Steve and Anja were our hosts last night, with Louie sadly unwell enough to join but Lennon pitching in to open proceedings with a nine-player crack at Flip 7. Weirdly, this was suggested by Martin, even though he has regularly disdained the game. As is our established preference we took out the Freeze cards, although in hindsight they might have helped Ian and Lennon, who both imploded with incredible regularity. In fact I'm not sure Ian ever got past three cards. Adam did though. He almost needed an occasional table for his cards at one stage.
Adam 202
Anja 152
Sam 146
Steve and Martin 89 each
Katy 66
Joe 54
Ian and Lennon - DNS
We split into two groups. Joe joining the Dalton-Dales for a gambol around the pyramid in Camel Up...
...whilst Martin explained the rules of Skull Queen to Adam and Katy (Ian and I had played before).
Both games took quite a while, even though we only played four rounds of Skull Queen as opposed to the one-round-per-player. The game is somewhat like contract whist in that you're predicting trick wins, but you're predicting for each suit rather than overall, and incorrect predictions can end up giving you zero points if your prediction pirates plunge off the plank.
Martin dicked Katy over on her very first trick, rationalising that it was 'the best way to learn'. Katy frowned. To my left Joe was enjoying the racing/betting experience of camels who are capable of flea-like springing onto each other's backs, apparently having never played before. We were sure it did the rounds on GNN about ten years ago, but maybe Joe was playing Brass or Agricola.
There was no Explainer's Curse for Steve as he ungulated his way to a convincing victory:
Steve 46
Anja 29
Joe 26
Lennon 22
And we wrapped up around the same time:
Sam 96
Adam 81
Martin 76
Katy 75
Ian 69
The double-movement cards (5 pushes the loser down twice, 8 up twice) played a significant role in prompting pirates into the pointless sea. Now there was some chat and bedtime duties so the remainder of us played The Gang.
We made a poor start, although it was a close-run thing with first Jacks and 10s and then sixes and eights (I think?) the wrong way around. Down 0-2 to the incoming cops things looked bleak. But we rallied, aided by a Muscle card, and pulled off a slightly curious win: in the final round all but Joe had their strongest hand in the table cards. This drama didn't quite captivate Steve though, who chose reading his book over being dealt in for the finale. Steve! It's games night!
Everyone bar Lennon was back at the table now and we split into two fours, with Joe leading Anja, Martin and Adam in a game of TRND, which unfortunately I know nothing about, and the rest of us playing a hugely dickish session of Misfits.
In game one, Ian defied gravity, physics, expectations and the fabric of reality as he pulled off three or four insane moves, earning him the title Prince of Darkness. Both he and Steve started new towers with horrible foundation blocks that we managed to build upon regardless.
Ian took the win, but as TRND was ongoing we began again. There were rules arguments as Katy attempted to executive-decision Ian's opening gambit - upside-down cloud - back to him. There was a group decision that the cloud rolling didn't equate it falling. Then it fell anyway.
There was a lot of shenanigans and complaints that the TRND players kept 'using the table' but Steve overcame all obstacles to claim the win: this 'despite Katy' my notes say. TRND finished with Martin the victor; not sure the word 'convincing' does the margin justice:
Martin 85
Adam 36
Anja 9
Joe 4
Joe's final hand was one card away from a huge points haul: close, but no red chair. We did briefly flirt with the idea of one last game, but that crushing disappointment for the Berge turned out to be the night's last act. We trundled out into the night, sated. See you in a couple of weeks!
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