Fishing and Farming

 As I prepared to go to Sam's this evening, I pulled on my waterproof trousers to guard against the driving rain falling outside. But once I'd reached my front door and stepped outside, the rain had finished. I decided against going back inside and changing, and instead spent the entire evening playing games while securely protected from the elements. 

With Sam, me and my waterproof trousers were Martin, Joe, Andy B, Adam H and Pete.

We started with a group game of Wriggle Roulette,  which we'd played last week,  except this time with a difference. Previously, pulling eels from the bag was a thoughtful deliberate process in which each player counted out the number of eels/snakes they wanted. But this time, thee was a careful rereading of the rules and it's descriptors of “grab” and “plunge” when talking about pulling things from the bag. And so we adopted a more carefree and random approach. 

This meant that several of us went bust after pulling out 5 items at once, and it wasn’t unusual to end up with nothing at all. This happened consecutively to Sam, Pete and Andy in one round. 

Another new problem was what to do about the eels poking out between fingers when you pulled your hand from the bag. But despite this, the new rules turned it into a different game. Less of a thoughtful push -your-luck and into something more devil-may-care. Martin, who got no points at all the last time we played, seemed to prefer this new version.

Martin 21

SAm 20

Andrew 11

Andy 11

Pete 8

Adam 8

Then we split into two groups. Sam, Adam and Martin played Farm Hand. I know little about this apart from the mysterious chanting of “E - I - E - I O” and then Sam's dismay as he apparently showed the wrong number of fingers when making his bid.

Martin 17

Sam 6

Adam -7

Pete, Andy and I played Shallow Regrets, a fishing card game which, at 20 minutes long, certainly doesn’t outstay its welcome. There’s a tableau of six piles of cards, you can turn over two and hope that you can catch at least one using the strength of the fish cards you’ve caught in the past. It was okay. I don’t think I really explored the interactive nature of the game until the very end, when I swapped one of my fish with Andy’s and came joint first. 

Initially, I wasn’t interested in a tie-breaker but then I found out that I’d actually won by that criteria so I’m happy to let the records show

Andrew 10 (plus fewest foul fish)

Andy 10

Pete 9

With Andy’s eye on the clock, we played Magical Athlete. This was chosen because, if Andy was clever with his pick of athletes, he could leave and let his game play on without him. I started appallingly, with my athlete almost immediately eaten my Martin’s mouth. In round four, Andy left us with his athlete, Sysiphus, being one that needed no choices - just don’t roll a  six. I can’t remember how well the absent Andy did since I was too excited by my second place - my only points of the game - and by Pete’s win, which was enough to secure a comfortable overall win.

Pete 13

Andy 9

Martin 5

Andrew 3

Adam 2

Sam 0

Without Andy, and now with my eye on the clock, we played a five-player game of River Dragon. We rechecked the Dragon Card rule and discovered that it doesn’t follow turn order and thus can stop a player that turn regardless of whether they were before you or not. 

Martin got himself into a winning position as so, of course, we were all expecting a flurry of dragon cards to stop him. Amazingly, no one played a green dragon in the first turn of the round and Martin, thinking we would, played a non-commital card that would be fine if it was blocked. But then in the next turn, three of us played a green dragon. The only one who didn’t was Adam who smartly used his move to guide his piece home for the win! 

With that, I was on my way, leaving the blog duties in Sam’s hands.

* 

After Andrew left we debated what to play next, and ended up on Zenith, Martin's new birthday lane-battler about controlling the galactic senate. It's a two-player or two teams, so he and Pete paired off against myself and Adam. 

Ostensibly it's a lane-battler where you play cards to the lanes of the planets to sway them - politically - towards your side of things. If the planet comes so far that it falls off the board, you've won it - three planets of the same kind, four of four colours of five of whatever colour is enough to win the game. 

However there's shenanigans galore with a diplomacy action available (get the Leader token, plus a bonus) and tech tracks to move up for powerful actions on the planet board. There are three currencies of a sort - credits, zenithium and planet movement - plus a semi-fourth in the cards themselves which can be passed between team-mates using diplomacy. As you can only play cards to your own quarter of the board - something I inevitably forgot last night - this can be key. 

There's a lot of iconography and it took us a good hour - but including teach I think - to wrap up. Adam and I obliterated the opposition with a 5-1 win, although my inadvertent cheating (above) took the gloss off somewhat. But this was fun. 

We then lost Adam to the night but finished off with So Clover, picking up a crappy red herring on Pete's clover to prevent ourselves hauling in an 18. I was blessed with some pretty easy combos, but there were some nice clues elsewhere. 

And that was that.