Wrong end of the sticht

This week witnessed the return of Katy, so that seven gaming stalwarts sat around Sam's kitchen table (Sam, Joe, Adam T, Martin, Ian, Katy and me). In fact, we began with eight, since Sam's son Joe joined us for a round of Fuji Flush.

It had been a while since we had last played it, but our biggest concern was not being able to talk about dick points in front of a child. A real shame since we began by all putting down 2s until Ian cleared the table with a 15. A big swinging dick, and we couldn't even mention it.

Adam 0
Joe M, Joe B, Martin 1
Ian, Andrew, Sam 2
Katy 3

Then Joe M requested a round of Insider, which we quickly cranked out. I was the master, and the word was Thermal Power Plant. During the guessing round, Katy, Sam and Joe B all suggested power plants, seemingly out of nothing, but despite that it was Ian who was the Insider. He'd won by using the old "quiet and mysterious" method.

Now we split into two groups. Three of us (Sam, Katy and Martin) played Hats. Not the album by The Blue Nile, but a set collecting game that comes with its own cookie. With it being so far away (again, I was perched at the end of the table) I know little about it. Not even what the cookie is for, but they played twice with Sam winning both games. I only noted the scores for the second, though.

Sam 29
Katy 28
Martin 26

We (Adam, Ian, Joe and me) chose Was Sticht?, a game whose box has been taken to several GNN nights but was rarely chosen. Until tonight. It's a trick taking game, but to describe it like that is like saying Kafka's Metamorphosis is about a man who just doesn't want to get out of bed.

Instead of dealing out the cards, they are distributed through a sort of mini game in which each player chooses a card from a column of a grid displaying all of the cards face up and then the "dealer" (who knows the trump suit) tells everyone who won among those four cards. In this way we are expected to deduce what the trump card is and adjust our choices accordingly.

Once that is done, each player has to chose one of the five targets they selected right at the start of the game, with criteria like No Tricks or Last Trick. If you complete this target then you discard it and the winner is the first to discard all five. Although, right from the start, we had agreed to play just four rounds. On top of all of this, lots of other rules kept cropping up during the game like someone who can't admit defeat in an argument and keeps coming back saying "and another thing..."

I found it all hard going at first, but by round four I think we'd all got the hang of it as we had gone from hesitant questioning to silent contemplation before our turns. This was certainly a good sign and I'd like to try it again soon.

Andrew 3 targets completed
Joe, Adam, Ian 2

Was Sticht took long enough that the other three squeezed in a game of Yokai and Eggs of Ostrich while we were in the final stages. In Yokai, Martin struggled to interpret his colleagues actions, saying to Sam that "I thought you were being clever," to which Sam bluntly replied "No." Nevertheless, they succeeded and were Glorious according to the scoresheet.

Then, in Eggs of Ostrich, Martin complained about how brutal it was. I think the score was

Martin 8
Sam 5
Katy 4

At this point, we were all available for mingling and, astonishingly, Toad in the Hole was offered up as a snack. This beat even Adam's offering of bite size sausage rolls at the start of the evening. The whole snack scene is seeing a revival that even Knizia would be jealous of.

Anyway, as for games, Adam, Ian and I chose Impulse while Sam, Joe, Martin and Katy played Senators, despite Katy's attempts at steering them towards Hit Z Road.

Senators was notable for Joe offering to buy olives in a creepy tone of voice. Katy seemed to enjoy her first game so maybe there's a chance of a revival?

Martin 9
Joe 8
Katy 6
Sam 5

During Impulse we started slow and with a remarkable lack of fighting coupled with a large amount of available Build actions meant that our space sector got pretty crowded.

Ian declared that he'd cocked up his techs and I was looking forward to a win when Adam snuck in and hit twenty points before I got a chance.

Adam 20
Andrew 14
Ian 11

While we finished Impulse, the other four amused themselves with a quick burst on Belratti. With Sam, Joe and Martin playing, some of the deductions about which painting belonged to which theme had an air of cryptic crossword to them. Sam tried to link Recycle to "re-sickle" until Joe told him that the drawing in question was a scythe. Martin tried to link Eye and Saw because it made "eyesore". Despite all this overthinking they did well, scoring 13-3.

