We’ll always have Powys

GNN games weekends are the semi-regular binge of board games that allow us to experience things that simply wouldn't happen during a typical evening session. Such as a hungover Ian trying to sleep in a nook by a window while all around him is chaos, or Katy swearing loudly at noon or my attempt at playing a dense, convoluted eurogame while also making pizzas.

It all began on Friday. I got a lift there with Sam and Stanley. We off at four o'clock, and the journey was pretty straightforward, taking about an hour. No such luck for Joe and Katy who had left Bristol at one, but managed to get lost three times, meaning it took them three hours. "We were so lost, we found a games shop in Monmouth," explained Joe.

Either way, when we arrived at Crickhowell (in Powys), Joe Katy, Hannah, Adam and Arthur were already there. And, far from chucking our stuff into rooms and getting straight down to some serious gaming, we stood around and chatted, apparently oblivious to the neat stacks of games in the corner of the room.

The earliest sign of our competitive spirit was a brief spell on the table tennis table while Joe and Katy cooked. After a delicious meal, we finally started gaming with Bandu. Stanley impressed us with his withering look since Katy made no allowances for his young age, handing him some terrible pieces.

Adam
Joe
Sam
Stanley /Andrew
Katy

This was followed by Hannah beating Joe and Katy (77, 71, 68 respectively) at Isles of Skye, and Sam beating Stanley, me and Adam (130, 128, 112, 107) at Ethnos, with its irritating base-60 score track.

Ethnos

During these games, Steve and Jon arrived (Jon, without Power Grid! For shame) and kids were put to bed. There were a couple of games of Happy Salmon, an action game that involves drawing cards and then trying to find someone else around the table who has the same action, while everyone else is doing the same. It looks absurd, and the silent version doubly so, but it seemed popular throughout the weekend.

At first, we split into two groups of four, for Ticket To Ride and Clans Of Caledonia on offer. Then Jon made the switch across the table to TtR, leaving Clans as a three-player affair.

This was possibly a wise move, since even as a three-player (two of whom were novices) Clans of Caledonia lasted a long time. Long after Ticket to Ride ended, and they were deep into Tumblin’ Dice.

Ticket To Ride
Hannah 176
Jon 164
Joe 138
Katy 113
Steve 92

Tumblin’ Dice
Jon 138
Joe 112
Katy 102
Steve 39

Two remarkable an inexplicable defeats for Steve, who only escaped negative points in Tumblin’ Dice in the final round.

Clans of Caledonia was a struggle for me, and I probed the various options with all the timidity of a man pushing a button in a wall, convinced it would open a trapdoor under his feet. Adam, despite yawning through most of the rules explanation, had a much better idea about what was going on.

Adam 136
Sam 127
Andrew 89

By now it was late, and travel-weary and somewhat tipsy, we all got together for a game of Dead Man’s Chest, the game where explaining the rules is never quite enough. Steve and Jon were newbies, and they seemed as baffled as we once were. And sometimes still are.

As for the game, it had three Dead Man rolls (i.e., a one and two). One of which cost me a life on the very first roll of the game. Then the next two both hit Joe, one of which he opened by accident (“Oh. I looked.”). Sam finished in first, with both lives still intact.

Sam
Joe
Katy
Jon
Steve
Andrew

That was that for day one. On Saturday morning, people arose in the following order: Hannah, Stanley and Arthur at 7.30 (probably earlier), then me, Jon, Joe, Sam, Katy, Steve and then a big gap before Adam finally emerged at 9.45. The first game to be played, after all the various breakfasts, didn’t get going until 10.25, and it was Junk Art.

Steve 16
Adam 13
Joe 9
Katy 7

Meanwhile, Jon introduced me to Patchwork and won 15-2, but I was impressed by the game. Ian was collected from the station by Sam and they played a tight game of Heck Meck with Ian winning 13-12.

