99% Perspiration

It was a hot and sweaty night. Although thunder distantly rumbled, the vice-like warmth didn't break, and five of us sat in the kitchen grateful for the occasional blessings of an oscillating fan. With the darkness came a slight relief - but not much. It was like an African evening in a sweltering, conspiratorial Graham Greene novel - only with less espionage and more German post. 

But I get ahead of myself. Joe was early and so with 20 minutes at our disposal, we disposed of them with a crack at Letterpress. I'd recently had a harrowing game against Adam, scoring only 8 points (-bad for round one, let alone the deciding round five finale) and the early showings weren't good as Joe won rounds one and two and picked up a couple of challenge cards: he had six letters to my two at this point. But I rallied somewhat, and though Joe's final word was more stylish - VARSITIES - I picked up a redemptive (narrow) win with SCRAGGING. 

As we compared hands, Pete and Adam arrived, followed shortly by Ian. I suggested we start the evening proper with a frippery, and everyone was amenable to 1AM Jailbreak. This is a Saashi card-shedder where we are allegedly trying to escape all our prisoners (our hand of cards) out of jail and into the tunnel (the table). Despite playing it as recently as last week I was hazy on a couple of rules - I blame the heat - but fortunately Pete and Joe were on hand to help me out.

 

Over the three rounds Joe proved to be best escape artist, as he loosed all his prisoners from chokey every time. His only competition was Adam, as the rest of us appeared incapable of using a spade. I'm blaming going to get the fan on this one. 

1 Joe 
2 Adam
3 Pete
4 Ian
5 Sam

We looked at the stack of 5-player games I'd brought in and wondered if it was too hot for Hansa Teutonica. Or if it would be too long. Or if we'd be done by 9pm (this last one was a gamer's joke, unfit for any other scenario). But there was a general swing towards it so we set up and clarified a couple of fuzzy edge-cases, remembering everything else apart from the fact if you get extra actions you get them straight away - you really had to be there, it was dramatic. 

Initially we mostly split by geography. Outside of the classic fighting over Gottingden Joe focused on the north and me the south, with the others running interference on both. I scored the first point, but if I had ideas that this meant I was in the running - and it didn't - I was swiftly caught and overtaken by Joe. Despite Ian's best efforts to get in his way, he managed to get a little scoring route together in the north-west and starting eking out points. 

Joe (red) takes the lead. Ian (fingers) is just about to move 

him further up the track as well

I was last to get myself up to three actions and paid the price, spending much of the mid-game feeling underpowered as Adam spent his four - and then five! - across the table from me. Although he scored precious little from the route-building he seemed to have timed things well, and spent the last act powering his way across the board. 

But it wasn't enough to catch Joe, who'd juggled the various challenges of HT with aplomb, building a big lead through his routes and developing the joint-largest network. Pete's plans to connect the east-west postal route fell apart - "I've gone wrong" he said, like an early AI postman - and Ian realised that he had no network at all. 

Joe 42
Adam 33
Sam 32
Pete 29
Ian 25

A stone-cold classic - great to play again and it definitely suits five. 

It did take a wee while though - it was past nine now - and it was still hot. We collectively determined we had one more game in us and it would be So Clover. We opened with three sixes - Ian, Pete and myself - but were foxed by Joe's clue of rummers. Joe suggested we could google it but we weren't sure that was in the rules. We were also too hot and lazy. And so we missed glasses/pirate, not knowing a rummer is a glass and being sidetracked by my fixation on the Rummer pub in town, which I thought might be green. Or possibly grey. Sorry Joe. We ended on a 4 with Adam's clover, thrown by the fact he'd written Hoodlum for hood. "I only realised when you said it" said Adam. What with the heat, it was that kind of night. 

25/30 - not terrible by any means. A very fun night - two years and a day since my last play of Hansa Teutonica! Let's not leave it that long again... Thanks all 

Orbital Problems

A Saturday evening of games kicked off with Andrew and I watching the tail end of the FA Cup. Once upon a time the cup final would have felt like a seismic event to us, but in these days of country-financed football clubs and billionaire playthings, the sheen has worn off and rather than watch the post-match trophy-lifting and back-patting, we played Kingdomino. I forgot to take any photos, but Adam arrived as we hit the home straight and I took a reasonably convincing win. We set up Caldera Park and Ian arrived to join us, kicking off the night proper with a quartet of gamers, surrounded by washing. 

