My mud is dry

Unfortunately Steve's plans to host came a cropper thanks to a migraine - hope you're ok today Steve - and after a flurry of emailing, we relocated to my (Sam's) house. Adam T was first to arrive, just in time to witness an argument about putting shoes away. "Am I... early?" he said, backing toward the door. If our arguments about screen time ever clash with games night, nobody will ever look at me the same way again. 

Adam had brought Terracotta Army, his 40th birthday present from us. I was intrigued to try it, but the game length of two hours had others - not unreasonably - havering. Adam H and Ian had materialised out of the fog, and Martin and Gareth shortly after. There was an unusual amount of chat over what games we should play, but when Laura arrived we settled into a four for Terracotta Army - Adam T, Martin, Laura and I - whilst Ian, Adam H and Gareth played Azul. 

Azul needs no introduction - well, except to Gareth, who'd not played before - but Terracotta Army does, and it's not a simple one. Adam took a very patient half an hour to lay everything out before us, surfing a philosophical wave over Martin's exclamations and Laura at one point announcing "That's it. No more rules." Hats off to him. At 8.30, we dived in and started getting our hands muddy: to build the terracotta army - as we were - you need clay, or mud as Laura preferred to call it. But at the end of each round your clay dries out, so you need to strike while the oven is hot. 

This rotating wheel is the nub of it: on a turn, you place one of your tiny workers (or big dudes, if you've upgraded like Martin did) on one segment of the wheel and take the three actions it offers, from inside to out. Gather wet clay (-wet as an adjective), wet clay that's dried out (-wet as a verb), make terracotta warriors, make specialist warriors, or get the battle/mud-based insights of experts who'll help you both now and every time you activate them before the end of the game. 

And here is where the battle itself plays out - not of bloodshed, but of spatial area control. Over five rounds five different criteria are scored, for example one quadrant, or one type of warrior (there are four) as well as the row and column the inspectors (those red dudes in the corner) are currently inspecting. The inspectors move at the end of the round, but quite possibly during it as well, so a well-placed warrior can suddenly be worth jack-shit if the inspectors don't witness their resplendent stylings. Laura - yellow - was first in there, building an archer. But it swiftly built up.    

You'll notice a distinct lack of mauve. For whatever reason - let's not delve too deeply - I didn't build at all in the first round, leaving me with a 20 point deficit early on I was never to recover from. Laura even asked me where my score marker was, and I was forced to point out it wasn't on the board yet. The shame!

Meanwhile, in the glass world

As well as the round-by-round scoring, the four warrior groups will also score at the end of the game for each grouping (two or more) multiplied by the number of players in it, with bonuses for having majorities. You can force tied groups into your control by having a specialist facing your warrior (other specialists do other things, like score points for the warriors around them, or score points for their row/column, or even just take up a lot of room, which is what the horses do). 

I think we were on round two when Katy arrived and Azul crossed the finish line. By golly, it was a close thing:

Adam H 56
Ian 54
Gareth 50

They debated what to play next before settling on First Rat, the rodent space race game of constructing unlikely rockets from piles of shite. I tried to chip in with the rules explanation, particularly when I heard the classic "What is cheese for?" which could be a generic kitchen query, or a philosophical poser. Or in this case, neither. 

Meantime familiarity was speeding things up on the Terracotta Army board - for the others, anyway. I discovered that the more I understood, the slower I went, and I had to take two do-overs after engineering myself into positions I couldn't actually afford, because I'd spent my money getting there. "Sam!" Martin harrumphed. But look at this thing!

Laura was occasionally stumped too, at one point lamenting that she needed to wet her mud. Her early lead had evaporated now, and Adam and Martin were jostling about alongside her. At the other end of the table, First Rat was approaching an end. 

I think I'm right in saying this was a debut win for Gareth, was it? Even if not, it was an impressive showing, especially against Ian, who I believe has won every time he's played this game?

Gareth 92
Ian 65
Adam H 63
Katy 42

Katy said she didn't know what the hell was going on. I was relieved not to be the only one in this state of mind, as we polished off the final round whilst the others shucked on their coats and headed for the hills. Adam, who was impressively unruffled throughout, felt confident of the win. He was correct! But it was a close-run thing...

The end-game scoring takes a wee while, and with the most warriors in the biggest group, I was hopeful of just maybe catching the peloton up. I should have known better...

Adam 165

Martin 160

Laura 145

Sam 135

Martin felt that the scores had a wide margin for error, considering the various ways the game generated them, but Adam demurred. I was still cursing my lack of action in the first round as we packed away, and then convinced Adam to stay by thrusting flapjacks upon him. We had a mini-panic over what the four of us might play before our time ran out, and eventually settled on Spicy. 

I took no photos - it's hard to pause in this game - but got away with a number of challenges, most of them on Martin, by lucking out - questioning the suit when the number was correct, and vice versa. And in doing so, I had a microcosm of revenge for my earlier humbling:

Sam 34

Martin and Laura 24

Adam 6

And that was that!