Next up was a true challenge: A Feast For Odin. Adam, Stanley, Ian and I all set off on this epic undertaking. Adam, though, had a trick up his sleeves: the rules. He’d watched a review or two and noticed that no one else builds up from the corner as we do, and he discovered that that rule only applied to calculating the income. Everything else was a free-for-all.

I had suggested playing a six-round game, but Adam quickly insisted on a seven-round one. I didn’t think anything about this at the time but looking back I remember that, although Adam had populated two islands, his main player board had almost no minus points covered during round six. Without that seventh round, things could’ve been very different. But we did have a seventh round, so things were all too familiar.

I went for animals, Stanley went pillaging and Ian started slow before suddenly filling his board with blue tiles.

Adam 111
Stanley 86
Ian 72
Andrew 65

In the kitchenette area, a game of Downforce was played, with the general consensus that the two-car strategy was a non-starter, with the eight-wheeled Jon and Steve trailing.

Sam 27
Joe 14
Steve 11
Jon 7

Steve was keen to get back on this horse, as it were, and another (five player) game of Downforce was set up. Again, Steve ended up with two cars, although I don’t think he had planned it that way. The race ended with both of his cars still on the track, racing each other for fifth place, until Steve ran out of cards and they both ended with a DNF.

Katy 24
Jon 20
Ian 18
Andrew 17
Steve 6

At this time, a game of Flipships was underway with Hannah, Joe, Stanley and Sam trying to keep the invading aliens at bay. My notes for this game read simply “Earth died.”

Meanwhile, Steve taught Katy and Jon the card game Tenbo. Possibly because he likes it or possibly because he wanted a game he knew he’d do well in.

Steve 21
Katy 15
Jon 13

Then, if last night’s Clans of Caledonia weren’t enough of a warning, I allowed myself to be recruited to another long game beginning with a hefty rules explanation: Yokohama. Even though I’d played it before and had some idea of what it entailed, I needed a rule refresher as much as the two beginners: Steve and Jon. Joe was the rules-explainer, but even he’d forgotten a great deal, and the rule book was never far from hand.

Yokohama

During Yokohama, Ian, Katy and Hannah comfortably played two medium sized games: Mad King Ludwig (Ian 95, Katy 89, Hannah 63) and Hit Z Road (Ian and Katy both survived – I don’t recall who won – but Hannah died early on).

Also Sam and Stanley played Near and Far. According to my notes, it was a draw.

As for me, I had to start making pizzas while still playing Yokohama. This made things difficult, not least because the layout of the kitchen meant a lot of walking back and forth, and I had to keep washing my hands before making my move.

My efforts at making pizza outlasted the game, and lead to a largely game-free period as people got their food one after the other. The scores for Yokohama were:

Jon 116
Steve 111
Joe 78
Andrew 60

The last of the food was being served (and thanks to Joe for knocking together some burritos to make up the shortfall in my pizzas) at nine o’clock and some restless gamers were after some gaming.

Hannah, Katy, Joe and I chose Lords of Vegas while the others set up a much-requested (by Stanley) game of Captain Sonar. Captain Adam, Steve and Jon were up against Captain Stanley, Sam and Ian. This game ended with a victory for Captain Stanley after Radio Operator Steve admitted he missed one of their movements and, from then on, didn’t know where the other submarine was.

In Lords of Vegas, it was a surprisingly swingy game. Katy started well, building lots of one-tile casinos of many colours, but then stalled as she couldn’t convert them to two-tile casinos quickly enough. So Joe took over, surging into a lead. But then he was undone by some reorganising from Katy and especially Hannah, who reduced his previously presidential presence in a five-tile casino to two miserable one-pip dice. I, meanwhile, faced early frustration in the lack of brown casinos paying out. My luck turned towards the end but too little, too late.

Hannah 40
Andrew 36
Joe 26
Katy 23

With Stanley off to bed, the other five played Tortuga. Ian won. “He was Dutch” says my not very helpful notes. “Everyone else lost. Weird conversation about nationalities” it continues.

