Crossover Crops

 This week's Tuesday night games was preceded by a sort of musical chairs of hosts and attendees popping up and dropping out; and just as four of us (Martin, Jo, Ian and me (Joe)) prepared to depart for the genteel climes of Anja and Steve's, Steve called to say their hosting was off due to an emergency. Given that they've hosted their way through several urgent plumbing situations recently, we were concerned that it must be something very serious; a small nuclear reactor meltdown, perhaps, or the discovery of a portal to Hell? Actually Anja had fallen on the stairs and hurt her arm - we hope you're on the mend Anja. 

The four of us abandoned the car and decamped to the Greenbank pub, and while awaiting the arrival of Pete, we played Llama Llama; from the designer of Panda Panda, played with the same deck make up, and just as agonising. I didn't record the scores. Martin won. 

Pete arrived in time to mention he'd played it when it was called Dog Poker. And Panda Panda was Cat Poker. We neatly segued into one of Jo's prototypes, Untrustwordy, which they pitched to us as poker but with words.  After the first round, I was lowest on the score track, having struggled to assimilate the relatively few rules of the game, and I suggested we play again, so I could regain some dignity. I did so badly in the second round (falling for Jo's bait that they were holding an X) that I dropped off the bottom of the scoreboard! Meanwhile Martin did so well he shot off the top. It's an interesting design, and Jo's planning to pitch it at the Games Expo this year, so fingers crossed we'll play it again in published form.

Though I'd brought Mü, we felt it might be a little late in th evening to be enjoying it's head-scratchy delights, and Martin had brought Reif für die Insel, which at least also has an umlaut. It translates, we think, to 'ripe for the island' which sounds like it might mean something slightly dubious to German ears, and involves an awful lot of bananas. Pete pointed out that this week, bananas were the crossover crop, as they appear in Santiago, which we played last week. As do potatoes, which feature in Maya, which we played the week before. The problem, we discovered, is that bananas are a bit of a crossover crop cul-de-sac, as they appear in loads of games but mostly on their own. 

I didn't take any pictures, but that's really no bad thing, as this game has about as much table presence as half a packet of banana flavour Chewits. It's an auction game, one of Reiner Knitzia's dodecorilogy (at the very least) of auction games. And it's quite neat, but fairly one note. Having played it a couple of times I can say I prefer something like High Society, which it reminds me of slightly. But it's fine. It's no Santiago!

Jo 89

Martin 75

Pete 67

Joe 63

Ian 59

After that we played Hot Streak - which has tons of table presence - but I still didn't take any pictures. Silly me. It was a fun game - in one race Dangler and Gobbler responded to the start whistle by turning around and running off the end of the board together. Very funny, and I pipped Jo to the win. Or do none of us win, we just enjoy a different life outcome. 

Joe 62

Jo 60

Pete 55

Ian 35

Martin 24

Before disappearing into the night, we gave it some So Clover. Of course we did. Martin saw my clue of toothed, and spotted tiger. "As in saber-toothed tiger!". I waited for him to spot Saber on another card, which he did eventually. What a gift. We scored 26, which is exactly the score I thought we got last week with three players, so clearly I was just thinking ahead.

With that we wandered into the night - it's fun to play in a pub every once in a while, and The Greenbank is very well-appointed in that regard; we were accompanied by lovely live music all evening too. Let's do it again some time!