Losing ones marbles

Joe, Martin and I rolled up to Steve and Anja's last night at the allotted hour of 8pm and whilst we waited for our final member Pete, I took the liberty of setting up Whirly Derby, which I'd brought with Louie in mind - but also myself, as I find coloured marbles spinning in ever-decreasing circles somewhat hypnotic. 

Pete arrived and without further ado we began racing. The rules are simple: each player has a 'paddock' of five marbles and over eight races you secretly choose how many to enter. Any raced marbles are lost - maybe they use the opportunity to escape captivity - but twice a game you can re-up and refill your paddock again. The basic game offers points prizes for first, second and third, but we played the advanced where some prizes combine (for example. the player with the most 1pt cards scores 15pts). 

There's some fuzzy edge cases that the brief rules don't cover, so we house-ruled them. The 'Slowness' bonus of the last marble to finish returning to its owner was a good rule, almost raising more drama than the winners did. But the game - or my copy - we found somewhat flawed as both our 8 races and several experiments we did after proved that Martin's green marbles were marginally smaller, and Joe and Louie's black and orange marbles seemed destined to finish last. Steve's blues were also quite innocuous.

Martin 54

Sam 29

Pete 15

Joe 11

Louie 6

Steve 5

Anja returned from packing Lennon off to bed just as we packed up, and split into two groups, Joe talking our hosts through the delights of Into the Blue as Martin explained Tower Up to Pete. 

Pete took to the game rather well. I think I got my best score ever as I decided to forego my usual flippant moves for a marginally more considered approach. This kept me competitive and elicited the odd satisfying noise from a chagrined Martin. But it wasn't enough to stop Pete, who nabbed first place on two objectives and took the laurels. 

Pete 56

Sam 54

Martin 48

We took a stroll to the impressive front room, where the contrast between the decor (floridly resplendent) and the activity (a Knizia dice-chucker) made for an enticing spectacle. Molly felt there was room for a final touch, however, and she sat on the activity to prove it. 

Steve took this one, pipping Anja by the narrowest of margins.

Steve 20

Anja 19

Louie 17

Joe 13

Louie now made his way to bed too, leaving six of us. We plumped for For Sale, which - I seem to say this a lot - was more fun than my photo makes it look. 

We actually played twice. In the first game Joe ran out of money and ended up with two very high property cards and three rather low ones. In the second he changed strategy but suffered a similar fate. Steve forgot that money was also points in the second game, and a recount boosted him into runner-up position. I managed to win both; I'm still not sure how. 

It was getting late-ish now so we pulled out those green plastic clovers and set about it. Oddly the clue 'marble' came up here, on Anja's clover, and we debated how likely a marble cup might be, although this gave way to Martin saying 'a jar of marbles' several times. Martin's 'Ramadan' for moon/fast was a highlight, and we successfully matched marble with dream/hearth. Despite some stumbles over Steve's clue of Argos (our mythology was a bit foggy) this was a broad success, racking up four sixes and two fours for 32/36.

And that was that for another Tuesday. I'm not around next week, have fun!

49 auctions

 Tuesday games night began with message fro Sam containing a photo of a pile a Heck Meck tiles with the comment “Joe just beat me 15-0”

By the time I'd arrived, though the attendance had swelled to six of us. Joe and Sam were joined by Martin, Pete, Katy and myself.

Katy joined last and tried to remember if she'd met Pete before and she wondered whether or not to turn down the c*nt level. She discussed this out loud such that, whatever level she finally chose, Pete was prewarned about what to expect. 

Although, as it transpired, there were to be few opportunities for evil tonight, as the games tended towards the more party end of the scale. We began with Invaluable, an auction game in which players bid on cards of two colours and add it to their tableau to try and make continuous runs of the same colour for points. All cards were dealt out, and each one would be put up for auction by the end of the game.

“49 auctions?” asked Joe, incredulously. And he kept a rough count of how many auctions were remaining. “Only 25 auctions left,” he cheerily pointed out, mid game.

Martin and Katy were the last players who bought anything, with Martin bidding 3 every time, trying to push up the price. We began with only 12 tokens, so I wonder if we were too timid. The money from winning bids would go to the player auctioning the card and if the auctioneer bought their own card ("eating your own shit," we soon dubbed it) then the money would leave the game entirely.

In the final reckoning, my row of seven yellows scored me a bumper crop and I ended up winning.

Andrew 48

Sam 46

Katy 46

Martin 41

Paul 37

Joe 35

Interesting game, but that’s quite a slim game mechanic to stretch across 49 auctions.

Since there were six of us sitting around a circular table, it seemed to lend itself to a couple of team games. First was Team Trio, the game where you have to collect three of a kind by choosing from other peoples’ hands, asking “play your lowest card”. We split into teams of two, and every time someone completed a three-of-a-kind, the other two pairs were allowed to exchange cards, and Katy and I demonstrated some top level psychic connection as we kept swapping cards of the same value.

Martin & Joe 2

Katy & Andrew 1

Sam & Pete 0

We stayed sitting where we were for another team game: Team Play. Joe experience a little bit of a Mendela Effect when he seemed convinced that the cards in this game went up to 9, whereas they only reach 8. I was actually about to agree with Joe until Martin pointed out the truth of the matter.

So, with the fabric of the universe back in place, we began. It was close at first, with all three teams having three tricks each. Then Martin and Joe got three more tricks in their next turns.

I often got “style points” for completing missions that don’t rely on matching colours with cards in matching colours. But style points don’t have a value. Not even as a tie-breaker. Instead Katy and I went for high value missions, meaning that although Martin and Joe triggered the game end, we had more points at the final count.

Katy & Andrew 30

Joe & Martin 27

Sam & Pete 25

I had time for one more quick one and it was Captain Obvious. In this game, we use our wipe-clean board to write a sentence of random length containing a word chosen by a player from a card. Then our boards are passed to the left and our neighbours delete one word, replacing it with “blank”. The idea is to read out the sentence and hope the other players can’t guess what the missing word is. A point to the reader if no one can guess, but a point to the writer and the guesser if they get it right.

Martin 11

Joe 7

Katy 7

Sam 6

Pete 4

Andrew 3

And with that, I had my rucksack back on my back, despite talk of So Clover, and off into the night. Thanks all.