I don't actually remember who won Caldera Park. I think it was Andrew by a hair, as Ian fell foul of particularly bad weather and I of misplaced confidence. It was something like 

Andrew 183

Adam 182

Sam 135

Ian 120

There followed a flurry of game propositions where we finally alighted on Hansa Teutonica. And what an epic this was, as we serially irked each other via the medium of desk enhancements, like competitive IKEAing. 

Adam looked to be building a decent network as again Ian lagged. Andrew was stuck on two actions for long enough that I stopped worrying about him. A dreadful mistake, as misplaced confidence© once again bit me on the arse. Andrew's network plus his east-west connections sent him soaring to a convincing win. Ian staged a good recovery too, whilst Adam was probably over-targeted, his reputation preceding him:

Andrew 46

Sam 40

Ian 39

Adam 37

Great to play this again, I really think it merits more table-time on a Tuesday. But if we thought we had tamed Adam, oh boy did we have another think coming. After chips - which Adam charitably went to get - we set up Orbit: The International Space Race. This hasn't been seen in a while but the rules are hardly complex. What makes the game tricky is the constant planet movement and the forward-planning aspect that tacticians like Ian and dice-chucking fuckwits like me do not shine at. 

Perversely though, I got off to a good start. Whilst Adam complained that we were all doing his achievements, and thus depriving him of points, I pulled off all of mine and had some security and time to pick up missions. Weirdly, Adam was doing this too - despite having rockets that moved incredibly slowly, he seemed to spend a prodigious amount of turns picking up cards and making quietly and worryingly approving noises at them. Meantime my cards said things like Return from Neptune, Ride a Comet, or Make A Rocket From Twigs. Worse, Andrew and Ian started barreling up the track too, eating into my early lead, as Adam's murmurs of appreciation continued.

Suddenly Adam started scoring. While his rockets were still ponderous in the extreme, his planning department was pissing all over ours and in three turns he scored 21 points. I picked up another Mission card I couldn't do and then the game ended. Ian and Andrew had a couple of Missions each, I had about 6. Adam flipped over something in the region of 20, and most of them scored (when they don't score, they cost you points instead). 

Adam 62
Andrew 40
Sam 39
Ian 18

"I'm never playing this with you again!" I cried accusingly.
"That's what you said last time" said Adam. 

Andrew had to leave, and approaching 10pm, we'd been playing for five hours so the three of us wrapped up with So Clover. After a good start with Ian's clover (a six) things fell apart with mine and Adam's. I couldn't think of a clue for black/frame and ended up writing Van Gogh. One of Adam's clues was Trump, and Ian and I found numerous things that could have gone there, including capital/medusa. We were half-right. A paltry 12/18 in the end, and an underwhelming finale in points terms but, as always, a nice closer. 

Just 11

Steve, Anja and Louie were our hosts last night, and joining them around the table were Ian, Gareth, Adam H, Martin and myself (Sam). Adam T was hopeful of coming but couldn't make it in the end, thankfully not down to me giving him the wrong address. While Anja was completing a job application/getting Lennon settled, we kicked off with Just One. 

And although Martin did some mild cheating, we started pretty well, hitting the marks consistently until too many duplicate clues left Gareth with an uphill task to identify Google, with only the clues Browser and Lens. Perhaps sensing his despair, Molly came to offer comfort. 

But Molly stuck to the rules giving no clues - my photo almost gave it away - and we lost a point. Then somewhere down the line we lost another, leaving us with 11/13, fatefully correlating with the correct address I hadn't sent Adam to. With Anja imminent, we split into two groups playing two short games: whilst Louie, Steve and I played Order Overload: Cafe, Martin introduced the others to Prey Another Day. 

Order Overload: Cafe is all about memory: each round, a bunch of orders are read out and then the order cards are dealt out to the players. Then the co-operative goal is to go around the table and call out the orders you don't have in your hand, and - assuming the orders exist - they get discarded. This continues until any one player is out of cards, meaning the level is complete! On Level 1 this is dead easy, the starting player just needs to remember one of the other orders. But every level the orders multiply, meaning by the time we reach level 6 there are no less than eighteen orders, including the bizarre Iced Coffee with No Ice. 

Another catch is that  if you call a non-existent order - which we all managed to do - you can't call orders any more in that round but can only answer them. Despite Louie's impressive recall, we stalled at level 6. Steve's face was a picture of agony, and he ruminated that he didn't have any truck with fun. 

