This game's got Seoul

 Joe’s place is barely a hop skip and a jump from mine, yet I still manage to misjudge how long it’ll take me to walk there and thus I was the last of tonight’s quartet to arrive.

Joe, Martin, Adam H and I started with Collect. It’s a simple game in which you collect animal cards.  The winning conditions depend on which animals you have in front of you, so there’s a certain amount of dick moves as a particular animal allows you to remove or swap cards in another player’s tableau thus ruining anyone’s chances of a win.

We played as two teams of two, although the players score individually: the first player to win a crown means that team wins. In rounds 1, 2 and 3 the winner gets half a crown and in the fourth round, the winner gets a whole crown.

We played while we made a start on Martin’s Thai Sweet Chili crisps, bought for his daughter but he found out they were the wrong Thai Sweet Chili and now he was stuck with two multi-packs of the wrong crisps.

The game was fun if a little lightweight. Martin won round one and then I won the next two, meaning our team won the game.

Martin & I - Surfin’ Safari

Joe & Adam - Strange Taxidermy

Next up was President Maker, a little table-top general election in South Korea. This time Adam started as the ruling Progressive Party against Martin (independent), Joe (Centrist) and myself (conservative).

Satire

I went for the extra candidate which did so well with Sam last time. It cost me two votes though and in the final count, came out three times so only a net gain of one vote for me.

The general election was much closer this time on paper, although as it played out Adam sped off into a huge lead with Martin’s meeples seemingly reluctant to emerge from the cloth bag in the final count. Martin did stage a late rally, but couldn’t close the gap.

Adam

Martin

Andrew

Joe

Next up we played Fives, the game that famously insulted us by putting a pivotal rule at the end of the rule book with the word “obviously” attached to it, effectively calling us morons for ever thinking otherwise.

Halfway through the game, a piece of Joe’s table fell off with a loud clunk, with very little concern from Joe. “What was that?” asked Martin. “Er… nothing,” Joe replied.

I admit I have no idea how to approach this game. In the four rounds that we play, I go bust three times and I only stay solvent in round four by sheer luck. I keep finding myself in a position where I have to win a trick in order to lead and dispose of a high card, but if I win a trick I’ll go bust.

The silver suit - hard to decipher 

Adam 17

Joe 14

Martin 10

Andrew 4

I left at this point, with the remaining three already setting up the next game. Thanks all for another special evening. See you all soon.