Gregory Peck's Bicycle

We had the tricky number of five gamers assembled last night: Joe, Ian, Katy and Martin joined myself at the spotty tablecloth. After pursuing the alcove of joy Martin and I brought in a small stack of games that suited a quintet, and - just as Joe arrived - we kicked off with Cross Clues. 

It was the usual blend of connection and confusion, and though we did pretty well - 22/25 on both attempts - there were still minor goofs, not least my clue of blue for heavy/dragon, neglecting to notice that blue went rather well, flag-wise, with red and white. With five of us, there were several moments where a grid location was proposed and someone would heavily demur, betraying the fact that that was the card in their hand. We speculated on solutions to this. Silence? A soft moan whilst touching your nose? Everything seemed to be like a flashing red light to highly-tuned Cross Cluers such as ourselves. 

Regardless, with that double warm-up under our belts, we moved on to the evening's main course. It's sat on my shelf for about two years since getting it in a trade, so from that perspective it was nice to break out Hoity Toity, which Martin felt he recalled well enough that we could tackle it. 

Designed by Klaus Teuber of Catan fame, this actually predates the wood-for-sheep innuendo generator by five years, and retrospectively we did decide that it showed its age a little. In Hoity Toity we are upper class twits trying to outdo each other by means of just Having Stuff, the more valuable the better. Ancient Chinese face masks, 1920's Belgium adverts for cheese, ornate ceramic smoking pipes - you name it. We get this stuff and then exhibit it for points, and points push us up the track around the outside of the board. But whilst that makes Hoity Toity a race, from a distance, close up it's a series of bids and bluffs and table-reads. 

Each round players first decide - secretly - whether they'll go to the Auction House to (in theory) try and get more valuables and grow their collection, or to the Castle to (in theory) Exhibit their collection, for points. The destination cards are all revealed first, and then everyone secretly chooses what they'll get up to at the locations in question. 

The auction house gets resolved first, with everyone who went their revealing their second card to show their intent. If they're bidding, then the highest bidder gets a valuable of their choice from the two available. If they played their thief, then they are - potentially - stealing the highest bidding card (the bidder still gets their valuable). Or if they played their Detective, they catch any Thieves, whether they stole anything or not. <<CORRECTION: detectives can only be sent to castles, see below>> So bidders increase their collection size, thieves get money, and detectives get points for throwing thieves in prison, from where they will return to the owner later. 

The castle happens next. If players played an Exhibit card, they exhibit their collection, which must have a sequence - a mix of sets and runs, so ABBCDD would be legitimate - and the biggest collection, with ties broken by oldest item, scores points and moves up the track. Second-biggest also scores. But here too, exhibited items can be stolen by Thieves and Thieves can be caught by Detectives. In both locations, Thieves with nothing to steal (or more than one thief!) or Detectives with no-one to catch all do nothing. 

What with some quirky scoring systems, it made for a funny but occasionally frustrating game, where playing the 'wrong' card is essentially a wasted turn, and you can very easily run out of money because successful bids in the auction that aren't stolen get removed from the game, shrinking the already haphazard economy. We all enjoyed it in parts, but felt too that it should have lasted half an hour rather than the hour+ it took. Despite my having no cash at all for the second part of the game, my strong collection was enough to get me the Poshest Twit status where, despite Martin's enormous last exhibit, I had enough to push myself past him for the second-largest confection of riches. 

1 Sam 

2 Martin

3 Ian

4 Joe

5 Katy

A special mention must go to Johnny Weissmuller's loincloth, which seemed a somewhat incongruous addition to Joe's exhibit. But Ian was impressed enough to steal it, and Joe stole it back. Posh people, eh. 

I was pushing for my new trick-taker, Torchlit, but despite having the Trick-takeriest player in the room, I couldn't get a bite. Instead we broke out Magical Athlete, and were stunned to find Katy hadn't played it before, even Joe's old version. The second race was the most interesting/annoying, as Martin pairing Scoocher (-activates whenever a special power activates) with Katy's Gunk (-all other players movement -1) on the wacky side of the board meaning most of the race was taken up with Martin's chortling as he shoved his stupid dog along yet another space. I announced that the Scoocher/Gunk combo should be outlawed. 

The finale however saw him caught and overtaken. Joe's Banana wanted to trip people up when they passed him, but he was too far behind to ever threaten as much. Katy's Slowcoach was at the back pretty much every time her turn arrived, and hauled her in enough points to overtake Martin and take the laurels overall. I had the satisfaction of winning the last race, at least, whilst Ian was left lagging, let down by Sisyphus' die-rolling. 

Katy 14

Martin 10

Joe 9

Sam 7

Ian 4

It was only tennish, so we decided to revisit The Mind, stopping only briefly for a round of crumpets courtesy of Stan.  I forgot to take photos of this occasion, though I did get one of The Mind. This may have been our first game, where we crashed and burned at level 4. 

So we reset and went again, and with doughy snacks to fuel us, did far better. As The Mind only officially plays 4, Martin announced that with five of us we needed to complete Level 7 to win, and because he told us this once we'd completed Level 7, we'd won! But of course, where there's a mind there's a Dark Mind, and that was our next challenge. We failed one level one. It was Clover time!

There was no record of legends last night, with a 6-6-4-4-3 on both attempts. We missed Pyramid/Wizard on Ian's clover (he clued Ra) in game one, and I was gnashing my teeth as nobody put Alliance with Countryside on my clover in game two. But there were some nice clues, as always, with Joe's low sperm count (-my italics) clueing us in to Lazy/Nut and Spa giving us vacation/hole. 

Having missed last Tuesday, and now slightly whisky-infused, I could have gone again, but it was now past 11 and bedtimes were calling. Thanks all, glad we gave Hoity Toity a run-out, it's not perfect by any means but I've played far worse. And probably will again.