We started with Tinner's Trail, a new favourite that belies Martin Wallace's reputation as the high prince of mind-melding rules. We've now played it enough to have strategies in place, albeit not born of ancient wisdom and back-of-hand familiarity. While Joe and Andrew fought over the adits that are such a boon to a cluster of mines, I focussed on making mining as cheap as possible and removing all water if I could. A couple of rounds in I was leading, but my mines were emptying fast, and Joe and Andrew were stockpiling. I didn't want to remind them - I'm sure they remembered anyway - that cash gets you less points the later you leave it in the game, but despite my fourth-round semi-rally, Joe's canny investing early on (he twice made tiny investments when I saved cash to bully people with) were enough to carry him over the line two points ahead of me, and Andrew trailing slightly in third:
Joe 97
Sam 95
Andrew 81
The early-evening talk had been of moving onto Stone Age next, but I remembered my latest new addition and my resolve to actually play the games I buy, so we broke Bacchus Banquet out of the box. In this game of bluff and strategy each player is a conniving Roman bigwig at a feast hosted by Caligula, and everyone has their own objective to meet in order to win the game. Only Caligula's identity is not secret, so you're not sure who is who and what they are trying to achieve. The mechanic itself involves giving gifts (cards) to other players who choose whether or not to receive them. Will they be harmless, or dangerous? And the key thing is, accepting a gift is the only way to become the active player. 'Hilariously', your character's well-being is represented by a belt buckle - if you let your belt out too far your character is gone from the game, presumably in the style of Mr Creosote.
But the '30 mins game time' marked on the box seemed slightly optimistic, as Joe won the first game inside about three minutes, collecting the presents he needed to meet his objective. Andrew and I - joint second by default - shrugged this off and we all tried again. This time Joe took fifteen minutes, playing as Caligula this time, to meet his objective of eating and drinking shitloads of gourmet Italian grub, until he passed out in an orgiastic haze. Well done Joe.
No-one was blown away by this but I felt that A. it was more subtle than I gave it credit for (I don't know about Andrew, but I definitely wasn't paying enough attention to what Joe was doing) and B. it would be better with more players. So a decent, short, 5-player option.
We ended the leaderboard medley with a game of Tsuro - Joe and I shared first and Andrew came second. By now it was ten o'clock so we went off-piste and rounded off the evening with a non-leaderboard game of contract whist, where I scooped up £3 to compensate for an indifferent showing on the strategy front.
Oh, and the post title comes from the fact we all saw the night as a chance to actually win something with three other players - Adam in particular! - attending a talk by Mr Monbiot. But in the cold light of morning only Joe won't be gritting his teeth as he says it.
The leaderboard...
| Played | Points | Ratio | |
| Sam | 19 | 84 | 4.42 |
| Adam | 15 | 78 | 5.2 |
| Andrew | 21 | 78 | 3.71 |
| Joe | 16 | 66 | 4.12 |
| Hannah | 7 | 34.5 | 4.9 |
| Quentin | 7 | 28.5 | 4.07 |
| Steve | 4 | 16 | 4 |