At the other end of the table there was a similar boisterousness but more at each other and less at our failing brains. Ian won the first game with 6 points, (Martin 4, Gareth and Adam 2 each) then Adam took the second game, which Anja also played in:

Adam 5

Gareth 4

Ian, Martin, Anja 3 each

Not having Andrew's impressive table-wide vision or note-taking habit, I confess I was none the wiser to Prey Another Day at this point, other than Adam insisting it was a game of skill, in a tone that suggested perhaps it wasn't. Who knows? He did win. 

Louie now made his reluctant way to bed - along the floor - and we briefly flirted with Quantum + Noli (3 and 4) before settling on Hansa Teutonica and Aristocracy (4 and 3). 

I was excited to get Hansa played again and pleased for Gareth who had tentatively mooted it more than once in recent weeks. However my pleasure for Gareth was to slowly evaporate, as he took route-building advantage of us repeatedly, by getting in our Teutonic shit. Admittedly he wasn't alone, as this sabotage soon became a table-wide affair. I was so wrapped up in it I forgot to take any pictures of Aristocracy, sorry. That ended before we knew it:

Martin 71

Ian 66

Adam 58 

And also before we knew it, Ian and Adam were out the door - the evening had flown by. Hansa Teutonica, despite always making you feel like you want to do more than you can and each decision a minor agony, also sped by. I pushed Anja over the finish line before anyone could take any more turns, but although it kept me in third ahead of Steve, it wasn't enough to stop Gareth's impressive haul of networking points:

Gareth 42

Anja 35

Sam 25

Steve 21

Clearly Gareth has some kind Martin/Babylonia type knack for HT, and needs to be policed. 

The remainder of us fancied 'one more' game, so Martin brought out Prey Another Day again.

He talked us through the rules, which are like Citadels role-calling mechanic crossed with a competitive version of The Mind. Everyone has a set of (the same) cards and secretly chooses one, before all are called and revealed, starting with the Bear (1) and working up through the numbers - but down through seniority - to the lowly Mouse (5). If more than one person selected the same animal, nothing happens. But if you're the only person to select, say, the Wolf, you can announce which animal you're hunting, and eliminate any players who chose that animal. 

So players are eliminated - or not - until either there's only one player left (2 points!) or every left standing has played three cards, in which case the player with the highest collective value of their animal trio wins: ie, at this point the apex predator Bear is a damn sight less useful. 

Steve had a shocking game, thrice eliminated through hunting and scoring nothing. "That was fun" he said, in the manner of a man leaving the waterboard room.

Gareth 6

Anja 4

Martin 2

Sam 1

Steve 0 

"I could have had an extra 20 minutes sleep" he added, staring accusingly at the table. Nonetheless, he agreed to a rematch. This time it was Martin's turn to be serially dicked over, although he managed to avoid a zero. It came down to Anja and I poised for a win, but it was Anja who pounced:

Anja 6

Gareth and Sam 5

Steve 4 

Martin 2

And with that another marvellous Tuesday came to a close. Thanks all!

We're all the 99%

At 7.45 there were seven of us clustered around Steve and Anja's table: along with Steve and Louie, Joe and I were first to arrive, then Ian, Adam and Martin made it a septet. Lennon made a brief appearance too, but mainly to collect a squidgy toy for bed. At Joe's suggestion, we set up 7 Wonders Architects, one of a clutch of new games in his bag. 

This is like an even-speedier 7 Wonders, or at least it would be with less players. Everyone's cardboard wonder starts scaffold-side up, and as soon as you've the resources to build it it's mandatory to do so, discarding the cards and flipping it over, starting from the bottom and working up - as Louie pointed out, you can't build from the top down in real life either. 

Ian's Big Dude, with pedestals flipped

Flipped wonder sections score points and - as with the original game - may also trigger bonuses. So far, so similar. But rather than drafting cards simultaneously, players take turns taking one card from the decks placed between players face-up, or - as I kept forgetting - from a shared face-down central deck, representing a mini-gamble. Wonder resource needs are fairly flexible: it's usually x number of matching or non-matching resources and what they actually are is immaterial. I think someone built a pedestal out of glass at one point. 

Science cards are cashed in for science tokens (one-off rewards/end-game scoring) and military cards compete with neighbours whenever war is triggered, which is less predictable than the end of a round. In fact, there are no rounds, and the game chugs along at a fairly rapid pace until someone - Adam, in this case - completes their wonder:

Adam 35

Louie 34

Ian 30

Sam and Joe 28 each

Steve 26

Martin 24

It was a bit long with seven of us, but the reaction was mostly positive. "I enjoyed it" I said. 

