Helmet by moonlight

 This week’s games night was heralded in the sky by a full moon veiled behind gossamer thin clouds, giving my walk to Sam’s the air of an 18th century oil painting. Ignoring all the traffic, of course.

At Sam’s it turned out we were five in number: Sam, Joe, Adam, Katy and myself. When I arrived, they were in the middle of Destination X, and Adam was hiding somewhere among 6 locations. We had cards in our hand, allowing us to ask certain questions while Adam looked up the answers in a book.

Of the 6 locations, Sweden was very much the odd one out, with the rest being islands or archipelagos in the Southern hemisphere. 

We soon outed Adam from his hideaway in Mauritania. Katy wanted to try another round but the overall consensus was to love on to something that was a bit more like a game.

We chose Vegas Strip. A recent arrival to these shores, it's similar to Las Vegas in that players are trying to control casinos but instead of the vagaries of dice, you can chose what value you place on your turn.

You also have a colleague who is aware that you have deemed two casinos “rigged” or “secure”. In a rigged casino, only the highest valued player wins the $15m bonus, whereas in a secure, everyone except the winner gets the money equal to the value they had in that casino. The way that the two team mates share knowledge is by an exchange of cards, being told “this is rigged,” and “this is secure. “

Since there were five of us, one of the three teams was made up of a single player. I round one, this was Katy who couldn't get a grip on the game and, with no team mate to work with, felt quite frustrated. She ended round one with 6 points while the rest of us were in the mid-20s.

In round two, I was the solo player and, initially I also felt out of my depth, just putting down figures at a whim. But soon I thought I saw some patterns and by the end I had won one casino and done well in a couple of others.

Round three, I was one of the players given two casinos and had to decide which was rigged and which was secure. I was actually given the same two casinos that I’d had in the previous round so I just gave them the opposite role as before and gave the two cards to Sam saying “this is rigged” and “this is secure.”

Except I hadn’t swapped them. I didn’t realise until the end, when the round was scored, that we’d been playing with different priorities. It didn’t benefit either of us, so no harm done, but I was disappointed I’d messed up, especially since I’d spent most of round three thinking that Sam was the best bluffer in the world.

Adam 76

Andrew 67

Sam 63

Joe 51

Katy 43

Next Katy was in the mood for So Clover, but Sam thought it too early. Instead we played Fun Facts where we have to answer questions like “How well dressed are you, on a scale of 0-100.” Our answers were meant to be secret but Katy complained that she could see mine quite easily. I told her not to look and she likened that to someone putting their cock on the table and then saying “guys, stop looking at my penis!”

Katy and Adam had two rounds in which they chose 43 and 44 for their answers, one of which being how much you’d pay for a really high-class meal in a restaurant. We got 5 out of 5 in one round which was “How much do you enjoy abstract art”

Final score 29 “nice score, you’re hitting your stride.”

Hitting our stride.

After 15 years, we’re hitting our stride. Because, as Sam pointed out to me later, Friday marks this blog’s fifteenth birthday. That’s insane. That means I was in my thirties when we started, and that can’t be right. But anyway, here we are. Well done everyone.

After I left, they had a game of So Clover which contained the word “helmet” three times! Crazy days. 

Oh, and Sam and Joe had kicked off the evening with a two-player game of Can’t Stop. Just as well they played before Katy got there, since it’s almost prompted a seizure before, due to her literal inability to stop.

Another lovely evening. Thanks all.