They eventually arrived - Joe generously supplying milk for Sally's tea - and embarked on a journey of temple exploration with Joe's update on Incan Gold: Diamant. I made like a chicken and exited early several times, whilst the others pushed their luck.
chests, not tents
With no Zombie Ladies in Diamant, it fell to the snakes and spiders to do for them. However, Ian managed to pip me and Joe at the finishing post:
Ian 21
Joe/Sam 20
Andy 13
Katy 9
Ben 8
We embarked on big discussion over what to play. It was just like old times, when we couldn't choose between Stone Age and Notre Dame. With nobody in demonstrative mood, it took Andy's generosity to allow the rest of us to finally choose two games, neither of which he was eager to play. He joined Joe and Ben on the Isle of Skye, whilst Katy, Ian and I set up Scythe.
Early doors
While Joe explained the rules to Andy and Ben, the three of us began exploring, producing and encountering with surprising speed. Ian (blue) spread his workers early and upgraded first, Katy (black) managed to enlist rather quickly, whilst I decided to produce all my workers and generate a bunch of stuff to faff about with. By mid-game it looked like Ian wasn't going to be competitive, as he bemoaned his performance and flung up his hands - metaphorically - in defeat.
Katy and I pushed on, and got ourselves both within a furlong of the finishing line. I decided to end the game before Katy could, because although I controlled the central hex, I wasn't 100% sure who would win, and letting her have one more turn would only increase the likelihood that it wasn't me.
We added up using a mixture of calculator and my mental arithmetic, and at first I though Katy had won. But Katy to her credit insisted we do the sums properly, and it turned out I had:
Sam 68
Katy 63
Ian 39
Isle of Skye had finished only ten minutes before us, with the scores at
Joe 86
Ben 70
Andy 56
They'd started another game which I saw nothing of, called Land Unter. Joe won that too:
Joe 8
Andy/Ben 3
While we bashed out a quick game of Pairs. Katy won that, with yet another tie for second:
Katy 21
Ian/Sam 15
before we joined together again for a game of Get Bit, the game of pirates swimming away from a shark before it eats them. I introduced it as the most random game I own, and confessed that I'd finished 2nd over the weekend playing Dirk. Joe and Andy embraced the idea of playing Dirk (it really is random) but it didn't work out quite so well for them, as they were first eaten:
1 Ian
2 Sam
3 Katy
4 Ben
5 Joe
6 Andy
Maybe it's not so random...
Katy, sans legs
We finished with For Sale, which went badly wrong for me in the first part of the game when I paid massively over the odds for the 12 card. Then in the auction phase I bid my low cards when no-one else did! While I was floundering around metaphorically the others were compensating by dropping their counters all over the floor in sympathy. But back in the world of the game, Joe picked up another win to see out the night!
Joe 53
Katy 52
Andy 50
Ian 46
Sam 39
We'll need Andrew's magic fingers to see how the leaderboard is affected, but it was a good night for Joe!