Tortuga

People slowly peeled away to bed, leaving six players refusing to buckle under the weight of fatigue. Myself, Jon, Joe, Steve, Katy and Ian stayed up for more. And, just like last night’s Dead Man’s Chest, we chose to introduce Steve and Jon to a game that never seems to make sense, no matter how much you try to explain it. Namely, Bemused.

Ian pours himself a beer for Bemused

This game of adopting personas is more an event than a game. A chance to throw insults at people according to which muse they’ve been dealt. Painter, Thespian, Actor (who, invariably, is accused of never being able to play The Dane), Musician, etc. This time, though, I was the Dancer and I must’ve been pretty good since I was largely ignored. I made no secret of my animosity to my gemina, the musician (Jon), because no one else was going after him. And it worked. I finished the game sane and healthy, with my gemina safely “not sane” (i.e., dead, in this case. Actually killed by Katy, who finished him off while Jon was having a rule explained by to him by Joe. Harsh).

Andrew 8
Joe 6
Katy 5
Jon 3
Ian 3
Steve 2

Midnight had come and gone, but we all felt we had one more game in us. Katy asked for something she could play while lying on the sofa under a blanket. Joe suggested I Crossed The Border. This is a simple word game where one person thinks of a rule regarding things that people can take across a border. They then give an example of it, followed by everyone else trying to get stuff across the border. The rule-maker tells them if they’re successful or not. And we go round and round until one person is still clueless.

For example, Joe’s first rule was “Words with ‘oo’ in them” so “I crossed the border with a pair of boots” would be fine but “I crossed the border with a copy of Vogue magazine” would not.

Katy chose items that began with K, A, T or Y. Ian’s rule was that you had to have your hand against the side of your face when you crossed the border. Jon’s rule was don’t hesitate when you cross the border, which I totally failed to get.

My rule was that you had to say the item with a rising inflexion, like a question. Oddly, this meant Ian did very well at crossing the border, since he always framed his crossings as questions, whereas the others were more confident and made their crossings as statements. As such, Ian crossed back and forth, but never really knew why but the others didn’t. It wasn’t until Katy got it that it slowly dawned on the others what we were doing.

We ended at 1.10 on Sunday morning before we tore ourselves away from the buzz of competitive conversation and went to bed.

Sunday morning, and we slowly crawled from our rooms. The first game was played before 9 o’clock so, in that respect, we did better than Saturday. But the game in question was the lightest of games: The Pyramid’s Deadline, a new game I’d bought in Japan from Oink Games (Deep Sea Adventure, Fake Artist, Insider).

It involves building a pyramid-y shaped structure before the pharaoh dies (indicated by the last red square being chosen). The selection of building materials is determined by the roll of some dice, so obviously the speed at which the red squares deplete is random.

This might be why in game one, none of us (Hannah, Sam and me) completed our “pyramid”. Then in game two, Hannah was too cautious since both Sam I and completed our buildings after her, and I won. But, then again, in the third round Hannah won when neither Sam nor I finished.

By 9.15 everyone except Adam was up. Well, Ian was up, but seemed to be in constant danger of falling back down again as he struggled under a hangover.

At some point around now, I introduce Steve to The Pyramid’s Deadline, but I made no notes about the outcome.

Eventually, Katy took pity on Ian’s attempts at a nap on a window seat, and arranged for him to get some sleep in a proper bed (rather than the mattress in the utility room he’d had during the night).

Then we played Deep Sea Adventure. At least, Joe, Steve, Katy and I did. We began quickly and it wasn’t until it was Steve's turn that he asked for a rules explanation. It hadn’t occurred to us that he hadn’t played before!

Luckily DSA is the kind of game you can explain while you play, so it didn’t hold the game up too much. There was a remarkable lack of drownings, apart from Katy and I in round three.

Joe 42
Steve 35
Andrew 24
Katy 13

Sam, Stan and Jon played Near and Far, with Stan running out a clear winner, but that didn’t stop Sam from saying he’d enjoyed it more than the other night when he and Stan had tied for first.

