The Gang's All Here

 After last week’s happy coincidence of everyone congregating at Joe’s door before we went in, it was back to normal as I, a few minutes late, weaved past the bikes on the path to the front door. I was the penultimate gamer to arrive and, while we waited for Laura and established that Adam wasn’t going to attend (by calling him, which seemed strangely old-fashioned), we (me, Joe, Sam, Martin and Ian) began with a game of The Gang.

It’s a co-op version of poker where everyone bids on how well they’ll do. This is tricky as those who don’t play much Poker have trouble gauging how good their hand is and those who do play Poker keep playing as if it’s Poker and bidding according to what your hand might be if the right card comes up.

In one round, I bid high in a show of confidence...

Joe, on the other hand...

Confusing. We played four times, with Laura coming in after the first time, and failed three rounds.

After this, the six of us split into two.  Joe, Martin and Laura went to Ireland for a game of Rebirth while Sam, Ian and myself played Fellowship of the Ring, the co-op card game set in Tolkien's imagined kingdom. 

With just three players,  we often found that our choice of how to approach each round was limited. At the start of a round, each player picks up a character with a certain goal. But often, three of those characters are mandatory thus we were mostly robbed of the chance to vary our tactics. 

And they needed varying. We didn't do so well, struggling past rounds two and three before eventually beating round four and satisfying ourselves that we had, at least, equaled the score of the last GNN group who played it. 

In Rebirth, it sounded like Ian and Martin were in a tussle for the lead. “I can’t shake Ian,” declared Martin as Ian continued to nip at his heels on the scoretrack.

Martin 239

Ian 234

Kaura 194

At the point we reshuffled our seats. Laura made moves to go home but was persuaded to stay for one more game. Martin, Laura and Sam played Tower Up while Ian, Joe and me played Sunshine Lane. Lots of buildings on this kitchen table. Martin mentioned he was writing a review of Tower Up. Considering how late this blog is, I hope he wasn’t relying on my photos at all.

In Sunrise Lane, Ian and I battled over highest buildings in the blue quarters and most coverage in the red while Joe’s longest set of buildings wasn’t enough to keep up with us as we celebrated our joint victory, inseparable even after the tie-breaker.

Andrew 104

Ian 104

Joe 98

Tower Up ended…

Martin 56

Ian 52

Laura 41

And then Laura and I departed. The remaining four were setting up the next game, Bomb Busters, as I was pulling on my coat. 

I was later informed that they had two successes.

Before the ended with So Clover twice, scoring 21 and 21.

Thanks all. Another splendid evening.