At eight o'clock I stumbled through Sam's front door, wondering what gaming delights I was missing. Once in the kitchen, however, I found four of my friends sitting around chatting. Had I got the wrong evening? There was a board game on the table, but it was still firmly in its box.
As I was the last one expected for tonight we (Sam, Martin, Laura, Joe and myself) chose our first game: Mada. An intriguing push your luck game in which you play cards from your three-card hand but you have to play a higher or equal card to the one you previously played. If you can't then you're bust. When the first person goes bust then the round ends and everyone else scores according to the card they had last played.
The rules are pretty easy to remember even though I forgot one of them seconds after I’d explained to Joe why it was easy to remember: “You can’t hold a scorpion in your hand,” was my useful memory aid which lasted all of three seconds after which I drew a scorpion from the deck and put it in my hand.
Laura did amazing work when pushing her luck. Once she had a 13 and had to draw from the deck: she drew another 13 and stayed in the game. And on another occasion, in a similar situation, she drew a lemur and was therefore able to swap her cards with another player. However, relying on such astonishing feats of fortune isn’t a winning strategy.
Andrew 18
Joe 18
Martin 15
Sam 14
Laura 5
It was nice enough, and we entertained/horrified ourselves at the thought of playing it all evening. “It would be a madathon,” quipped Martin.
Next, because there were five of us and none of us were Katy, we chose Ethnos. Although maybe Katy doesn’t hate it as much as we like to pretend. Midway through repopulating Slovenia or Slovakia Laura got a call from a child who didn’t seem impressed by Ethnos and wanted her to come home now.
But she couldn’t, not with a hand full of cards since she often had to choose a card from the top of the deck. So did Joe who grumbled about “topdecking.” He grumbled with good reason when, in round two, the second and third dragons came out consecutively (despite his extensive shuffling between rounds to hopefully avoid that predicament) and ruined his eight-card move.
Martin 108
Andrew 85
Sam 83
Joe 65
Laura 48
After this, Laura went home and the four of us played Joraku, a Japan-themed territorial control game where the number of scoring regions decreases during the game and the highest scoring region (number 6) in round one is worthless for the rest of the game while the opposite happens to region number 1, which is Kyoto: the eventual target for all our Daimyos and Samurais.
It was interesting. After round one, only two points separated the four of us, leading Martin to muse that “it’s almost as if nothing we do makes a difference.” Then in round two, I pushed myself into first, a dizzying five whole points ahead of Sam, only for us to concertina together again in round three.
Sam 62
Joe 61
Andrew 59
Martin 57
Despite his remarkable revival, going from last to second, I’m not sure if Joe liked it. It was a curious game and there was a sense of running out of things to do by the end.
Now it was my turn to leave and the remaining three played So Clover. They played twice, and got about 11 both times. In the photo, Sam points out Joe’s clue of Bunkbeds for Bedroom/Fry because “fry” is a young fish. Apparently.
Anyway, thanks all. I’m a no show next week but hope to see you all soon!
Fun to play Ethnos again, if only for the joy of the exploding plastic pieces
ReplyDeletethough there were other joys too, of course
DeleteJoraku is a funny one. I like its simplicity and relative brevity. But there is quite a mechanical/mathsy feel to it as well; it doesn't tell a story in the way Brian Boru does. If you're adding a board and area control to trick-taking, I feel like you want a bit more from it than slightly-protracted turns.
ReplyDelete