around "like scaly cocks" in Res Arcana.

Owing to the seismic events at home, I had arrived late. They'd only just begun Res Arcana, but I said I was happy to sit and watch, as the game usually only takes about 20 minutes to half an hour. But Res Arcana had left its brevity in the box, and prolonged silences were punctured by swearing or me gagging on Sybil's farts, as she laid on my feet and let loose. Martin told Adam his Elvish Bow was really fucking annoying. Adam didn't even say sorry. Adam sighed heavily and passed. Incongruously, Joe began whistling. Forty-five minutes later, Martin threw his hands in the air as the victor, but even he seemed mostly relieved it was over.

Martin 10
Joe/Adam 5 each

"That felt like a slog" Martin said, after his arms descended. Adam and Joe agreed.

Now a quartet, we briefly debated what to play next before settling on Songbirds, Joe's recent acquisition from La Rochelle. Then we debated how to utilise the scoring system, before we realised three of us were saying the same thing in slightly different ways. In this game players are, card by card, creating a 5x5 grid of birds (numbered 1-7) in each round made up of four types of bird - not being twitchers, we called them green, blue, grey and red. At the end of each row and column is a berry, with a points value. When all cards are placed, the bird with the most value in each column/row claims the berry for themselves.

Everyone has kept one card back for themselves, and now scores the points of that colour.

It's an odd bird, very thinky and made slightly thinkier by the fact in the middle of the grid is the crow, who devalues the cards around him. Like a condensed Five Tribes, you can't really plan ahead and so was positively pre-natal with pauses. We all agreed it was probably best as a two-player game.

Martin 58
Sam 55
Joe 51
Adam 50

The sense of underwhelm was still in the air and perhaps in hindsight another thinky abstract wasn't the best choice, but next up was Mini Rails, the stock and track-manipulation game.

Like Res Arcana and Songbirds before it, it was replete with protracted lulls as everyone tried to work out how to get screwed over the least. It's a nasty piece of work and you can be sure if you think you've got a break someone will smash up your dreams with a hammer in short order. Martin invested in beige early on and tried to engender support by insisting "The future is beige". He then told Adam that 'mean is good' when the potential victim was Joe and - ten minutes later - kind is good when the potential victim was Martin.

I floundered and only avoided coming fourth after an error in the final round by Joe cost him the victory and Martin a solo third. Both Joe and Martin said "Let's play something fun after this"

Adam 19
Joe 18
Martin/Sam 14 each

So the something fun turned out to be Memoarr, which not unlike Songbirds consisted of a grid of cards. In this case however you are flipping them over and trying to remember where they are. When it's your turn you must flip a card that matches either the animal or the background of the last flipped card. Everyone - in theory - knows the identity of three cards at the start, which you hope will be your handy backstop. But it doesn't always work that way.

Adam professed confusion. Martin expressed rage. Joe and I had a ball of a time though. You have to doff your cap to a game that has Adam muttering "I've got to find an octopus..." under his breath. Even Martin's palpable disdain dissipated as play continued over seven rounds, during which time you would think you'd get to know all the cards. But it's not as easy as it sounds - luck saved me on one occasion when I went Dirk.

Sam 7
Joe 4
Adam/Martin 3 each.

There was just time for one more sally into Das Exclusive as we ended the evening with Kribbeln. Adam, reeling from Memoarr, came surging back with a spectacular start but halfway through the game his luck ran out with his Krib ended up with an astonishing 35 in it. A great score, but he'd need 5 sixes to do any better in his final two Kribs.

Now Joe who was on Adam's tail surged ahead as Martin fell behind. As we entered the final round my slow-and-steady series of third or fourth places needed a fillip to put me back in contention and three second places got me within touching distance of Joe. But then he won the final Krib as we all imploded and took a convincing win.

Joe 26
Adam 20
Martin/Sam 19 each

A strange night of feisty games that surprisingly plodded a little and silly games that fared a lot better. The biggest fist-clench of the night was probably the news from Westminster. But as always, a total pleasure. Hope to see you Thursday!