Hemmed in by Chocolate

I arrived in deepest Easton at about 8, along with Ian and together we looked over Steve and Anja’s collection, pondering the opportunities of a really stodgy Eurogame while Martin was out of the country. Snowdonia, perhaps? Even Keyflower?!

Then Katy and Joe arrived and with the two hosts and Louie joining us for the first game, our ensemble was complete. Steve went upstairs to get two chairs from the loft and Louise broke open his Easter egg while other chocolately comestibles were scattered around such that he couldn’t reach anything once we started playing (hence the blog title). 

We began with The Detective Club, a curious game of Dixit plus deduction. Each players has a hand of six cards containing a surreal illustration, and the Active Player in a round chooses two of their cards that have a certain theme linking them. They play one card face up for us all to see and then they write this word on a number of tiny note pads and hand it out to the other players so that they can chose cards that also match the theme. Except one player (the Conspirator) has a blank pad – they have to guess what the theme is and play cards they think best fit.

Then the theme is revealed and everyone has to explain their choices. This can require some high level creativity on the part of the Conspirator. Or not. Katy was a surprisingly bad conspirator, so bad that people almost thought she must be genuine. “Do you want to look at my cards?” she protested after she tried to convince us that a bee in her picture related to beehive, which was a kind of hairstyle which somehow related to the target word: hat. And it wasn't even a bee, it was a fly.

Steve did that old mistake of looking at the wrong page of the pad and so for the first round he thought he was the conspirator. Turns out, he makes an excellent Conspirator because no one suspected him. Meanwhile, Joe made sure everyone kept their hands at 6 cards with constant reminders to draw from the pack, and he even considered a variant where players without six cards would be disqualified.

Steve's cards for "mouse"

Ian 13

Andrew 11

Katy 8

Joe 6

Louie 4

Steve 3

Anja 0

Then Louie went up to bed. I was keeping an eye on the clock since I had to leave at about 10.30 to pick up a friend from the station. L.A.M.A was considered for a while but then discarded in favour of a decadent opulent simul-play of two copies of Mille Fiori. Katy declared that she was looking for someone who can beat her at this and she, Joe and Ian set up at one end of the table. I was with Steve and Anja which I was a bit apprehensive about since Steve is known for his lengthy pontifications but it turns out I needn’t have worried. He played so swiftly that I started to feel bad that I’d made him play out of character.

As for the games,  early on Steve and Katy sped off into such a big lead that they started comparing scores in a sort of cross-table challenge to be overall champion. Our game was very ship-based at the start and then I went big on keys while Steve and Anja tended to monopolise the food cupboards (you know, that bit of the board with biscuits, fish and broccoli).

In the end it literally couldn’t have been closer on our board with Anja and I sharing a dead heat.

Anja 199

Andrew 199

Steve 184

Katy 211

Joe 197

Ian 175

Ian seemed ambivalent about Mille Fiori's charms after his second turn. At this point, I dashed out of the door towards Temple Meads and the final five ended the evening with L.A.M.A.

Anja 9

Katy 14

Joe 27

Steve 33

Ian 49

Thanks all, it was special.

We Are Detectives

 When I arrived at Sam’s at eight, I found that the gamers already present (Sam, Joe, Laura, Martin, Ian and Katy) had just finished a round of Swat. It was suggested that I could just be dealt in and work out the rules as I go, especially since Martin was still on zero points, but I declined and watched. I absolutely would not have been able to work out what was going on. A number of cards, bad and good, are dealt out face up and when a player decides they want them, they slap the table. Like Ra, Joe explained, only more stressful. Martin made a decent comeback, but no one could catch Mr Consistency Ian. Although Sam almost did.

Ian 60

Sam 58

Martin 40

Laura 39

Joe 32

Katy 29

Then Katy left and won’t be seen again for a while as she goes on a cycling trip which is part of her Land’s End to John O’Groats journey (not being done all at once, of course).

The six of us then played The Detective Club, a game in a tin box. This is like Dixit except that there’s a word that the pictures have to relate to that everyone except one person knows - we are given the word on a little pad of paper, but the imposter gets a pad with nothing written on it. We chose two pictures (from a hand of six cards) and the word is revealed. At this point we have to explain our thinking behind our choices and then we decide who the imposter is.

In the first round this was made tricky by Martin turning to the wrong page on his pad, seeing nothing written, he assumed he was the imposter. Only after he chose his first picture did he see the word “message” on the back of the pad. This caused confusion and allowed the real imposter, Joe, to get away scott free. I don’t remember who the other imposters were but I have a clear memory of Ian mumbling some non-sequitors about why his picture meant “blockage” and also of Laura picking a card seemingly solely because she liked the spaghetti War Of The Worlds type monster on it. We stopped after three rounds.

Joe 11

Ian 6

Sam 4

Andrew 3

Martin 3

Laura 0

Now we split into two. Laura, Sam and Martin played Quirky Circuits which is, I’m told, like The Mind crossed with Robo Rally. I didn’t keep a track of how things went but Martin told me they’d completed all of the tracks they attempted.

Joe, Ian and I played Nidavellir. Ian had played it before on Board Game arena, but this was his first go with a physical set. And it was very physical in that it required quite a lot of setting up and fairly constant upkeep. The idea is to bid on cards and so collect sets of dwarves to score points. There is a theme. I think you’re building an army or something.

It was fun, once it got going and most of the icons are pretty straight forward. There was one card with so many icons it looked like someone had punched the keyboard while typing in Wingdings, so we ignored it.

Joe 293

Ian 269

Andrew 234

After Quirky Circuits ended Laura went home and Martin and Sam banged out a quick two-player Cross Clues. They were lucky to have “doctor” which linked nicely to Foot, Eye and Pig. I didn’t get all the clues but was impressed by “Achilles” for “Foot” and “Arrow” and “Barbeque” for “Zoo” and “Cook”.

Sam and Martin 19 points

Then I stayed up extra late, keen to play my first game of So Clover. I’d seen it often enough that I knew what was going on, but I had to be careful not to externalise my frustration when they guessed my clues somehow missing that “Tower” and “Bridge” go together quite well. Similarly we must have been completely discombobulated trying to get answers for Sam's clue "grey" that we missed the easy tap-in of "Guardian" and "magazine".

 But we did okay. 22 points in the end.

And then I left at almost quarter to eleven! They were setting up another game of So Clover and then played Cross Clues and Rosetta.

Thanks all. See you next Tuesday.