Stanley 79
Sam 42
Jon 38

Next up was a game of Downforce. I ended up with three cars in my team, which was not my plan even if I had boasted beforehand that it was. If two cars is a curse, then surely three cars is a death wish! But, no! Thanks to some clever betting and keeping an early lead, I did okay. Not first, but pretty good.

My team in Downforce

Sam 13
Andrew 12
Ian 10
Stanley 8

While this was happening, another game of Yokohama was being played. Joe was keen to try it again while the rules were still fresh and he was confident that he could teach it better this time, too. Katy was drafted in to the game, along with last night’s conscripts Steve and Jon.

They kept saying it’d be quicker than last night, and maybe it was. But not by much. After Downforce had ended, Sam and I played Clans of Caledonia again. It was much quicker as a two player, and I did better, too.

Sam 126
Andrew 118

Hannah put together salad and cold meats and cheese for lunch. Still Yokohama kept going.

People started getting anxious about not having enough time for a walk. But Yokohama wouldn’t be rushed.

Finally it ended. Scoring was calculated, and it turned out to be the same person who won last time!

Jon 123
Joe 98
Steve 95
Katy 91

After that, it was time for the walk before being ferried back to Bristol by Sam. Five other gamers stayed on for one more evening, and I hope they’ll add their comments to the end of this post.

Meanwhile, thanks all. It was special!

A bird! In the sky!

Adam reports the final scores...

Capital lux
Joe 80
Adam 65
Hannah 39




Mysterium


We all won. But I won most and Katy won second most. Because we're overcompetetive. Joe was an excellent ghost.

Ticket to ride
Adam 178
Hannah 161
Katy 145
Joe 142
Jon 138


Apparently Katy isn't going to play with Hannah or I ever again.


Kingdomino
Jon 53
Adam 51
Katy 46
Joe 29




Team play
Adam & Joe 25
Katy & Jon 24

Good night folks!

Choose your demise!

Chippenham, April. Paul Jefferies had made the long journey from Croydon to Chris' house, so I came the other way from Bristol, armed with a small selection of shortish games.

When I had arrived, they'd just finished playing Carcassonne, which Chris had won by a narrow margin:

Chris 120
Paul 117

And they were in the mood for something reasonably short, reasonably luck-driven, with a side-helping of watery death. So Deep Sea Adventure it was, which Chris roped Jacqui into playing. She liked so much, we played it twice!

 what a dive

first game:
Sam 16
Paul 6
Chris 4
Jacqui 3

second game:
Chris 34
Jacqui 31
Paul 16
Sam 10

After that, Jacqui retired from gaming for the evening to rustle the kids to bed, and the three of us played Sluff Off. This is a trick-taking game where it's all but impossible to finish with zero points - you'll usually have less. At the start of each round players take tokens (minus 2 points) showing how many and which colour tricks they think they'll win. Win the trick, and you get rid of the token. But win a trick you don't have a matching token for, and you pick up a -3 token.

what a card

But - one person can also play the Sluffer, who doesn't care how many tricks they do or don't win. Their role is to be Loki - making mischief, and trying to get the other players to pick up the -3 tokens. The Sluffer scores -4 points at worst at the end of the round - every -3 token the others pick up improves their play by a point.

Paul/Sam -7
Chris -10

Chris's old pal from the Reading Board Game Club, Laura, arrived, as we finished up; so we quickly explained the rules, and played again.

Sam -7
Laura -10
Chris -12
Paul -14

There was no plan for an epic game this evening, so we kept with reasonably lighter fare, setting up Flamme Rouge next. We went with one of the game's suggested tracks, only flipping the final stretch to give exhausted riders a nice downhill finish. I played a cagey game, never attempting to get into the lead, but my careful hedge-betting counted for nothing when I realised that Paul's exhausted roullier was about to freewheel over the line, and I was miles behind!