"I'll enjoy writing about it" Martin muttered. With Anja now joining us and Louie wanting one quick game before he was exiled to his bedroom, we set up That's Not a Hat.

The chalice of palpable disdain passed from Martin to Adam as confusion reigned supreme - the game's actual aim, rather than an inadvertent by-product. Ian and Anja confessed to having no idea what cards they had, and Ian's speculative skateboard proved his undoing. 

Ian loses (three penalty points)

Adam, Joe, Steve, Martin and Sam all win (no penalty points)

Louie left us and we split into groups. It was now Martin's turn to break out a new game in Hot Lead, for which he was joined by Joe and Ian. 

Anja was keen to try Hansa Teutonica and I needed no encouragement. Steve looked slightly askance at the busy board but signed up, and soon established a classic confused-Steve-scores-loads-of-points strategy. I missed what happened in Hot Lead, other than it finished before before I'd concluded teaching Hansa Teutonica, as Martin crowed happily. Joe win twice and Ian once before they moved on to Gang of Dice. 

Ian's view

We'd kicked off in Hansa Teutonica by now, and Steve's early trading post in Guttingen (I think?) started hoovering him up points. We kept remarking on it, but didn't actually do anything about it, each of us busy concocting our own little schemes. 

But you know in a game where one concocts their own little schemes, Adam will probably concoct more efficiently than anyone else, and so it proved in a tense - for some - conclusion. Steve triggered the end of the game by hitting 20 points, with the rest of us some way behind. Anja had no network to speak of, as our scheming around Guttingen kept her on a miserly two actions for half the game. I had some end-game points to score, but not enough to catch the breakaway leaders: Adam and Steve tied on points, and were only separated by the second tie-breaker!

Adam 48 and most valuable network
Steve 48
Sam 35
Anja 15

Brutal stuff. At the other end of the table Ian was wrapping up a win in Spots, of which I missed all the drama as we were hypnotised by Adam's scoretrack action in HT. Joe and Martin finished with three dogs each. We made a big group again for another new game out of Joe's magical bag: Fun Facts. 

This a slightly Wavelength-esque co-operative where in each round we are asked a hypothetical question such as How much would you need to be paid to work for a year at a research station in Antarctica or a factual question like How long have you been doing your favourite hobby. Everyone writes their answer - always expressed as a number - on the back of their own plastic chevron and then we go around the table adding ours to the column, placing it where we think it's correct relative to everyone else's. Once that's done, the starting player has the option of moving their own chevron before they are revealed, starting at the bottom. Collectively the hope is we're in ascending order, but of course the game throws up surprises. 

We score points for each chevron that keeps to the 'order' we're trying to establish. Above we are discovering everyone's liking for celebrating their own birthday. Ian (35) is perhaps unsurprisingly at the bottom. Joe (orange) and Anja (red) are the numbers slightly out of kilter. 

I loved this game, even if some of the questions skew it rather heavily away from joyful innocence and into unabashed smut. How comfortable are you around nudity? Do you enjoy time with old people? By the time the relatively innocuous query about favourite hobbies arrived, everyone was basically talking about wanking and how much Steve likes reading on the toilet (99%) which he not unreasonably argued was a percentage of the time he enjoyed reading, imagining one would assume that if he's not enjoying it, he'll stop. 

We didn't do brilliantly but it was a fascinating insight into everyone's psyche, sending Ian and Adam home with possible big thoughts. Steve was starting to yawn but we coaxed another game out of him that turned into four games - the rapid and tense Kites. Our first attempt was the most successful as we weren't that far off emptying the deck. But every time we said one more time, we seemed to get worse.

So much so we had to eventually accept that we are just shit at flying kites, and better at judging each other's peccadillos. After decades of our favourite hobby (exceptions: Ian (video games), Adam (football), Anja (listening to music)), at least there's something to show for it. 

Chippencon!

Friday

With Paul J the quiet instigator of the idea, the old London branch of GNN coalesced this weekend at Chris's house in Chippenham: as well as the host, Paul J and myself there was Paul H for the duration, Stuart on Friday night and then Andrew on Saturday. 

But all this was ahead of us as I arrived at midday on Friday and after catching up with Jacquie and the kids, Chris and I shot off to collect Paul J from the station. Then after a second-wave newsbeat, we started gaming! We kicked things off with Babylonia, new to both Paul and Chris but a relatively easy teach. 

