Just F(Inis)hed

Here's a belated report of the January shenanigans back on the 4th from Pete!

I arrived to Steve and Anja's on the final Sunday before returning to work, still pretending it was full the Christmas holiday, to find a stack of games on the table for potential selection.

With a whole afternoon before us (there is some foreshadowing here) we (Adam, Anja, Steve & I) selected Inis. We took a little while on the rules, as Adam hadn't played before and the rest of us not for a while, and then started drafting our action cards.

Steve & I both chose to further delay getting into the action by passing our first turns, which Adam professed to be baffled by (pick your guess as to the endgame conclusion now).

The first part of the game seemed to mainly consist of Anja stocking one side of the board with citadels and repeatedly filling them with orange clans. Meanwhile Steve or Adam built some sanctuaries and Adam also held quite a few festivals. I'm not really entirely sure what I was doing. I recall feeling peturbed that I had to keep passing good action cards to Steve, but I don't recall achieving much with the ones I decided were better to keep 😂.

With time advancing we decided we had better pause to arrange dinner - which turned out to feature a succession of challenges including the initially chosen fish-and-chip shop being shut, and the backup choice requiring cash only, requiring various forays. Those of us in the house cleared Inis off the dining table to make way for for a very nice dinner.

After eating we then played Just One to include everyone - so now Lennon, Louie, Laura and Arthur to bring us up to eight.  We got a couple wrong early on but recovered to a fairly convincing win. I don't think I've played it with that many before and we seemed to eliminate less words by duplicating clues than I expected. In fact, I mainly remember it being useful that Adam and I had doubled up on 'diplomacy' as a clue for 'panda', as it turned out this would not have been a helpful clue..

Next Steve, Adam, Louie and I selected Tsuro. Adam and Louie stayed clear of trouble to start with while Steve and I went down one side. The timing worked well for me and I sent Steve off the board before nearly flying straight off of one corner. Fortunately I was able to turn round but then found myself heading for Adam. Meanwhile Louie had achieved a diagonal across to the far corner. Adam and I crashed straight into each other with Louie finishing the winner.

We then performed some successful tectonic shifting to bring Inis back to the table, and resumed with Anja's hoards of orange clustered around the capital and to one side.

The game did reach a climax in fairly classic Inis fashion. I reluctantly vacated the hills and managed to seize the capital, and together with a deed I briefly met one of the winning conditions by ruling over 5 clans. However I didn't hold it long enough to even take a pretender token as Anja and Steve both contested it.

It looked like Anja or Steve could potentially win, before we all realised that Adam had timed his plotting to perfection, making his bid for leadership just as everyone else had largely exhausted their action cards.

An excellent debut win, though long-term stability of ruling various quarrelsome clans in a hotly contested capital has to be questioned.. And where is the food going to come from, with hardly anyone left in the countryside?

We then finished with a fairly successful round of So Clover! - 6 on Anja's, and then 4 on everyone else's. I think my favourite was (Steve's?) escalator for ladder /luxury.

Another very fun afternoon, but then back to work - hence finishing the blog taking a while!