Laura leads, but Paul is in pursuit

Paul: triumphantly puffy
Chris and Laura: consolatorarily breathless
Sam: knackered and last

what Paul's winning rider had left in the tank

Chris bought in a selection of games but the general feeling seemed to be erring toward HitZRoad, the game of zombie fight or flight. I made the same mistake I made before by not bidding, and only broke this rule when I bid eight resources in order to pick up five. Not very good apocalyptic economising, and I was out first, eaten before we even reached the final third of the game. 

Laura made it a lot further, but couldn't quite reach California before being turned into a zombie pudding. Only Chris and Paul survived the trip alive...

Paul 10
Chris 8
Laura dead last
Sam dead first

rotten luck

We finished our four-player adventures with some Fuji Flush, in which your demise is more frequent, but less grisly.  Everyone professed not to understand it. But you don't need to understand Fuji Flush in order to win it...

Laura
Paul
Chris
Sam

Everyone enjoyed not knowing what was going on so much, we played it again:

Sam
Laura
Paul
Chris

Laura made for the hills - or Bristol - with the time now past eleven. But with nowhere to drive to, us boys were up for one last game or so, so after not much debate we ended up playing 6Nimmt. It might not have the utter chaos of an eight-player 6Nimmt, but it was still entertainly replete with wails of despair. My strong start disintegrated into a final two rounds of terribleness:

Chris 52
Paul 59
Sam 69

There was just enough space left before bed for Push It. So we pushed! Paul pushed rather hard, even flicking the jack off the table at one point, and it became a two-way fight between Chris and I, which I managed to finagle at the death:

Sam 11
Chris 10
Paul 2

With midnight approaching, the evening came to a close. Thanks all!

Spring forward, Fall Back

The night of the spring equinox rolled around, and in the Morrison household myself, Ian, Stanley and Little Joe rolled our way to glory/defeat in Las Vegas. We were expecting Andrew any moment, but he'd assumed an 8pm start and was at home putting his hair on.

 Stan's domain

Ian and Stan played solo; Joe and I were a team with Joe designated dice roller. We played a game of hedge-betting, whilst on the other side of the table things were more dynamic. Dynamism paid off - or it did for Stan, anyway:

Stanley $210,000
Sam and Joe $120,000
Ian $40,000

The boys went upstairs to read, and Ian and I almost played Quoridor. But then we realised that with Andrew texting his agreement to Eclipse, we had better start setting the game up.

Andrew arrived and space conquest began. Ian explored in search of peaceful lands, but found hostiles. Andrew went for his wasp strategy - he can't resist! - and went in search of hostiles, but found empty air. I was lucky: finding a mix of both, in the right order. I also discovered an ancient chit that improved my dice-rolling. Those ancients! They knew how to make an artefact.

Early exploration

Unlike previous games where we have circled the centre hex warily, Ian and I barrelled in there on the same turn. I managed - just - to see off the hordes of Hickman, but my fleet was near-obliterated, and despite nearly defeating the ancients, they saw me off. We wondered whether Andrew wold take advantage of our military weakness, but he carried on exploring, content to keep distant.

endgame

We rebuilt, and re-attacked. But as the final round arrived, there was a proliferation of movement as ships flew in and out of hexes before finally settling into battle. I held onto the central hex, and managed to nab one of Ian and Andrew's. It was enough for the win:

Sam 31
Ian 21
Andrew 15

By the time Eclipse had finished, our evening had morphed from a genial 70's commercial for board-games into a bleak 70's health warning about alcohol. Ian and I both managed to research knowledge we'd already acquired. Andrew forewent his usual Zen fatalism in order to retake a turn, and insisted that not being able to see the research tiles was better.

In light of which it seemed apt that our next game was Extreme Biblios - or Blissful Bibs, as my fumbling fingers and auto-correct decided to call it. The game was notable for Andrew's apparent decision to bid on every colour in the auction, which for some reason gave me the giggles. Or maybe it was his voiced desire for Ian to eat his own sh*t.

Ah, Blissful Bibs...

