Sam and I decided to tackle one of Sam's "Guilty Eleven", i.e. those eleven games he's bought but not yet played. Tonight it was At The Gates of Loyang, a sort of trading game that apparently plays best with two. When I arrived, the kids were out of the way and the table was already set up to begin. If I'd been any later, I expect Sam would've been standing at the window, waiting for me to arrive.
We read through the rules of the game, which are very badly written. So we watched a video on YouTube to see if we'd got it right, but even then, we didn't realise a couple of mistakes until quite late in the game.
Nevertheless, we understood the majority of the rules and, once we got into it, we found it to be quite an enjoyable game. First, you sow the seed. Then, nature grows the seed. Then you sell it to customers, or trade it on the market. There are certain cards which help with trading or harvesting etc.
There's not much interaction, but a certain amount of mistrust when your opponent has a card that allows him to sell to your customers. Also, there's a bit of bluffing in the card phase: you need to play two cards, but you have to pick up a card that's already face up on the table as well as a card from your hand. I found myself making "ooh, I don't want this card" type noises when laying a card down for all to see, only to pick it up again when I got the chance.
And the scoring system is clever too. Unfortunately, not easy to explain in a pithy sentence, and we misunderstood it until near the end of the game. However, for what it's worth, the game ended
Sam 15
Andrew 13
And the explanation for the title of this blog post? A recent craze amongst Sam's kids is to say "hair" preceded by a random word, such that great hilarity ensues. For example, "Egg hair", "Tooter hair" and the perennial favourite "Poo hair."
