As I walked through Bristol, I was enjoying the blue skies and fresh breeze, feeling like summer was finally here. As if to confirm this, Adam H rode past me on his bike, waving at me in a t-shirt and reflective sunglasses looking for all the world like he's headed to the beach. But he wasn’t. He was heading to Sam's house for this week's gaming interlude.
When I arrived I also met Sam, Laura, Ian and Joe, with Pete joining us soon after I sat down. We played Hot Streak - a Magical Athlete type of game with a retractable track that extends from the game box across the table. But while Magical Athlete has a cast of dozens, Hot Streak consists of four runners who have a distinct lack of super powers. As such, it should be easier to predict the winner, right? Runners move according to cards drawn from a deck that everyone has seen, but then has had a card added to it from each player and then, as the race progresses, cards are removed from the deck. This means, whatever information we all had at the start, gets more and more inaccurate.
Joe was assiduous in his preparation for the game, supplying a music soundtrack to enhance the excitement of the game. One of the tunes was “Yakety Sax” which we observed, despite its fame, wasn’t the kind of tune you’d put on to listen to at home.
Ian was the best at predicting the results by quite a margin. Pete, though, in many ways played the perfect game: finishing with exactly the same amount of money that he started with.
In an example of Flavour Text gone mad, each possible result has its own i-ching-style life prediction. I didn’t note them down except that they all seemed quite long except mine which was a single sentence.
After a quick start, I was very slow to get my meeples off the island. Eventually I decided to stop waiting for another raft and swim for safety. Might have worked too, but then the third volcano on the island erupted and the game ended.
* * *
After Andrew left they were still frantically putting fingers in dykes in Rising Tide, so Adam went to the front room and returned with a small selection of games for Ian and I to choose from. One of them was Steam Power, but at 9.45 we both felt - not realising how far away the end of the evening was - that it was a little late to start route-building. Instead, with Laura's encouragement from the sidelines/Holland, we set up Tipperary. All of us were pretty rusty on the rules but it's dead simple. Especially if you're Adam.
In brief, Tipperary is a polyomino game with multiple overlapping ways to score. Finding ways to combine them is where it's at, and whilst myself and Ian sprawled our farms erratically over the table, Adam's homestead was much more rigorous in its structure and discipline.
Whilst he was never in the running for 'largest flock' Adam shrugged off this minor oversight with a bagatelle of other point-scoring shenanigans.
Sam 78
Ian 60
Despite our Dutch dammers insisting the game was nearly over, I suspected that we might have time to squeeze in a quick luck-pusher in Lure, the game of catching fish. But suddenly Rising Tide was over, and despite the fact it took considerably longer than the advertised 45 minutes (Pete and I anticipated an hour, so we were only 50% out) everyone seemed happy - especially as they won. The Netherlands was saved!
Pandemic - Rotterdam
Surprisingly, nobody was making moves to go home, so we split into teams - Ian/Laura/Pete v Joe/Adam/Sam - and played Triangulation.
We got off to a solid start when Adam and Joe figured out Red Bull from drinking/caffeine/races and then intercepted Ian's cocaine/horror/Maine as Stephen King. His 80's cocaine habit was new to us - Ian said that apparently he doesn't remember writing Cujo - but we were off to a flyer.
Adam's first reveal was towel and Pete instantly suggested - correctly - The HItchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Laura revealed Joey and we guessed Friends. But her second clue gave away that it was Australia, and then Joe's wood/Helena/Mars for Tim Burton wrapped up a win for our team. We did Pete's clues anyway and Ian and Laura correctly guessed Subway from High Street/Underpass/foot.
Adam now left for home leaving five of us to finish the night with the traditional So Clover. We opened with a 6 - I was rather pleased with my white lie for elastic/fable - but ran into problems with Pete's clue of Wogan, which seemed to loosely connect with lots of things. Surprisingly the answer was radio/stud, which Pete appeared to be tinged with regret about. Laura's clue of Mr. Y Bear for light/magician was another baffler, prompting thoughts of Yogi Bear and Logie Baird before Laura revealed it was intended as 'mystery bear'. Beyond that, she volunteered no further information, happy to cackle gleefully into her beer. I think we finished with Joe's, which was another 6: spicy for demon/noodle was nice.
It was now shockingly 11.30pm though which for us five clarity bears meant bedtime. A cracking Tuesday night, thanks all!
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