Ian was more circumspect, but I managed to grab the Mr Biblios title by grabbing Blue, Brown and Red dice:

Sam 10
Ian 2 (wins on Extreme tie-breaker)
Andrew 2

Andrew and Ian started drinking whisky at this point, and we played Love Letter. Ian seemed to morph into a Derren Brown type figure, as he wiped out Andrew (once) and me (twice) with his first guesses.

Discard your future

I never recovered - or got going, to be more exact. Andrew did, though:

Andrew 3
Ian 2
Sam 0

As it was Saturday, we played more games! First up was Push It, which Ian won in the manner of Mike Tyson taking on a couple of small kangaroos.

Ian 9
Sam 5
Andrew 1

one reason I didn't take pics of Push It

But Andrew wasn't going to take that lying down, so we played again. This time it was as tight as it possibly could be, with all of us poised on 8 points. I have no recollection of how I won, but the evidence says I did:

Sam 9
Ian/Andrew 8

Whew! The curtains came down on the evening as we stood up, stretched, and put our coats on (except me, because I was already home). Then Andrew noticed we hadn't played Deep Sea Adventure, so we all sat down again as the curtain went back up.

diving 

I played a similar game to my Incan Gold tactics - safety first; making it back to the sub in all three rounds. I think Ian did similar. Andrew definitely drowned once, possibly twice. But he still remained competitive, which is quite impressive if you're dead:

Sam 36
Ian 34
Andrew 27

panicking

And with that, the evening really did end. They managed to find the front door, so I'm hopeful they both made it home...

Anything You Bandu I Bandu better

A cold Thursday night, and Katy was baby sitting Arthur at Adam and Hannah’s. Possibly without their knowing, Katy invited the GNN crowd around to keep her company but only I, Ian, could make it.

Being just the two of us it was a fairly quiet affair, but it made choosing games relatively easy as there was only a limited number of games that either of us felt we knew well enough. After my attempts to get Katy to play Railways of the World were met with reluctance, we instead chose Castles of Mad King Ludwig.

Whilst we both enjoy COMKL (as all the cool kids are calling it), we agreed that this particular game felt like it ended rather quickly; a bit anticlimactic. I couldn’t shake the feeling that we’d missed some rules, but as far as we could tell we played it all correctly.

I fell into the trap of chasing my bonus cards (bonus points for circular and downstair rooms), when instead I should have been looking elsewhere. Katy completed far more rooms than I, which gave her almost double the number of points I had. The results came in:

Katy 50

Ian 28

After that I suggested Hive, and after a quick read up of the rules we were away. I still think Hive (a game whose title can’t be contracted any further. “HV”, maybe?) is a rather clever game, with a tension that builds in an almost chess like manner.

This time, my own defenses were a bit slow to react to Katy’s attack, and I realized a little to late what she had planned. My own bugs were too far away to stop her circling my Queen.

Katy wins

Ian does not

Next, Deep Sea Adventure was mooted. Katy couldn’t recall if it worked well with two people, so we thought we’d find out. Turns out it works rather well, although it was a death-light game, with only Katy running out of air once in the three rounds.

I played fairly conservatively whilst Katy was a little more daring, being the only player to dive deep enough into the abyss to collect a three-dot tile. If the tiles had been shuffled differently she could have easily have won, but she did not.

Ian 38

Katy 34

It should be mentioned that Arthur had been sleeping quietly throughout the evening, to the point where we wondered if he’d somehow wandered off somewhere. But we felt confident enough that we’d notice a small child roaming around, and played on.

Push It was next. We used four pucks each, and rather arbitrarily decided to play to sixteen. We also played a possibly-not-official rule that if you had all four pucks closest to the jack, you would score four points. We also decided that knocking the jack off the table would result in minus two points.

The table surface proved challenging, having a high friction, so many of our shots came up short, whilst others went flying well past their mark. So, a usual game of Push It.

At one point I did manage to get all four pucks closest to the jack and in another round Katy knocked the jack off the table once, both of which helped give me the win.