Finally, we played Just One. This is a word game that I just don’t get. I keep expecting normal words but instead I get pop culture references or, as was tonight, an actual name. Despite clues to the moon landing and the other clue “Lance” I couldn’t get “Armstrong.” Sorry. Joe gave away the word by saying it out loud (Zeus) meaning a re-deal was necessary. Martin’s word was “passion” and when he saw our remaining clues: Desire, Throes and St Matthew, he said “Jesus Christ…” with an air of despair. At the mention of JC, I sort of chuckled and from that he was able to deduce the clue. Phew.

After this,we were finished. Thanks all, and hope to see you all again soon.

Markers Aurelius

This week's games night began with eight people sat around Sam's kitchen table: Sam, Stanley, Joe, other Joe, Martin, Quentin, Katy, and me. We needed a short game we could all play before one of the Joes had to go to bed. We chose Insider and dealt Quentin in despite him never having played before.

Regular gamer Joe was the master and he handled our questions dutifully until Martin blurted out "Is it a volcano?" which was the correct word.

We discussed whether or not Martin was the Insider, but we had very little to go on. In the end, only Joe voted against him and it went to another round of voting, with Quentin's questions "Is it geological?" and "Is it a mountain?" bringing suspicion upon him, but he wasn't the Insider either. It was Stanley!

We played again, after Martin explained the finer details of the rules to Quentin, and this time it was the smaller of the two Joes who was the master. I guessed correctly ("baseball") but only Katy voted against me. Maybe there's something about him, but we chose Quentin again and we were wrong again because it was Stanley again.

One Joe went to bed and we split into two groups and played a couple of short games until Ian was due to arrive. Joe, Katy and Martin played Maskmen. Katy won with a whole round still to play but was a little put out to see her magnificent lead shorn down to a narrow victory by the end.

Katy 4
Joe 3
Martin 1

Sam, Stanley, Quentin and I chose Spy Tricks, a game I had no recollection of despite having played only a few days before. Sam won big in the final round, putting his double bet onto the correct card, and just squeezed past his son into first place.

Sam 25
Stanley 24
Quentin 20
Andrew 11

Now Stanley went to bed and Ian arrived. We rearranged the groups into me, Martin, Sam and Ian playing Senators while Joe, Katy and Quentin played Let's Make A Bus Route. That game ended

Joe 60
Katy 47
Quentin 47

And then they moved on to Good Little Tricks, a devilish card game whose basic premise escapes me at the moment. There was a fair amount of people claiming they were going to "shoot the moon," though.

Joe -21
Katy -26
Quentin -34

We were still playing Senators when they were done, so they bashed out a quick single round of Little Tricks:

Quentin 0
Joe -7
Katy -20

Meanwhile, over in Ancient Rome, we'd seen all kinds of history flash before our eyes. After Sam had the rules explained to him, our first game was over in minutes as the fourth War card game after only five or six rounds.

Sam 8
Andrew 7
Ian 6
Martin 6

We set up to play again and this time it was more of an epic, with the fourth War card not coming out until the very end. But before then all manner of events unfolded. I was hit by Civil Unrest and a lack of cash during some extortion, meaning I lost two senators but I was then able to cash in two high scoring sets of cards for 51 in cash which I used to buy my way into first place. Other players took turns being in last place, first Ian then Martin and finally Sam. But that fourth War never seemed to arrive and Ian ran out of cash, meaning he slipped further back while my frugal final rounds got me first on a tie-breaker.

Andrew 11 + 8)
Martin 11 (+2)
Sam 10
Ian 9

Finally we were all together for a game of Just One. We started well, but soon duplicates started to creep in. Sam did well to get 'cocoon' with only 'chrysalis' and 'enclosed' to guide him. Joe was less fortunate, having the impossible task of getting 'panda' from the two remaining clues (after four bamboos wiped themselves out) which were 'diplomacy' and 'eyes'. Once again we were "wow, not bad" according to the score sheet.

There was one more game in us thanks to generous offers of lifts from Joe and Quentin, and it was Fuji Flush. I was first to one card but just couldn't push through. Mid-game, Katy was doing so badly that she claimed she had more cards than when she started. But it was Quentin who was able to join his last card to another already on the table and push through for victory.

Joe's best Godfather face during Fuji Flush.

Quentin 0 cards left
Andrew 1
Martin 1
Sam 2
Katy 2
Ian 3
Joe 4

And that was all. As we set off, I somehow managed to lose my phone so at the moment I have no photos from the evening, but hopefully I'll put them on later (EDIT: done it!). Thanks to everyone for a splendid time.

