That's How You Make Your Wife

The evening began with card tricks. Joe started things by showing Louie how he could predict a jack coming out of some dice rolls and a clutch of calculus. 'The secret's in the maths' he confirmed later, although he never elucidated on why he got the suit wrong. "I was distracted" was the most he'd let on. 

Louie returned the favour. He broke the deck into several piles, shuffled them about, and predicted a nine, which duly appeared. There was an impressed moment and I wondered if maybe Anja would produce a rabbit from somewhere, but it transpired instead that it was time for Hot Streak. 

We were at the full eight by this time: as well as our hosts and Joe, Martin, Adam, Pete and myself (Sam) were also perched around the table. Anja - who hadn't played before - had a concern she didn't really understand what was happening. "It doesn't matter" Martin said. Hot Streak is that kind of game. 

Pete got off to a flyer with two big payouts in race one. But he was less effective thereafter, with Adam and Martin looking like the racers to beat. I played my usual ineffective strategies in races one and two before pulling off a surprise payout in the third race. Adam scored highest overall, and when Martin said no-one was interested in the scores, he chimed in "I am". So the positions below are 'the positions' although perhaps more intriguing for the combination of Martin reading the stories from the results book and my phone trying and failing to make sense of them. 

Adam 61 - your legal defence fund for having shaved ass into the horn of the mare poodle
Sam 57 - to an old woman who cracked them into a fine cloak of good fortune at all Will and Don’t you look handsome in it 
Pete 49 - you book studio time I saw what I’m pretty sure it was a hot runaround
Louie 40 - do you use your winnings to buy a copy of the streak by John Perry and CMYK? You enjoy playing it for years with friends and family.
Anja 32 your winnings goes straight into gobbler College fund
Joe 28 - Mart corner you in the parking lot and that’s how you make your wife
Steve 22, -you mail your winnings to your niece who uses them to buy a sweet butterfly knife to do tricks with
Martin 23 - you finally have enough money to fulfil your dream of buying a used copy of Tony Hawks downhill jam for the Xbox 360 so you do it

Hot Streak's always fun - especially with Joe's bespoke playlist - but with 8 of us it does feel like the races are only about a third of the actual game. We moved on. With Louie's bedtime looming, how much longer could he spend with us? Steve announced "Twenty minutes. Fifteen minutes. Ten minutes" and it wasn't clear if he was indecisive or just living life at a faster speed than the rest of us. Regardless, we set up Cobra Paw, the game of rolling two dice and trying to be first to snatch the matching tile off the table - or each other. 

"How does it end?" I asked Steve.

"I don't know" he admitted. Then he looked up the rules and said first to have seven tiles instantly wins. We began rolling and snatching and it only took about four minutes for Anja to get six tiles, at which point Steve said she had won. We all insisted he'd said first to seven, Steve was sure he had said six, but either way it made no difference: Anja was Queen Cobra and Louie was Prince of the Duvet. On the other side of the table, they were playing Big Shot. 

I know nothing of this except it's by Alex Randolph (of Xe Queo and Raj) and consists of auctions. I like the look of that board too; the picture makes me want to play Sardegna again. When Cobra Paw finished they were deep into <whatever it was> and will hopefully illuminate us as to what happened in the comments. Meantime we played Bella Vista. 

Bella Vista has a randomised set-up to create the board and then over 8 rounds we all place our 8 buildings  on it (in the three-player game, the last-to-go also places a building of the unoccupied fourth colour). There's two end-game objectives: in our play last night, it was buildings at the border of the city and buildings in clusters - and some in-game objectives in the form of contracts: have two buildings next to the river, or one building in each blue neighbourhood - that kind of thing. If you qualify for a contract at the end of your turn, you can take it for the cash/points value at the end of the game. 

Turn order is critical: often two or more of us are in pole position for a contract. But going earlier in turn order means paying for the privilege, and in a game where cash and points are the same thing you can end up paying 6 coins to complete a contract worth 8 coins. I made a critical error late-on, thinking I had the four-buildings-on-borders contract sewn up and not spotting Steve could swoop in and grab it - which is what he did. 

Steve 110

Sam 106

Anja 105

We wrapped up at exactly the same time as Big Shot, with Martin happiest about the scores. 