We played slightly too open, having the full board instead of the slightly condensed one for three, but that made it an easier learning game:

Sam 149

Chris 147

Paul 99

And now familiar with it, both were enthusiastic for another crack.

My long and arduous master-and-apprentice defeats at the hands of Martin stood me in good stead once more:

Sam 123

Paul 99

Chris 96

Lovely to find two more converts! We moved on to Sushi Go, the game of card-drafting Japanese foodstuffs. Owing to a misunderstanding over chopsticks, I ruled myself out of contention after round one, but it's not exactly a grind.

Paul 72

Chris 59

Sam 46

 Paul began a four-game winning run here, following his Sushi Go triumph with victories in Alhambra:

Kingdomino...

And Kingdom Builder.

Chris was appalled to finish third in every instance, voicing aloud his regret at the very idea of Chippencon. Things didn't improve immediately for him when Paul H arrived, as we kicked off with Tournament Raj and despite a huge last-round haul, he still finished last. Paul J and I slugged it out for first place, but he shrugged me off to claim a fifth victory in a row!

Paul J 60

Sam 51

Paul 45

Chris 33

With tea consumed - thank you Chris and Jacquie - and Stuart freshly arrived, we fancied something a bit feistier now, and so I talked them through the rules of Hansa Teutonica. 

Despite my encouragements to get sabotaging. everyone was very polite at the start and the first couple of rounds were slightly after-you-sir. But soon enough we were getting in each other's way and the cussing ramped up slightly. The initial sense of being hobbled by two actions fell away as we proliferated across the board and engines kicked into gear. 

After an hour of cross-postal interference, Stuart leapt from an innocuous fourth place into joint first with Chris, and I couldn't quite catch them. We checked the rules for a tie-breaker and Chris' fewer actions-per-turn won him the game!

Chris 38 wins tiebreaker 

Stuart 38

Sam 37

Paul H 29

Paul J 25

Now into the meat of the evening, we debated our five-player options. Paul J was understandably reluctant to learn another set of rules at this point, so we alighted on Istanbul, needing a mostly-fringe-area refreshment on rules. I forgot to take any photos at this point, but suffice to say Paul H was now warmed-up and moved through the gears to wrap up a relatively straightforward win, grabbing his fifth gem with the rest of us at least two turns away from doing likewise:

Paul H five gems!!!!

Sam  4 gems 31 cash 

Paul J 4 gems 6 cash

Stuart 4 gems 1 cash 

Chris 3 gems 13 cash 

The hour was getting late so with the request for something 'silly' I suggested Block Party.

Although this meant another set of rules, the fact they only take about 45 seconds to explain meant we were off and running quickly. And Chris made a banana. 

"I tried to bend it" he cried, but it mattered not: Stuart identified it. I guessed Paul H's spider and he saw the fire engine in my creation. We all ran the highs and lows of emotions - my milk bottle was alleged to be a snowman, a mountain, and an igloo - but ultimately the last game of the night saw Chris triumph:

Chris 11

Sam 10

Paul and Paul 8

Stuart 7

Saturday

I surfaced at around 8.15 to an extremely muggy day. We threw opens doors and windows to try and get some air into the house. Chester enjoyed having all these access points to the house. 

As well as the visiting articles to investigate. 

After breakfast, Jacquie liked the idea of trying out Block Party, so we did. Despite some creative performance anxiety, her debut creation was this beautiful pineapple:

However despite a frankly shambolic attempt at a door (in dubious colour choices of grey and pink) Chris triumphed again. I lost track of where Jacquie, Paul J and I finished.

Apart from that intense Block Party workout it was a fairly lazy morning. Paul H returned at 11am and while Chris prepped the chilli for later, he talked Paul J and I through the workings of Imhotep.

I think I played this about eight years ago, and I found it's piece-of-string machinations just as opaque this time, as players choose whether to add cubes to boats, or sail a full-enough boat to one of several possible destinations. It's fun, but I am really awful at judging anything being a good decision, and my focus on building a massive Burial Chamber didn't match up to the canny shenanigans of the Pauls, with Paul J claiming a debut victory!

Paul J 49

Paul H 41

Sam 39

Then with Chris back at the table, we returned to Babylonia. 

