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!