Reboth

Adam H was our host last night, and as Martin, Joe and I stepped out of the autumnal air we found deep discussions afoot between the host, Steve, Katy and Ian. I didn't quite pick up everything but I think gigs were mentioned, and food, possibly. It was a good five minutes before Joe broke out Champions, causing Martin to mention again how disgusted he still was with those who voted for Sylvia Plath over Kermit as someone who'd keep their Christmas decorations up all year. We explained again that it was her distracted air of accidental neglect, rather than a desire to relentlessly celebrate, but he wasn't having it. Meantime new arguments were breaking out, about whether Ralph Wiggum or Russell Crowe would know all the reality TV stars. 

Ian was champion of champions, correctly predicting the results to all but one of the match-ups. Impressive!

Ian 29
Adam 25
Katy 24
Martin 22
Joe 20
Sam 18
Steve 14

Then we broke into two groups, both of them playing Rebirth, Knizia's new tile-layer than both Ian and I backed without realising the other had. How fortunate though, that we could now have Advanced Rebirthians in the front room playing the Ireland side of the board...

Whilst in the kitchen I talked Katy, Steve and Adam through the less taxing Scotland version. As everyone is now well aware, you have a hand of a single tile, and place it on your turn to score points off farms (food or energy) or settlements. But you can also get extra points for castles (most tiles adjacent) and missions (get a mission by placing next to a cathedral). Steve instantly forgot you can place farms on empty spaces, but recovered from his mid-game surprise to catch us up: and at one stage it was as tight as can be, with all of us poised on 55 points. 

But things changed in the endgame, when Katy realised she had neglected castles and we all had incomplete missions. I forgot to make a note of the scores, but I won and I think Adam was second, then Steve and Katy. The others were still making noises of rumination over the emerald isle, so we began playing Looot, the take-and-make game where the making is puzzly but the taking is spicy.

Katy liked having vikings but became slightly disconcerted by the plundering, where we get in each other's way on the shared board before hauling our booty home again. Adam seemed to be collecting so many longships it seemed impossible to do them. We proliferated. 

Meantime Ireland had been successfully reborn - by Ian. It was a close run thing though:

Ian 206
Martin 201
Joe 200

They all announced how crazy it was. "I want to try Scotland again now" said Martin, like a man who'd been complaining about stubbing his toe and then had someone hit it with a hammer. Seeing we were knee-deep in sheep and axes, they began playing Tower Up. 

In Looot, there was drama on the final round as Steve snaffled up the gold Katy needed to complete two of her longships. It's a mildly dickish game with two, but with four the vindictive side of the vikings really comes out. What's more, Steve's move was enough for Katy's prediction that he would win 'despite not knowing what he was doing' to come true. I'm not sure what happened to Adam, whom I had expected to beat us. All of us had incomplete longships, but Katy had four of the buggers. 

Steve 100
Sam 99
Adam 88
Katy 51

Tower Up ended around the same time, as Joe triumphantly pranced around the room with his hands in the air. Again, it was super-tight:

Joe 55

Martin 54

Ian 45

And that was that! With no So Clover under the roof and Adam needing a reasonably early night, we were done.