I walked into Joe’s place on a relatively mild day between peaks of British summer and found myself walking into a game of Cross Clues with Joe, Sam, Katy, Adam T, Ian and Adam H. Before long it became clear that everyone were on very different frequencies when it came to giving clues. One misunderstanding followed another. “Club” for “weird/foot” was missed and my one contribution was also hopelessly wide of the mark as I thought “Solstice” would go with “mean/night” since mean can also mean “average.” Katy tried to dissuade us that the Solstice wasn’t the average night but too late.
We didn’t even count up the score, that’s how badly we did.
With Martin on his way, we decided to give Cross Clues another go. This time we did better but still not amazing. Hats off to Adam T for his clue “diarrhoea” for “brown/lightning.” Classy. His clue “bite” for “angry/horse” sparked off a discussion about what angry horses are best known for: biting or kicking. But that’s all horse feathers. We did well enough to count up the score this time.
22 out of 25
With Martin still en route, we broke out Flip 7 and took out the freeze cards. In fact, it was quite dick-move-free. Whenever someone got a “Flip Three” card, they almost always used it on themselves. And, in fact, it almost always worked. Especially if you were Ian who seemed to be blessed with a surfeit of bonus point cards.
Katy only scored in four rounds but on three of them, she clocked up 37 points. She also found herself concerned when Adam H shuffled the deck of cards just as she was about to draw another card. Convinced that the deck was now stacked against her, she asked the dealer (Adam T) to cut the deck before handing her a card. He did so. She went bust all the same.
Adam H managed to flip seven cards in one round and he’d run Ian a close second throughout until the last round. Ian decided to stick first and Adam just pushed his luck long enough for him to squeak a close win.
Adam H 209
Ian 203
Katy 144
Joe 128
Adam T 105
Andrew 95
Sam 0
By now Martin was here and we split into two groups at two separate tables. Sam, Martin, Adam T and Ian set off for the Shires in The Fellowship Of The Ring. I think I heard mention of starting on Chapter 10. Impressive but I've no idea how far through the game that is.
Katy, Adam H, Joe and myself indulged in the luxury of Ra - Pharaoh edition, with its chunky tiles and metal money. Katy got a brief overview of the rules, just to refresh her memory and then we began.
Round one saw a lot of disasters and floods pulled from the bag. Adam and Katy were the last two players and they let tiles fill up and clear themselves out twice, due to the grim nature of what was on offer.
Round two ended in a similar fashion, with Katy the last active player insisting that it was more fun to play with yourself.
By round three, the Nile had pretty much dried up and I was regretting buying quite so many pharaohs. Also, I had very few buildings unlike Adam who had so many that Joe had to explain about stacking the same buildings on top of each other, you know, like they did in Ancient Egypt.
At the end, Katy was delighted by her score and I was pleasantly surprised by mine. Joe said he usually did better than his and Adam admitted that he didn't really like Ra.
Katy 43
Andrew 41
Joe 33
Adam H 32
And so, I gathered up my belongings and set off at a sensibly early hour, leaving the rest of the evening in safe gaming hands.
Over to you, Sam.
* * *
In Tolkien-world things started out well, as I recall - not that I recall that much now. But I believe we cleared chapter 10 and Adam T read out the narrative intro for the next chapter. I don't remember that either, but it was either 11 or 12 where we ran into trouble, as it's a 'long' one: meaning there are multiple characters to complete and two of them were rather tricky: Boromir needed to win the last trick but couldn't be trusted with the ring, and someone else needed something crazy like a card of each rank. We - or Adam - pulled the latter off, but went wrong somewhere else and needed the Vest of Mithril or something to save us. But then we went wrong again anyway. Fellowships are work.
After Andrew left Martin tempted Adam T and and Katy into a game of Greed. I don't know what the mechanics are, but the name does a pretty good job on the theme.
...whilst Ian, Adam H and I showed Joe the ropes - ho ho - to Monkey Palace. For a reason that I missed, the rules weren't in the box and so we did a little hazarding around the finer points. The basic ones are easy: build a monkey palace, build your engine, get bananas. The result on the table was as impressive as ever.
Not sure if our slightly fudged rules favoured me, but I picked up a win as debutant Joe found himself up against three experienced simians.
Sam 42
Adam 38
Ian 36
Joe 29
I don't know what happened in Greed, other than Martin was greediest:
Martin 160
Adam and Katy 155 each
Katy and the Adams now left for home, leaving just four of us to clover out the evening, which we attempted twice. Our first effort was a very solid 22/24, with only my clover muddying the waters.
We went again, which as everyone knows is always a terrible mistake. And so it proved here, with a shabby 18/24 thanks to a couple of dodgy red herrings and maybe some heat/game fatigue creeping in. Did like (Joe's?) essential for friend/oil though.
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