Ian 16

Katy 10

There seemed to be time for one more game, so I suggested Bandu.

This game of Bandu is the main reason why we felt it was worth recording the night. My tower featured some rather impressive balancing, even if I do say so myself. Katy agreed, and at one point seemed more interested in seeing my tower succeed than winning herself!

But I’ll let the pictures speak for themselves. Behold.

The photos make it seem less impressive

Whoooaaaarra!

Somehow Katy’s tower (which I didn’t take any pictures of, though a fine construction it was) toppled before my unlikely creation succumbed to physics.

Ian wins

Katy does not

Around this point Arthur stirred, possibly awoken, though hopefully not, by the sound of wooden blocks clattering onto a table.

Mechs and the single girl

...With an eagle on her arm. But more about Scythe later.

This week’s games night began as a sparse affair. Just Sam (host), Katy and myself meeting up at half seven. With the promise of Ian and Adam at around 8.30, what should we play to fill the fifty-seven minutes or so (after we’d dispensed with the chit-chat)? We decided Istanbul would be a game that would test our minds and also fit easily into that time.

If only Sam and I had known quite how easily...

While we busied ourselves with building up our wheelbarrows, Katy shuffled between the black market and the palace, slowly getting gems. Then she sped off towards the gem dealer, with plenty of cash in reserve. Then Sam realised she had a “gem dealer times two” card and was about to end the game. And there wasn’t anything we could do to stop her.

Sam's wheelbarrow

And Katy's

Katy 5 gems
Sam 3 plus cash tie-breaker
Andrew 3

So with the spare time, Katy suggested Deep Sea Adventure. And with no one to say that it was the wrong number of players, Sam and I agreed. We dove, collected, returned to the submarine. Well, Sam did. Katy and I died an early death in round one.

Then Adam arrived, so we instantly included him in the roster, and a little yellow man was added to the crew while Adam was still taking his shoes off. We didn’t think he’d mind starting on zero since, in this case, he was still joint second.

Adam died in round two, while the rest of us got back safely. Then in round three, Sam (clearly winning) simply loaded himself up with treasure, used up all the oxygen and so we all expired.

Sam 23
Andrew 11
Katy 8

And Adam got no points at all, but I can’t put him on the leaderboard since he wasn’t there/paying attention for about fifty percent of the game.

With Ian on the way, we decided to go crazy and give Scythe a go. Katy was the only person who hadn’t played it, so Sam went through the rules.

By the end, Ian had arrived and got settled while Katy looked decidedly unsettled at what lay before her.

I was Nordic something, the blue tribe and a recent favourite. Adam wanted to be yellow but was sitting in the wrong place and had to make do with red. Katy was black, Ian white, Sam yellow.

With five players, there’s a lot less space on the board and, as you’d expect, more fighting. Six battles raged over the course of the game. Movement was fraught with dangers and the encounters apparently at more of a premium. Sam happily took two points off his popularity, ploughing through two of my workers to get to the last on the board.

Adam spread out, slowly but steadily, a veritable red menace. Sam remained concentrated near his base. Katy sighed as she tried to get her head around the rules. Ian also bemoaned his lot, stuck almost exclusively in his three opening hexes. With no metal to make mechs, he spent a lot of time repeating the same actions.

As the game progressed, so Katy became more proficient and Ian got out, by using a mine. Adam took control of the centre hex. Sam spread out and I became hemmed in, stuck behind Sam’s, Ian’s and Adam’s forces, and mostly sulking in the lakes by the end of the game.

Adam finally triggered the end of the game by producing his eighth worker, and getting a sixth star. The scoring produced a surprise for everyone, with Ian coming in first, despite having never built a single mech. How this analogue, tech-free lifestyle ever worked, we’ll never know.

Ian 73
Sam 64
Adam 58
Katy 41
Andrew 38

With the hour just past eleven, we packed up and set off.

Katy leads the Division for Medal Table and Points, while Ian’s win at Scythe propels him into first in Points Ratio.