This was a corker, as leads between the Pauls and Chris ebbed and flowed whilst I languished back on a measly five points, hoping to draw enough farmers to use my ziggurat power. They didn't arrive and I had to focus my efforts building a central network that Chris spotted was going to haul me in some juicy points when they started paying out. I agreed, but I didn't think I'd close the now huge gap between Paul J (at this point) on something like 110 while I was back in the 30's somewhere. But as it turned out, it was damn close!

Chris 138

Sam 136

Paul J 130

Paul H 107

A baptism of fire for Paul H, then, but the next game - after our classic Lunch of Beige - was one he knew intimately: Eclipse! 

This was Chris's second-edition version, with some minor rules modifications (and one less round) and some faction asymmetry, but largely the same narrative: early rounds are developing tech and kitting out ships, building towards a massive bunfight at the end. Except here the bunfight never really materialised: Paul H and I established an alliance, and Chris and Paul J did the same.  Chris considered attacking Paul H, but decided against it because it looked like a death wish.

My dreams of peaceful expansion were undone by poor planning and ill fortune and I spent a few rounds only doing two actions and then passing early. The others expanded more successfully and built monstrously-violent death machines of the cosmos in a sort of cardboard cold war.

Then at the death Chris attacked the central hex and quickly reenforced his dominance there. He tried to take some hexes off me but didn't roll what he needed and we all eyed him warily. Oddly, his aggression went unrewarded in the sense of point-scoring, with Paul H's 'In Bed With the Ancients' faction grabbing victory:

Paul H 33

Paul J and Sam 32 each

Chris 30

Though it was certainly not a damp squib, I didn't enjoy Eclipse as much as I used to. It's a long haul to get to the more-exciting finale (caveat: my adjacency to that was more my fault than the games') and at times it feels a bit like a slightly protracted drum-roll. There's a lot to consider as well, and if it's a more elegant construction than Xia's everything-by-dice, it doesn't feel as stupidly fun. 

Speaking of dice, though, next up - after the very delicious chilli, and a quick sortie to the shops - was Las Vegas. It's not a game that supplies quite the epic narrative Eclipse does, but it was a nice pallet-cleanser:

Sam $510k

Paul J $470

Chris $380

Paul H $280

We knew Andrew was imminent, but just had enough time for another four-hander in the little-seen (by me at least) Timeline! I couldn't help but notice a seam of dark comedy in the images, with a number of characters looking vaguely psychotic.

Paul H won this. I discovered the refrigerator was invented much earlier than I'd anticipated, but now with crushing inevitability the exact year escapes me.

Paul H wins

Sam and Paul J 1 card

Chris 2 cards 

Andrew arrived just as we finished and after the briefest of catch-ups the discussion of what to play as a five began. Dominant Species? A bit long. Twilight Imperium? Very long. Istanbul? A bit short. We settled on Lords of Waterdeep. With no Martin or Ian present I elected to play green, so the colour/game combo made it feel a bit like 2010, as Prince used to sing.

Early on it was fairly even - I shot off on the scoretrack to 32 but had a bunch of skulls that made my actual score a current 14. Paul H pulled ahead and played some dastardly intrigue that balanced out revealing his Lord with the fact we couldn't target him all game. That was a bummer. Meanwhile I pulled ahead again, and Chris targeted me with one of those bastard mandatory quests that I'm definitely not still sore about. Andrew mostly chuckled at the names of the quests.

Incredible scenes at the end as Paul H pulled so far ahead it was almost embarrassing. My late game recovery wasn't enough to catch a resurgent Chris, and a briefly-dominant Paul J found Andrew had enough to sneak past him in the final count.

Paul H 166

Chris 148

Sam 144

Andrew 134

Paul J 131

After twelve hours of gaming I suddenly got hit by an ocular migraine, and had to play my final game (Incan Gold) with my eyes largely closed and Chris communicating events to me ("Zombie Lady!"). Paul J and Chris lacked our frugal conservatism and, falling behind, risked life and limb - and ultimately lost life and limbs - in wild attempts to recover.

In the end, however, it was Paul H who took yet another win!

PH 34

Andrew 32

Sam 26

Chris 20

PJ 0

And at this point, with my vision no better, I had to take myself to a dark room. It was a bit of a underwhelming way to end Chippencon and I was gutted to miss Chris and Andrew take on the Pauls in Decrypto! The Pauls won, though what the words and dramas were maybe we'll learn in the comments.

Thanks to Chris Jacquie and kids for putting up with us all, and everyone attending for making it fun.