Martin 38

Joe 33

Adam 12

Pete 5

Pete seemed sanguine about Martin pointing out he started the game with twice as much cash as he ended it with. They all seemed broadly approving, in fact. But now we rejigged, with Adam, Anja and Joe playing Spots... 

And the rest of us choosing between dnup and Gang of Dice. I said as I'd chosen Bella Vista I'd stay out of the debate and went off to the bathroom. I returned through the kitchen, where Anja was treated to me saying 'so they make these bottles with extra large labels' repeatedly to my phone, as it refused to understand the text I was trying to send to my niece. I have basically become reliant on technology that terminally misconstrues me. Meantime they'd chosen dnup.

This game's mental gymnastics exist within a simple framework, but they are still mental. However on a second play things felt a little more malleable to me - marginally less chaotic. And Steve won the first round despite being bamboozled anyway. We were briefly distracted by Joe being sad, but otherwise mesmerised by dnup's weirdness: I won the second and third round to take the game...

Sam 5

Steve 2

Martin/Pete 1 each

And Spots ended at the same time. Joe had rallied from his serial busting enough to claim second, but clearly Adam had run away with it like a dog with a bone. 

Adam 6

Joe 3

Anja 2

And with 11 o'clock nearing us, we wrapped things up for the night, with So Clover making a rare non-appearance. Despite that bombshell, a very fun evening. Thanks all!

Who’s on Third?

Tuesday at Joe’s. I arrived at the same time as Adam T and Joe lead us downstairs to his kitchen, we were greeted by a group of five more eager gamers, Ian, Martin, Adam H, Katy and Sam. The scent of peanuts filled the air as two nut-based snacks sat in bowls in the middle of the table. As an octet we decided to play a game together and Triangulation was brought to the table.

In this game a clue-giver writes three clues to try and make his team guess a word (always a Proper Noun) but in such a way that the opposing team can’t guess the word when given two of those clues, chosen at random. Joe, Adam H, Katy and Sam lined up on one side of the table and Ian, Martin, Adam T and myself were on the other.

Joe started the game and the first clue to be revealed was “Rusty.” Blank looks all round. I suggested Mad Max, so we went with that. This caused a certain amount of deliberation from Joe before he said no. This made us think that this might be somehow related to Mad Max - an assumption not entirely disproven by the next clue “Dusty.”

In fact the answer was Springfield. Joe had misremembered the name Krusty the Clown as Rusty, hence the confusion. I had a similar experience on my turn. I chose Stan Lee but then couldn’t remember if he was Marvel or DC. I felt fairly sure it wasn’t DC so my clues were Marvel, Origin and Pauper - the third clue based on Stan Lee being screwed over by Marvel.

Another source of confusion was when Martin’s first clue was “Third” and Sam wondered if it was an allusion to the famous “Who’s on third” comedy routine by the Three Stooges, until he realised he meant “Who’s on first” by Abbot and Costello.

Martin, Ian, Adam T and Andrew 4

Sam, Katy, Joe and Adam H 1

After this, we split into two. At one end was Spyrium, a game that harked back to a time when every board game had a cyber punk aesthetic and was all about building engines, and me, Ian, AdamsT and H set up to play. 

The other players chose Bella Vista, a game with an appropriate name as they all build up their delightful multistory somewhat Parisian apartment blocks across a city according to a varying set of rules. 

Katy ended up a clear winner, reflecting her desire to make a better world. In this case, one full of parks.

Katy 104

Martin 90

Joe 78

Sam 70

Spyrium played out as you may expect. Ian and I went for points while the two Adams seemed content to sit on zero points for most of the first two rounds. Of course, the two Adams had just been toying with us. While my final round involved no building at all and a desperate attempt at converting anything in my reserve into points, both Adams still seemed to have a plan and the money to complete it. Adam T’s experience gave him the edge over H’s innate sense of how to win a game.

Adam T 62

Adam H 55

Andrew 51

Ian 46

And then I left. Only two games, but still a full evening. As I left, Sam, Katy, Joe and Martin were playing Dnup. It was a card game where you have the opportunity to turn your hand of cards upside down, which would give you a whole new set of numbers to play with. I know little else about it, including the scores.

But thanks all, it was special.