Homer and Away

Forgive the epic post. I thought I'd keep tabs on the games we played in our week in Cornwall, but it turned out we played a lot of games. A lot.

Saturday

Mine and Sally's annual getaway with Katie and Mark fell just outside Penzance, specifically overlooking the train track that we became obsessed with during the week. As a present, Mark and Katie had the Trainspotting Log Book delivered on the Sunday and we began recording our debut week as 'foamers'. As we weren't sure about some of the terminology, Length was often recorded as 'Long' and Place Seen might be 'Balcony' or "next to the kettle'.

Excitement peaked early when Sally coaxed not only a wave from the driver, but a horn as well. He went in the book as 'Ledge'.

Games-wise though we began with JamSumo on the Saturday we arrived (Peppa won Sumo, Mark won Jam) followed by, post bed-time, a great game of Decrypto which Sally I won partly due to our obtuse clueing and partly down to sheer luck, when we speculated wildly on an interception and pulled it off - twice.

We followed that with Push It, which Mark and Sally won with a series of deft flicks, mostly notable for Sally's sideways karate-chop technique that started off chaotically, but improved. All of us suffered at the hands of the undulating tablecloth. But Katie definitely provided all the high spots of with her high-velocity attacks, that usually sent some element on the table careering into my midriff.

Mark and Sally 21
Katie and Sam 8

A great arrival evening, surely to be followed up by a day of rain and heavy euros.

*

Sunday

Sadly I rose (at six) on Sunday to find a gorgeous day in the offing, so the most gaming I could engineer in the morning was a game of Ganz Schon Clever against Peppa. It's a more-ish and fast-moving play with two, and Peppa gave it 7.75 out of ten, as opposed to El Dorado which she played with us recently and gave a 9.

Then we went to the beach and some stuff happened there.

After lunch, Mark, Sally, Peppa and I sat down for a game of Azul and everyone loved it (Peppa: 8.5) I made some early hay off the back of Mark (to my left) not doing anything mean to me, but as they all became more cognizant of what was happening in the game, these breezy, benign moves dried up and my possible all-blues or all-yellows or even possibly-both-down evaporated into neither. Mark's quiet contemplation proved to be the key.

Mark 75
Peppa 66
Sam 59
Sally 41

After watching Jumanji (the new version) there was another beach sortie, before Peppa and I played the debut game of Skull King. I recall Joe and Martin were familiar with it - or its mechanics - but it was new to me. A trick-taker where there are three basic suits, a trump suit, but then some pirate cards that trump everything; with an additional catch in that the strongest pirate (the Skull King himself) can be trumped by the 'weaker' mermaid.

The scoring is what makes Skull King interesting though - like contract whist you bid tricks, but you only score if you meet your bidded trick target, and if you're out you gather ten minus points for every trick you're over or under. Bidding no tricks at all gets you the round number multiplied by ten.

It was neck and neck until round ten, where Peppa's slender lead fell foul of my five-trick targeted haul!

Sam 240
Peppa 140

After tea Lula and the boys retired to bed, and it was Mark & Peppa v Sally & Katie. As with the night before, it was another one-sided battle, only this time Katie was on the winning side.

Sally and Katie 11
Mark and Peppa 3

Then the main event of the evening was The Quest for El Dorado. Mark and I had played this with Peppa recently and they were quite taken with it, so we embarked on another dash for the mythical city with nothing but forschers and was auch immer zur Holle to get us there.

It was a mixed success. Katie was rather tired and not quite in the puzzly mode to figure out the best routes. Sally didn't mind the puzzling but her northern belt-tightening ways meant she didn't like buying cards and then keeping the money. "It feels weird" she said. Weird or not, she still found a way to surge past the pioneer Mark and claim a victory in most Ian-like fashion.

Sally - makes it to El Dorado
Mark - watches Sally from a nearby lake, unable to find a paddle
Sam - trapped behind a mountain
Katie - has a nice view of Sam

We stepped out onto the balcony where the much-talked-about game of Mooning the Trains finally began, as Mark rolled back the years - and his trousers - to give the late-night commuters an unexpected view. He insisted afterwards he had only done it to impress Katie, although these motivations were revisited the next day when he realised it was his first mooning. I guess as we move through life, different things give us pause for reflection.

Mark 1
Everyone else 0

We ended the evening with a couple of games of The Mind. Or to be accurate, three games, after the first level of our first game was so disastrous we reset and started again. Both had their high spots with, at one point, a 7-8-9-10-11 going down rapid fire from all angles. But neither saw us past level 5, as shurrikins couldn't save our bacon.

