And all that jazz

 Late as usual, I rocked up at Sam's place at 7.45. Most of tonight's attendees were perusing thr games collection while I got my coat off. Martin asked me if I liked the sound of a tile laying game about Jazz. An easy sell. I replied in the affirmative and booked my place on today's big thinky game, Bebop.

There were eight of us tonight. Sam, Martin, Katy, Pete, Ian, Andy M and myself. Katy expressed concern that she may have to reign in her usual aggressive style in the face of two relative newcomers but when she found out she was playing a game against three old familiars, she was happy that she could be a dick again.

I was joined by Martin, Pete and former semi regular Andy M, who I hadn't seen in years but in finest Games Night tradition, we just nodded and said hello. 

The other game,  chosen by Sam, Katy and Ian with Adam H in mind, who was on his way. He phoned once he was at the door, apparently unable to be heard by us in the kitchen. Once at the table, he got a rules explanation from Sam while Pete guided us through Bebop.

Any idea that this may be about Jazz was quickly quashed - it’s about a Jazz Festival and the idea of the game is to put our “fans” (the dice) next to the stage hosting their favourite instrument (drums, piano or trumper). First you put your seat down and on top of that, you put a die. The idea is to chain colours together in such a way that you have the majority of one instrument on your seats.

The game had a pretty simple mechanic, either place a seat or a fan and five of the seats had special abilities. But the strategy seemed to elude us. “What do I want?” cried Martin midway through the game. Even Pete, who’d only played once before - against himself - couldn’t offer any pointers.

Meanwhile, in Instanbul, Sam worked early on his wagon while Ian got the first jewel. There had been talk at the start of the game about Katy breaking the game last time she played.  I remember hearing about this but tonight she stayed firmly in the middle of the pack. Right up until the end. 

Ian 5

Adam 4 plus cash

Katy 4

Sam 4

After Istanbul they set up a game of misfits. Our jazz fest was showing no sign of ending. 

Whatever plan Katy had once had about being a dick seemed to have dissipated by now as she began with a disc placed flat on the table. Sam, far less amicable, put a cylinder on top of the disk, lying on it's side. 

After that, it was your usual recreation of 1970s public sculpture with exhortation to us not to bang the table. Not much chance of that, as we had entered the thinky standing up period of the game. 

Adam won Misfits 

After this, they played Gold Fever. Adam seemed to play the first part of the game while studying the rule book. They played twice, with wins for Katy and Adam. At the end of the game, Sam seemed to find a number of stones in the lining of his bag. 

Finally our Jazz Festival came to a close. We had, by now, long since passed the playing time suggested on the box. We were heading towards the final scoring with still not any solid idea about how well our strategies do. 

Andy M 98

Martin 97

Pete 87

Ander 71

Andy said he was happy with his win since he liked jazz. I don’t know what to make of Bebop! It was quite long and I never really got a grip of any possible tactics. I was tired, it was approaching 10 by now and I decided to bail out early.

Without me, the evening tore through more games@  Tower Up, Wavelength and two offerings of So Clover.

Some beautiful clues in there. Vampire/Pigeon for Bat is perhaps my favourite. Also, Sam played Agent Avenue four times, losing to Martin 2-1 and then playing against Pete later on. What a night.