The Sponge and Nestle

Anja and Steve were our hosts last night, so we kicked off the evening with an update on the latter's fly-by-night plumbing activities. What does Anja do when Steve is hurdling rooftops with a tap spanner in his belt? Maybe she mixes cement. But in this instance she was getting Lennon to bed, so we began without her, kicking off with Meister Makatsu, new to Steve, but familiar to the rest of us: Pete, Martin, Joe, Ian and myself. 

 

We'd only just kicked off when Anja and Louie materialised, happy to watch and wait as we played out Knizia's tricks-are-bad semi-trick-taker. If I knew the tie-breaker rule before I'd forgotten it, so was interested to hear that if points leaders are tied, whoever holds the Meister Makatsu token wins instead. I decided early on to try and engineer this position for myself, but though I had the card I needed in the last round, I didn't have the circumstances.

Ian 7 wins on tie-break
Steve 7
Martin and Sam 11 each
Pete 13
Joe 'a horrible amount' 

We split into two groups: Pete, Steve and Ian joined me for Medina as the other four played 2 Win. 

On our end of the table I talked newbies Steve and Ian through Medina's thankfully-simple rules and refreshed Pete, who hadn't - I belatedly remembered - played it with me on Saturday after all (at OGFest). Collectively, we're building the city of Medina, which consists entirely of palaces, stables, and a single street along which citizens march in an erratic procession. 

But it's not a co-operative game: you're trying to maximise the size of your palaces (one of each colour) and position them by the walls and street for extra points. The catch is that as soon as you take ownership of a palace, you can no longer make it any bigger (exception: add a stable). There's some structural ordinance in Medina too: no abutting of buildings, and the walls each side must leave room for a gate (even if, as we subsequently discovered, it's blocked by a building.) We were a short way into our adventure when 2Win finished with a victory for Joe. 

1 Joe

2 Martin

3 Louie

4 Anja

Louie retired to bed, and Joe, Martin and Anja set up Renature, with Joe's new board that changes the mechanics slightly (in ways I unfortunately missed). 

Back in Medina, Steve was constantly foiled by the rest of us grabbing palaces before he could, as I held onto the largest orange palace and Pete held a big brown palace he managed to nuzzle up against the point-giving citizens. 

I forgot to take a picture of the finished thing, possibly because I was focused on sabotaging Steve's late-game attempts to build anything that might push him into the lead. I thought I was harmlessly littering the perimeter with walls but it transpired I was helping Pete nick a wall bonus off Ian. He and I were first out of pieces as Steve and Pete entered a tit-for-tat finale, hedge-betting on who could be the Last Dick. It was Steve, but it wasn't quite enough:

Sam 36

Pete and Steve 34 each

Ian (stolen wall by Pete) 31

Very close! Renature still had a short time to go, so we filled it with the magnetic fun of Kluster. 

Actually not all of the fun is magnetic. Some is in the bizarre rules translation, which tells you to set up the string to make a play area as above, and then instructs players to place their magnets in 'any groove of the sponge'. There were also references to a Nestle which left us none the wiser. The game was fun though, especially after we made the play area smaller. I think we all won once, except possibly Steve. And then Renature finished. 

 

Anja enjoyed her debut, but suffered a little at the hands of non-debutants Joe and Martin. We didn't have precise scores but it was something like

Martin 60ish

Joe 50ish

Anja 40ish

We rejigged, with Martin keen to play Better Letters and me unable to coax Steve into it so I could play Robo Rally instead. He splintered with Anja Pete and Ian into a game of Hey That's My Fish, whilst I sat down with Martin and Joe to make words. 

With no Jo here to maximise the personal scoring I wondered if I might be in with a shout. But my 'shortest word' wasn't as short as Martin's - who had en - and I misread the board, leaving me lagging early on. You can't lag against this pair: Joe was putting in words like liminal and Martin transubstantiation (or similar). Whilst this wordy drama played out, Pete was savaging the other penguins in HTMF.

I'm not sure how he did it, but look at that face. Clearly a self-hating sphenisciphobic. 

Pete 39

Ian 21

Anja 17

Steve 15

They grabbed Misfits off the shelf and went into the front room to play, possibly anticipating me bashing my fists on the table in a fit of pique. 

Better Letters finished just after 11, with Martin narrowly taking the laurels from Joe. 

Martin 50

Joe 44

Sam 32

And I left for home with Misfits still continuing! I heard later from Ian that he caused a huge collapse and Steve jumped in for the win. Whilst that was happening in the front room, Joe was beating Martin at Le Chocolat next door. I don't know much about this other than you're having to split a bar of chocolate and try not to eat - as Martin put it this morning - 'too much shitty orange'. Don't know if there's a score?

Apparently they even considered more gaming with So Clover available, before common sense took hold and everyone went home.