Monday

Daytime Monday was a trip to St Ives. I am never going to St Ives again.

On our return I reacquainted myself with the rules of Lords of Vegas by playing through a few rounds, but I couldn't quite generate enough momentum to get four players to the table. Instead Peppa and I blasted through another ten rounds of Skull King. Peppa's initial few rounds were successful bids of zero, whilst I picked up minus points. But such is the swingy nature of Skull King that a couple of big wins put me back into contention - and as with the day before, it came down to a decider in round ten:

Sam 70
Peppa 20

In a later rematch, another round ten showdown went the other way rather more spectacularly:

Peppa 90
Sam -10

Before the children migrated to bed, and Mark and I cajoled Katie into another game of The Quest for El Dorado as Sally made tiffins. Katie was hesitant, but susceptible to coaxing, and so we set off once more, in German, for the land of gold - or to use the German, gold.

Just as before, Mark hurtled into an early lead whilst Katie and I dawdled. But just as before, he was to be overhauled in the final reckoning - despite pulling off a spectacular final move to get himself to El Dorado, Katie followed him through the gates and the cheering masses turned their attentions to her, seeing as she had the most chevron-shaped tie-breakers. Meanwhile, I was cursing my Forschers for turning up at the wrong time. It's a bit like Lignum, this game.

Katie - El Dorado!
Mark - El Dorado!
Sam - El Perazoso

With that humiliation out of the way, we moved on to the next one - Decrypto!

It was Sally and I versus Katie and Mark. Our words were DUST, EVENING, GLASS and COMPUTER. But we had a miscommunication immediately when I guessed Sally's clue of Buffy related to the evening, not dust. While Mark bamboozled us with clues comprised of words we'd never even heard of (doubotrons, opinel) Sally and I were helped that for four rounds straight we didn't have to clue 'evening' at all, as all our code cards were variations on numbers 1, 3 and 4.

They were getting closer, twice getting two out of three clues right. But when the end came, it came through another miscommunication - my clue of No relating to the Little Britain computer sketch that Sally wasn't aware of. She guessed Dust, reasoning that No would be her answer if I asked her to dust.

Mark and Katie win
Sally and Sam go to bed.

Tuesday

Skull King!

Peppa 200
Sam 140
Stanley 10

I worked in the morning whilst the others headed to the beach to christen Stan's wakeboard.

Later in the day I - appallingly - couldn't find anyone to play a game, and ended up tackling Ganz Schon Clever by myself. I didn't do great, scoring 152 points and then a very shabby 120-something. Then I realised I was selling myself short by not picking up dice from Dirk, as you're meant to with the solo game. I played again, but it didn't improve my score much.

Sam 158

Better than Dirk's zero, I suppose. I also headed into Penzance to check out the local games shop, but sadly Google was not quite as up to date as we'd like. And gaming-wise, neither was Penzance.

Skull King got played again after Joe and Lula went to bed, and this time Stan eked out a win with a low-bid strategy that, once more, was a last-round decider:

Stan 240
Sam 230
Mark 50
Peppa -30

Then after the older children also retired, I tried to convince the grown-ups to play Lords of Vegas by sheer force of will. Or at least simply repeating the words over and over. But we played Push It instead. With the tablecloth removed it was a more pleasing surface, and the game's narrative was dramatic as Katie and I surged into the lead, were overhauled, then surged back, to leave both sides poised for a win on 20 points...

Sally and Mark 22
Katie and Sam 20

I got the yips.

Then Decrypto returned to the table, this time with the teams split by gender. How Mark and I survived as long as we did I don't know, as the ladies seemed to have identified half of our words by round two. And we swung perilously close to miscommunications more than once - luckily I guessed that Mark's canopic related to Pyramid, and not to Oasis. But with Katie and Sally seemingly onto us, we had to go more and more obtuse, until my clue of Benson (for Butler) flummoxed Mark and we picked up our second miscommunication.

Katie and Sally - win!

And we finished with The Mind. After our crash-and-burns of the previous evening, this was a triumph, with Level 12 achieved with three lives and three shurrikins. I advised everyone to play the Dark Mind at the same speed they would the Light Mind, but didn't follow my own advice, and we crashed out on round three.

Mark then mooned another train.

Mark 2
Everyone else 0

Wednesday

Whilst the kids started the day watching Harry Potter and the Saucer of Something or Other, my solo ascents of Ganz Schon Clever finally reached something more respectable.

