Another warm evening began with one of those things GNN doesn't have a tag for - conversation. But this didn't last long and soon we were trying to impress Meister Makatsu with our ninja moves, a theme so far-fetched for this game of card-shedding that Martin's inward sigh could be heard as he began explaining it to us.
We were six: as well as Martin and myself (Sam) Pete, Ian, Adam and Joe clustered around the table. Meister Makatsu is a demanding meister: our goal is to try to not win tricks - of a sort - as each round we play two cards of four, from three potential suits, with the highest in each suit claiming a point - points are bad - unless it's the orange suit, in which case it's two points. Unless it's round two in which case tricks win 2 points (orange 4) or round three in which case 3 (6). Getting rid of high cards early is ideal and there's definitely some luck. You don't want all your high cards at the bottom of your deck.
But there are also two cards you'll never play, so the last hand gives you something of a get-out clause. I hoovered up more early tricks than felt ideal, but things worked out for me in the final round, when I got nothing at all. It was a game notable for how much it made Martin swear at us.
Sam 7
Joe 9
Pete 10
Ian 13
Martin 16
Adam 19
Next up was Qork. This an extremely silly real-time reactions game where one player - the Cupper - rolls and reveals two big chunky dice. All the other players have corks on strings on a Qork mat and if the dice are doubles or add up to seven, must whip the corks away before the cupper slams the big rubber cup down on them. If you're caught, you get a point and as with Meister Makatsu, points are bad. If you yank your cork unnecessarily, that's a point. If you're the cupper and you don't catch anyone, that's a point for you.
It's very stupid. Most of us at some point yanked our corks in a panic and Adam gamely gamed the system by lifting the cup off the dice to hold it immediately over the corks. Perhaps that helped him. Pete's reactions seemed like they could use some work, but on the other hand I'm not sure when this skill has real-world applications. He triggered the endgame by hitting ten unwanted points.
Adam 3
Martin 4
Everyone else: miles behind.
We did a third game with six of us: 2 Win. I think this has been explained elsewhere but it was a first time playing with so many players, and it seemed to go down pretty well. Martin chose to start fairly high and kept b[icking up cards for being the highest until Adam stormed past him into the early nineties.
Despite his proximity to a century, Adam survived a couple more rounds whilst first Pete Joe and Ian and then myself fell by the wayside. But Martin clung on for the win.
We split into threes now, with Martin and Joe introducing Pete to an old and fairly brutal Knizia tile-layer called Genesis and myself Ian and Adam opting for Rebuilding Chicago.
Genesis is pretty simple. Players 'collaborate' on creating terrain types, but fight over majorities with only first and second place scoring. Each area must be at least three tiles, but there's also bonuses to be had for the largest of each terrain type (x2), and the largest of overall x3. There's also obstructions on the board to factor in, meaning you want to avoid the geographic cul-de-sacs that inevitably emerge.
Final board (face-down tiles are just denoting scoring)
Pete took a debut victory here as Martin fell victim to Explainer's Curse.
Pete 45
Joe 39
Martin 36
In Rebuilding Chicago we don't have that shared space, but the timing and claiming of events was the most critical in this play that I've yet encountered.
Ian and I could probably have done more to hamper Adam though: not exactly a whitewash but a solid win thanks to his late-game placing of Landmarks. Thank God Ian ended things before he could build a third.
Adam 154
Sam 143
Ian 129
In the short time Chicago overran Genesis, they'd played Chocolates, also known as Martin's Revenge.
Martin 25
Pete 17
Joe 11
I missed every chocolate-based photo opportunity as I was so focused on polyominoing in Illinois, but I did manage to snap Martin packing it away, apparently in a fine late-evening mist.
It was late enough that Adam felt he could clover before bedtime, so that's what we did. Some really good stuff here and oh-so-close to a Record of Legends score of 36/36. We fell just short on Pete's clover which had a slightly unfortunate red herring of rifle, which we thought went with repartee. We should have listened to Adam, who correctly thought it was comedy/tennis. A solid clue, but 34/36 ain't half bad, and a memorable play as well for Martin's workplace tale of an abandoned Zoom call after someone shared their screen in a highly unsuitable manner. Not him, I should make clear.
So we then lost Adam to the night but felt it was early enough that we could play on, and stayed in cloveresque territory with newbie Alibis.
Like So Clover, it's a word-association co-op, with a theme that floats away in the breeze, although the deduction element is intact: we're collectively trying to work out who the 'criminal' is and we all dealt two of the line-up ourselves. First off we must convey which two we have by looking at the random words on them and attempting to link them in a clue: just like one side of a clover, basically. Then we announce our clues one at a time and everyone ticks off which pair we think that player has on our own little elimination boards.
After that we all announce who we are and hope that at least one other player deduced correctly: if so we can reduce the 'heat' on us by one. Then we'll remove three heat for every player who successfully figured out who the criminal was; the goal being to remove all the heat over three rounds.
And we succeeded! It was a close-run thing but we swept the board win round three with everyone figuring out that
Japan was the rogue word (I forget which superhero it was though). A great success, and a fine way to wrap up the evening.
