Rome burned, onions wept

Seven gamers and Joe's kitchen table came together this week in a resounding crash of bonhomie and rivalry. Joe, Sam, Martin, Ian, Adam T, Katy and me were all seated by 7.30 and we began with all of us collaborating in a game of Belratti.

This Dixit-ish game of detecting conscious choices from random chance is a firm favourite but are we getting to good? Since discussing our choices is not allowed, Sam hit upon a method of giving his cards a percentage according to how good a match they were for one of the two targets. This was quickly adopted by all of us except Katy who refused to reduce her art to a mere number.

We did well but, also, we got lucky. We linked wasp to a clapperboard because they had stripes, only for Adam to tell us that the real link was B-Movie. Too smart for us. And despite a lengthy discussion as to what was better matched to mouth: bread or cigarette, we got it wrong. Bread should have gone with the other topic - tiger. Tiger bread, you see. Well done, Martin. Sorry we didn't get it.

Us 21
Belratti 6

Then we split into two groups. The Was Sticht gang (Joe, Ian, Adam and me) regrouped for another attempt at the wily trick taker while Katy, Martin and Sam sat around the card table for a feisty game of Senators.

Was Sticht started hesitantly, with Ian having to have two attempts at explaining who won which trick during the opening matrix stage. Then the game was remarkable for a large number of no trumps, and for round three when I dealt out no green cards at all in the first half of the matrix.

The game was much smoother this time, with Joe cleverly choosing his cards according to one of the criteria ("no tricks", "no green cards," etc) he needed to complete.

But I won again! Is this the game for me? It was close, though.

Andrew 3 plus 16 on the tiebreaker
Joe 3 plus 13
Ian 2
Adam 1

While we finished that, the card table gang finished Senators and two other games too. From what I can gather, Martin was in the lead and then saw a sudden collapse in support, followed by the third war ending the game in dramatic fashion.

Katy 11
Sam 10
Martin 9

They followed this up with Heul Doch Mau Mau. I don't know what variant they were playing but when Martin said "balls!" in frustration, Katy replied "hairy or shaved?" I didn't note Martin's answer but judging by the final score, his frustration can't have lasted long.

Martin 114
Katy 85
Sam 83

They also managed to squeeze in one round of the word game Handsome. Sam won.

Sam 3
Katy 1
Martin 1

Then there was a period of reshuffling, with four crossword wizards (Sam, Adam, Joe and Martin) going head to head over a game of Montage. Although Sam did apologize beforehand that anyone paired with him would lose.

I tried to listen in to make notes but the only clue I heard was "Donkey" and its answer was "Ass". But I'm sure the rest of the clues were brilliant.

Joe and Martin won!
Sam and Adam didn't.

The rest of us played Downfall of Pompeii, which needed a little rule refresher but was otherwise smooth sailing. We were a little surprised when the rules told us that the owner of the game should set everything up but, since Joe was already playing Montage, we struggled on without him.

It was a memorable game Katy who got one Omen card after another, allowing her to throw her opponents into the volcano. She ended with no meeples left to put on the board when, luckily, Vesuvius erupted. I wonder if I got the Relative Rule wrong but it was wrong for all of us, so never mind.

It was enormous fun pushing lava into the path of our opponents so they died a fiery death. Kathy's early advantage lead to her victor.

Katy 7
Ian 6
Andrew 5

Around this time Adam left and the remaining three bashed out a quick game of Eggs Of Ostrich to fill the time until Pompeii was covered in lava.

Martin 11
Joe 6
Sam 3

Then the six of us played Stinker. Winning entries that I managed to write down were...

Why is a good man hard to find? Polio Death (Ian)
What's under the Pope's hat? Courgettes (Joe)
The name of a fairy tale? Alana and the Bum (Martin)
How to tell someone they have bad breath? Smell toilet to compare. (Katy)

Don't recall the category for this one.

Martin 32
Joe 27
Katy 25
Sam 24
Andrew 11
Ian 9

Then Sam and Ian left, while the final four played on past the eleventh hour with a rousing game of Krass Kariert, the card game of no winners, just losers. We all lost one life in the four rounds that we played and so we called it a draw and went home rejoicing in our shared non-defeat.

Handsome beyond words

With mass absences ruling out Tuesday's gaming, we gathered together on a Thursday for our weekly fix. There were five of us around Joe's freshly cleaned kitchen table: Joe himself, Sam, Ian, Martin and me. Martin was itching to get started, having not played any games for ages and we began with some light hearted luck pushing with Push.

Deal yourself some cards, avoiding duplicates of colour or number, making up to three columns to help you avoid going bust. You choose which column to keep but, and here's the twist, your neighbours get the other two columns. Added to this is the little matter of the die which, when rolled, requires you to discard all of your cards of the colour showing on the die.