Sam 273

According to the solo game rules, that makes me equivalent with Einstein. Probably in his post office clerk phase, I guess. Post-breakfast, I had to go on a mission of mercy (dishwasher salt; lemons) whilst Stanley and Peppa played a head to head of the current game of the moment, Skull King.

Stanley 150
Peppa 100

Before Lula instigated a few games of Insider. In the first two, the insider (Joe and Sally respectively) got away with it, as we collectively accused Sally (when it was Joe) and Lula (when it was Sally). In the third game the insider was Peppa, but she was undermined somewhat by the word being 'trashbox' which we were all so unfamiliar with it sounded strange when she guessed it!

Then it was back to the beach. While Stanley and Peppa zoomed up and down in the water...

Mark and I made a face.

Then, post-lunch, after another few games of Skull King, I finally managed to get a quorate for Lords of Vegas!

Stan was still preferring to roll around on the floor like a puppy wearing a hat, so it was myself, Peppa and Mark. And things began rather badly for me when Mark took control of my first casino in short order, getting himself a two-tile gold casino on the strip. My attempt to reorganise blew up in my face like claiming a 1gold card in Biblios (although I didn't make that reference at the time) before Peppa surged into an early lead.

Like the guy in the VW advert, I put all my money on silver, whilst Mark did something similar with purple. Both of us gnashed our teeth as lots of non-silver and non-purple cards flipped over, and Peppa was first to turn the corner on the scoretrack.

Then purples began to surface, and Mark overhauled her, and as we entered endgame Peppa ran out of dice and seemed happy to simply amass tonnes and tonnes of cash.

It was looking like a two-horse race for a bit as I brought up the rear, but I was saved by fate when two Strip cards popped out in a row, benefiting all of us - but me in particular on the Game End card, as I'd just sprawled to create another four-tile casino, pushing me into the slenderest victory.

After another trip to the beach (we made a dragon)

...a dog wanted to use Stan's wakeboard...

...we came back to yet more Skull King, with Lula now another convert. Not sure how many games the kids played, or who won them all. It went on for a couple of hours!

Then there was a quick game of Doodle Rush which Stan and I shared a win on, and after Lula's bedtime Stanley, Joe, Peppa and I played Now Boarding.

This is a Tim Fowers game, he of Paperback, Fugitive, and Burgle Bros. It's got the same UPA illustrative style and like Burgle Bros, it's co-operative. Unlike Burgle Bros though, there's a time element: players are working together to carry passengers around the USA in their planes, and although you can plan as much as you like, when each round starts there's a mere 30 seconds to do all the doing, and you need to quickly factor in the new passengers who've rocked up and messed up your plans.

At the end of each round, any passengers still in the airports get an anger cube - four anger cubes and they flounce out of the game. Three flounce-outs, and the players lose. Get through all the passengers with two or less - you win!

It looks great. It plays absolutely nuts, and I found it quite stressful, even having played it a couple of times at home with the boys. 

We lost!

The grown-ups evening was relatively short, as we were all exhausted by now. but we still squeezed a couple of games in: in El Dorado my dumping cards strategy (thanks Adam) saw me claim a convincing win as the others cursed their cards.

Then on The Mind we were so out of sync that Sally realised she was listening to the radio, and I thought I was holding a card from a previous round.

And so to Bed.

Thursday

The distractions of the outside world meant the first game didn't game played until the shockingly late time of 7.30, when we played Destination X. Joe was the spy, and hid out in Uganda.

Then Peppa was the spy, and we found her in Singapore.

Joe and I went off to do stories whilst the hectic sounds of JamSumo came echoing through the floor above us. Not sure what happened, but Sally said later she'd done enough JamSumo to last her a good while. After that they introduced Sally to Skull King, but it was a baptism of fire:

Peppa 240

Stan  190

Sally 10

The evening was also games-light, with only two of them hitting the table. Azul was first. Katie's understandable reticence at learning yet more new rules was overcome by Mark and Sally insisting that she would like it, and my setting it up while they did so.

And she did like it! 

Although Sally's triple-column board aligned with all the blues meant she took a pretty convincing win. The rest of us duked it out for second.

Sally 86
Mark 74
Sam 73
Katy 67

We ended a reasonably early evening with Push It, the Gods of seating once more pitching Katie and I versus Sally and Mark. Katie's elegant 'Queen's Butler' pushing style was hitting the high spots, but my mojo wasn't on and it was another victory for Sally and Mark.

