Overstocked and Underllama-ed

This week was Laura's turn to host, but perhaps because of the heat (and Joe's being in France) we were down to five when the allotted hour arrived - as well as Laura, there were Ian, Adam H, Martin and myself (Sam). Mostly the introductory talk was about Laura and Lucy's fridge, being as it was enormous and semi-sentient, with a screen on it that could play music and order shopping. We all liked the fridge. 

But there were games to be played too, and with Katy coming later we kicked things off with Martin's new card game of 1980's toy crazes, Overstocked. There are super-simple rules here, but tricky decisions: over six rounds everyone plays one of six cards from their hand before revealing simultaneously, and they're then resolved in number order. On your turn you have a choice - add the card to your tableau, which will (hopefully) get you points, or add it to a shared tableau, which defines how much: when all cards have been played, you multiple your largest group of x on your tableau by the largest matching group in the central one.

The catch - of course there's a catch - is that the largest group on that shared tableau at game-end scores minus points, having blown it's popularity out on a wave of oversaturation. So Overstocked contains a wide seam of dickery as everyone tries to devalue each other's wares, a fact that made me encourage everyone to screw over Martin's teddies. 

Sadly, they didn't listen. 

Martin 26
Laura 25
Sam 12
Ian 10
Adam H -10

Then we had a quick blast through Cross Clues whilst Laura generously plied me with spaghetti bolognese. Fortunately I had a combo (Firefighter/Salad) which I had no idea what to do with, so I made the most of our ten minutes by eating. There were some tricky words out there, but I'm glad to say it wasn't a shocking repeat of mine Joe and Katy's four out of 25. 

I canvassed for Powerships next, hoping to break my staccato run of last-place finishes, and everyone was amenable. We went through the standard bewilderment over assembling the board, then Martin explained the rules to Laura, and we were away. 

Ian and Martin sped off early with Laura and I tailing at a little distance. Would my plan to take all the marker planets wide prove a foolish one? At the moment, it was Adam lagging at the back, and seemed to be shaping up a two horse race between Hickman and Griffiths. While Adam was first to crash, around the second marker the rest of us sped, although I - needing to roll a 2 or a 3 - rolled a 1 and my plans turned to cosmic sand: I crashed as well, and watched Adam speed by me. 

Martin made a miscalculation over the final planet and shot past it, allowing Ian in for the win. Martin recovered for second and Adam swept in third. It only remained for Laura to nab 4th with me still trying to get out of second gear on the other side of the solar system. 

Then disaster! She missed the planet (above, Laura pink) and had to turn a wide circle in mitigation. Sensing an opportunity, I (blue, above, in the distance) swept home and celebrated my fourth place like I'd just destroyed the Death Star. 

1 Ian

2 Martin

3 Adam

4 Sam

5 Laura

Katy had arrived in time to see the dramatic finale play out, and now - whilst Laura and I aired our misgivings about the idea - she joined Martin and Ian in pushing for Wandering Towers. 

In fairness, even though it was chaotic and frustrating in equal measure, it was also hilarious. I think it took us about an hour of complaining, agonising, cursing and wondering in equal measure. I was first to get a wizard in the Raven Tower, but after that spent a lot of time with visible wizards miles away from reaching it. Martin forgot where his wizards were, and Katy made the mistake of having a conversation with Lucy and returning to the table to ask where her wizards had gone. How we laughed at the idea of charity. Ian triggered the finale whilst I was away in the loo and by the time I returned I had no more turns, and Adam had already won and it was a contest for second. "I just need to roll an eight!" Martin said hopefully.

1 Adam

2 Ian

3 Everyone else, although Katy wanted it noted she had four full potions and was therefore more 3rd.

We split into two groups of three, with Adam and I introducing Katy to Llamaland (without objectives) and Laura, Martin and Ian trying their hands at High Score. 

Katy loved the llamas, especially as we weren't eating them. I loved tesselating. Adam loved winning. Although I set the pace llama-wise, Adam's cunning guile somewhat incongruously suited llama farming and even the arrival of Chai, who walked across the board, couldn't disrupt his chain of thought. 

Adam shrugged off the interruption, and I snagged another llama. Whilst Katy was concerned at my ungulate overwhelm, I ran out of options on the last two turns just as Adam's strategizing came to fruition:

Adam 66

Sam 53

Katy 49 

Whilst Ian had ousted Martin and Laura at High Score (15-13-12) and Martin had his revenge in a three-player rematch of Overstocked: 

Martin 54

Ian 20

Laura 10

Then Adam and Ian left, bound for Easton, and the four of us settled on Laura's Ebay find of Marrakech to finish. Martin was keen on the dickish version, but this was vetoed. Marrakech has plenty of inadvertent (and occasionally vertent) dickery anyway. Omens looked good for Laura as while the three of us squabbled over territory, she built an enormous, sprawling carpet across a third of the board. It was so big that we kept running away from it until there was no option but to embrace the peril. However despite a couple of hauls, we got away with relatively little taxation and struck back, carpet-wise.

Martin and Katy were soon cash-poor and complained about being oppressed. Laura and I agreed oppression was fun from our perspective. However, thanks to some spawny rolling it was me taking the honours at the end of the day!

Sam 55

Laura 50

Katy 39

Martin 19

Another GNNight concluded, then, with much fun had in the July heat. Until next week!