It's a fun game, where a lot of the fun is watching other people struggle with bad luck. Especially if the person in question is Martin. "Random nonsense!" he declared as the die sliced away another high scoring set of cards from his collection while leaving the rest of us relatively unscathed. He couldn't even take solace in his beer since his regular subscription ales were nasty sweet tasting novelty flavours.

Ian and I both banked cards to keep them safe and when Ian did suffer at the hands of the die, he was able to shrug off losing twelve points with a unconcerned "I can live with that." But it turned out to be pivotal.

Andrew 64
Ian 56
Joe 41
Sam 38
Martin 29

After this we played the Dixit / Face Cards type game of Belratti. We only had the rules in German, so Martin searched for the English version online.

In this, we are artists and collectors. We all have a hand of nine cards with pictures of objects and then two more picture cards are revealed, indicating the topics that the collectors want in their art works. But in among these hand picked cards are four randomly drawn pictures by Belratti, the famous painter of forgeries. Picking his cards instead of ours is a minus point and six of them will end the game in defeat.

We began optimistically by declaring that Sam and Ian (our two painters) could successfully chose six paintings to sell to me, Martin and Joe. To cut a long story short, they couldn't. Belratti snuck three of his paintings into the deal. He was already halfway to beating us and we never recovered. We had only nine pictures successfully identified when Belratti hit six which, according to the score sheet, is "a picture of misery."

Next up, we needed something more meaty to go with the just-opened crisps. Northern Pacific was introduced to me as a simple but mean train game set in the US. Put your cubes in the city where the train is going to be sometime in the future, but all the other players are doing the same. In doing so, alliances are forged and rivalries are cemented.

It was a difficult game to judge and we all struggled with the problem of trying to make a move that doesn't immediately make people move the train elsewhere. Joe stoutly defended himself against any accusations that he was taking a "Joe turn" pointing out we'd all had moments of excess pondering. It was a bit mean of us since he was in last at the time and needed a decent round to get back into contention, which he got.

In fact it ended very close. After leading for rounds one and two, Martin found himself caught by Sam right at the end, despite his great joke about dropping a big one in Butte.

Sam 21
Martin 20 (fewer wasted cubes)
Andrew 20 (more wasted cubes)
Joe 19
Ian 18

With the news that England were winning 3-0 against Norway in the Women's World Cup ringing in our ears, we played L. A. M. A. The fun game of picking up or putting down cards. So simple yet so amusing. I adopted the role of cock blocker for this game. I suggested that Martin should start and then, having checked his cards, he immediately had to pick up. Then I kept ruining Sam's plans with a sequence of moves that kept increasing the value of the cards past the one he wanted.

Joe played a clear round and got to put back a ten. He also went to the toilet and while he was away we complained about how long he was taking over his turn. Hilarious. But he had the last laugh with a decisive win.

Joe 11
Martin 32
Andrew 34
Ian 39
Sam 46

At this point, Ian set off home but we were still very much in the zone. We tried Kami, a very pretty Japanese themed game from France (I think) which was simple, although with a frustratingly opaque rule sheet that spent more time telling us the characters’ back story than how to play the game.

The basic jist is that one player plays an attack card and the next player has to play the same card (or an empress) to counter it and then they can play an attack card of their own. Winning team (you play in pairs) is decided by the first person to play all eight cards in their hand. It seemed simple and a bit random. The winning total is supposed to be fifteen but when Joe and I ran into a 9-0 lead after two rounds, the game was ended.

After this we played Handsome, An Elegant Word Game. This game comes in a tiny pack and it concerns making words from the five communal cards in the middle (one supplied by each player and one drawn randomly at the start) and the two cards in each players’ hand. Only consonants are supplied, so you have to come up with the longest word using whatever vowels you choose. In the “party variant” consonants can be repeated. These people party hard.

Sam was in his element, winning on QUASHED. I just checked and we owe Joe an apology since HELIXES is a valid plural of HELIX, which would have got him an extra point for longest word that round. Martin was all musical, starting with VOGUED and JIVE while I was channeling my inner fisherman with WHELKS and an underwhelming (and non-scoring) BOX.

Sam 11
Joe 8
Martin 7
Andrew 4

Finally, we had another go at Belratti. This time we stuck to low numbers of paintings to match to our topics, and we made sure to use those useful special action cards. With this, we did far better. I clearly thought that either familiarity or a smaller player count had improved matters but what I said was “This is so much better without Ian!” Then they insisted I blog that, so here I am. Sorry, Ian. Didn’t mean it.

Joe, Sam, Andrew and Martin 16
Belratti 3

A marvelous way to end the evening and set off into the hot June night. See you all soon, I hope.