Friday

Our last day was another games-light spell as we headed to the Minack theatre for a kids show, and followed that with the beach.

In fact, bar a final outing for Skull King (I saw off Stan and Peppa) we almost didn't play games at all, until a bizarro-world style changing of identities occurred, as I speculated that I was gamed out, only to be cajoled into it by Katie. Whatever next!

With the aid of Mark's margarita and a succession of fatty snacks (and only mildly dispirited by a hiccup attack) we ended the holiday with a final blast of Azul!

Re-energised by margaritas and a reckless sense of hedonism - or as close as I get to it - I suddenly found my inner tiler, channeling Andrew's clustering to push me into the lead, and triggering enough bonuses to hold it to the drunken end:

Sam 90-something
Katie and Sally - in the 80s
Mark - in the 70s, thanks most likely to picking up no less than eight red tiles!

And with that, we were done. A gaming marathon! And a fun week.

Played in Wales

A week in Wales with Mark, Katie, and the four sprogs meant that as well as the beach, chips and ice cream, we got plenty of gaming time as well. I took a couple of bags worth and all but three got played at some stage. Daytimes were often taken up with surfing...

Joe gets a push from Mark

...whereas the night - or the odd patch of rain - was about gaming. The hit of the week with Stanley and Peppa was Ninjato. I touched on this previously, but have since delved further into its depths with another four plays this week. I remain utterly terrible at it, whilst Stan won every time, to mine and Peppa's growing despair. It's fun calling Banzai, though the more I play the less 'lucky' the game feels - it's a tactical battle to keep control of Envoys and start rumours, which are as pertinent here as the cards in Stone Age.

Four skills, but I got nowhere

The early evenings were dominated by Insider, which everyone could and did get involved with. We played too many of these to count, but I was the Insider only once and every other player accused me! The successful Insiders, I noticed, didn't get too vociferous about accusing anyone. Sally was a terrible Insider too, but that was only because as soon as anyone accused her she hid her face in her hands. Mark, Katie and Peppa had the most success, whilst I offset my serial defeats with the joy to be found in the natural world outside:

that black thing is a bottle-nosed dolphin!

The other game that all the kids played was In a Bind - this was the Junior version, where there is marginally less physical challenge but the addition of making animal noises/waving/talking in a deep voice etc when you pick up a card. This is more fun than it might sound after a couple of glasses of the good stuff, but obviously the kids played it sober and seemed to like it too.

Peppa and Joe drew

Peppa, Stan and I also had a few goes at Cobras, which is another one I enjoy without ever getting close to winning. The closest I got was second place with game abandoned due to the late hour and surfing fatigue. I have never been so reluctant to bail on a game!

We managed one game of Near and Far, which my win at made some amends for continual thrashings on the Ninjato board. Mine and Stan's campaign game continues with me holding a slender lead overall...

Peppa and Stanley, both Near

...often the evenings had some kind of dance focus though, with Just Dance 2017 on the Nintendo galvanising all ages - with the exception of Joe - onto the floor. I have promised not to add any photos or videos of this, though, and considering some of them involve a balding tubster with no sense of rhythm, I'm happy to stick to that.

After kids had been scrambled to bed, we struck upon a pattern of Barenpark and Bandu. I had far more success in these arenas than I did Ninja-ing, Cobra-ing or Dancing, although Mark picked up a couple of wins in Barenpark. Tessellating bear houses was Katie's game of the week; in fact, although we also bashed out Wibbell and Honshu as well, Barenpark and Bandu were the nightly staples. Bandu got typically tense, and everyone had to perfect their 'Bandu Breath' - breathing off to one side so as not to disturb the fragile structures on the table...

Katie, breathing east

Late in the week though I thought it was worth introducing Mark to Flamme Rouge, which he fell in love with. It was a drunken Thursday night with everyone else in bed when we played three games in a row, Mark winning 2-1 with a deathly finish on the final race to clinch it!

This tablecloth did my nut in all week

We tried to introduce Katie to this cycling classic on our last night, but she felt she had done enough rule-learning for one week. So we stuck with Barenpark and Bandu, and when the ladies retired to bed Mark and I set up Flamme Rouge for one last race/game of the week; which Mark won, again on the final stretch!

We returned - heavy legged from the beach and heavy headed from margaritas, but sated. A lot of fun - Can't wait for Novocon now!