Rebel without a corset

With Winter tapping on Autumn's shoulder, I walked as briskly as I could manage to Sam's kitchen. There I found Joe already seated,  putting away a game called Panda Royale. As Adam T, Adam H and Ian arrived, it never left the table top, hovering within easy reach. And so, when we had all settled down with drinks in front of us, it was chosen for its second time around tonight. 

It's a cleverly designed dice-rolling/drafting game where we all start with a  lowly yellow 6D die and, round by round, we pick up more coloured dice. Each colour has bonus. Purple dice instantly double their score, blue dice double only if you have a glittery blue dice too. Clear dice can be swapped for another player's die (usually blue glittery ones).

I chose red dice as my path to victory. These scored Value of dice x number of dice. There's a chance win big but, also, the lower half of the numbers all count as negative which is a risk. And so it was that once I rolled all minus points and saw my score turn sharply backwards. 

Adam H specialised in blues and the thieving clear dice. Sam did so too, but he usually got his clear dice from Adam when his glittery blue dice were stolen.

The rules were sparse so we devised our own method of deciding who was starting player, which we promptly forgot. 

In the end, Ian’s horde of Purples and Adam T's collection of blues got them a joint win. Was there a tie-breaker, we wondered. Maybe the roll of one last die? But then Sam said that there wasn't one. We were a little disappointed that the game designers had suddenly abandoned the dice-rolling mechanism at such an important juncture. 

Ian 451

Adam T 451

Adam H 446

Sam 376

Joe 314

Andrew 303

And the scores of the first game, before I arrived, were equally close.

Joe 481

Sam 480

Adam H, at this point, told us about a beer left at his house last week. Some sort of rose raspberry concoction. We assumed it was one of Martin's. Adam brought it back and offered it to anyone who was interested. It was put in Sam's fridge where, I believe, it is still there as I write.

Next up we chose Rebel Princess, a feminist trick-taking card game which is hard to find in the UK because (a) of its Spanish origins and (b) the difficulty of searching for it without returning results about Star Wars. 

Our own feminist trick-taker, Katy, was expected later but it played six and everyone seemed intrigued so we didn't wait. After all, Adam T insisted it would only take two minutes to explain. “... five minutes.” he corrected himself after a glance at the rules. 

It's feminist in the sense that every player has a power they can use and these are denoted by princesses from literature and maybe history. To make things more interesting, each round has an additional rule such as: split your hand in half, play the first half then pass the other half to the right and continue playing with your new cards.

Winning cards with suitors (one point per cards) or the frog card (5 points) was bad. The powers added a new dimension to the game. Ian demanded that Adam H begin his hand with a random card. Adam H did so but, before he revealed it, he took a chance and played his own power and reversed the card values such that low cards would win (which would be bad).

Had his clever plan worked? He revealed his card. A two. Disaster! He won the hand on his way to a less than stellar performance, saved from last place only by Adam T's explainers curse. 

Andrew 7

Sam 13

Ian 15

Joe 20

Adam H 23

Adam T 24

Then Katy arrived, and the seven of us split into two groups. Ian and the two Adams played Rebirth, the Ireland map. Ian went through the rules for the two ingenues. I didn't pay much mind to the game, except when Joe balanced a shell from a pistachio nut on one of the meeples. Such fun.

It ended (after I'd left for the night)

Adam H 264

Adam T 233

Ian 212

Me, Joe, Sam and Katy played Fishing. Another trick-taking card game with (aptly enough) hidden depths. The basic premise couldn't be simpler. Win tricks and each card, at the end of the round, scores one point.

But the cards you win are recycled back into your hand. Therefore, if you do badly in one round, you'll only have a few cards. In this case, you can draw up to the required hand size from a stack of cards that are more powerful than those cards you start with, and they get more overpowered as the game goes on.

The game raises an interesting dilemma. Do you deliberately do badly in one of the eight rounds in order to pick up some OP cards from the deck and win the next round or two? It's such a clever mechanic. 

Katy played particularly aggressively and, perhaps swayed by our recent brush with feminism, the rest of us derided her toxic masculinity. 

I was stung in the final round, picking up -6 in special cards allowing Katy to scrape a win. She'd been twenty points ahead mid-game and just about hung on while we whittled her lead away. 

Katy 84

Andrew 82

Sam 78

Joe 78

I dashed out with almost indecent haste and then the trio I left behind played Misfits. 

Katy won

And then they played So Clover. I was sent a photo but no score. But let's be honest,  you can't put a value on fun.

Thanks all. See you next week.