Swapping Secret Santa for Secret Hitler

Big T was first to arrive at my house for Christmas games yesterday, as we kicked off a few hours earlier than usual at 1pm. Joe was hot on his heels so after a brief catch-up and coffee, we reasoned that it would be silly not to start playing games, so we did. Joe brandished Take Time at us and we jumped in.

This is a fun little Mind-esque game of playing numbered cards around a clock face, with the not-insignificant caveat that each segment, going clockwise, must be of the same or higher value than the one previous. Add in a couple of extra wrinkles and that's pretty much it: but with no communication allowed after you've seen your cards, success proved occasionally elusive. Did we succeed on that final round? I don't actually remember now, but either way, Katy arrived and we shifted gears into sentient vegetable heroism with Potato Man. 

There was just time for a one-round game (won by me) before, as if summoned into being by Adam - compare above and below images - Pete turned up. 

We played another single-round game (won by Big T) and then Adam H and Laura arrived, so we split into teams and broke out Phantom Ink. Joe and I were the clues, with Joe's team at a slight numerical disadvantage (Joe, Pete, Big T) as I clued to Laura, Katy and Adam H. 

Our first word was Pancake, and despite my spelling confusion, our team's question of Who would dislike it was very helpful as I started <mis>spelling CELI(AC). When asked for a nickname I clued CRE(PE) and from there it was a straightforward victory. We went again with the Adams now clueing for the same teams, and midway through the game Chris arrived to bolster the numbers, joining with the short-staffed Pete/Joe/Big T gang. Unfortunately we lost our most coherent decoder shortly after, as Laura had to go off and escape from a room in Cabot Circus, and Katy and I spent most of our time looking at each other in confusion as Adam regarded us with a mix of long-suffering sympathy and crestfallen disappointment. We did figure out Snow, but our shot in the dark simply negated any opposition doubts and they guessed, correctly, the answer was Snowball. 

We realised with a large afternoon stretching before us we could now play some big ol' chunkers. Big T proffered The Barracks Emperors and Joe Chris and Katy leapt in to join him. I played the Christmas sympathy card to get River of Gold on the table and Andy Mosse arrived to find himself dealt in to it, charitably sitting down to an immediate rules-teach. 

In River of Gold, we're sailing up and down (well, repeatedly down, thanks to Rokugan's curious looping geography) the river and establishing trade routes. Despite the madness of the board, River of Gold has a certain simplicity to it: there are only three actions to choose from: move your boat, build a building or deliver to a customer. The goal is to move yourself up the six influence tracks to the east of the river, and the main difficulty we found with the game is remembering to roll the die at the end of your turn instead of the beginning. 

Andy took the laurels here, with Pete second and then myself and Adam lagging a short way behind. 

At the other end of the table, the Barracks were echoing to the sound of a lot of profanity, with Katy summoning her insult of choice for Chris as he did something or other she objected to. There seemed to be a lot of objecting, in fact - the game is a trick-taker of sorts but with a board where cards are laid and prizes - using the word loosely - to be surrounded and claimed. This chicanery continued as River of Gold finished and we began playing Poison. 

This was also new to Andy, but he took to it with his standard zen vibes and nearly followed his River of Gold triumph with a second win, but I just pipped him. 

Sam 13

Andy 14

Adam H 22

Pete 34

Around now the Barracks Emperors concluded as well, and Katy celebrated her debut victory by going off for chips, abetted by Joe and Adam. When they returned, Andrew was with them as well, like the fourth wise man, proffering a festive bottle of ketchup. We paused for dinner. 

After that, Joe suggested Secret Hitler and we split into liberals and fascists. Katy wanted to know if, should she be dealt into the fascists team, she could sabotage it. Joe admitted there was no rule against it, but it could get confusing. And in fairness the game was confusing enough with Joe and I not spotting that each other were fascists and me being convinced Chris was, even though he hadn't opened his eyes. I knew Katy wasn't because she seemed to be enjoying herself.  

I'm still not 100% clear on how the game works, but I did grasp that we all take turns being the president, and the president nominates a chancellor, and then there's a vote and then the president gets some cards and passes two to the chancellor to choose one of, and after this either a liberal or fascist law gets passed. There's enough fog over proceedings that nobody can be totally sure who is who, and Andy found himself shot dead simply for having the temerity to chat in chambers. Then Katy shot Big T who was Hitler and so the liberals won - perhaps for the best in these popularist times, and certainly for Katy's disposition. 

Laura was returning imminently so we split into three groups, with the Fellowship trick-taker, Babylonia and Mille Fiori spread across the table. But now I will hand the reins to our default note-taker and blogger, Andrew.

*

I was walking towards Sam’s house when I was caught up by Joe, Katy and Adam T. I was astonished as the coincidence of all of us arriving at the same time but this was soon explained when I saw the bags full of portions of fish and chips. I had got here just as people were breaking for food.

I had just eaten, so I watched while the gaming table vanished beneath unwrapped papers and various deep fried comestibles. The chat revolved around games, trying to think which games would work with non gamers. Joe told us about a game where you’re given a word and have to guess if it’s a Tolkein character or an antidepressant.

After the food was finished and the table cleared, Secret Hitler was brought to the table. As Sam has already said, it’s a social deduction game, it was capable of allowing all of us to play. In this game, the liberals have to detect the fascists - as determined by drawing an envelope with your secret identity within. And if that weren't enough, one lucky (?) player gets to be Hitler.

I'll be honest, I didn’t really get it. I was a fascist and, as such, I knew that my partners were Joe and Sam but it later transpired that Sam didn't know about Joe, since they were sitting next to each other and couldn’t see each others’ secret signal at the start of the game . Additionally,  Chris kept passing fascist policies. Maybe he was also a fascist and I hadn't noticed, I thought, or maybe he's passing fascist policies because they give the player a little special action. But then Chris, using a special action, assassinated the liberal Andy M, so then I was quite convinced he was a fascist and I’d missed it. Sam voted against himself as President. “I changed my mind,” he explained. I was bemused.

In the end, Katy was the one who identified Adam T as Hitler and killed him, and the game ended with the liberals victorious. It was quite sedate, apparently. Previous (non GNN) games have been quite rambunctious, we were told. Maybe it was the chips, but it was all very low key. I had no idea what was going on at all.

Next, several people adjourned to the front room to choose a game, and Pete came back with a £10 note in his hand, making us all wonder what was going on in there. We hear from Laura that she’s on her way and so we devise a system in which we set up three games and she can join any of them once she arrives.

The choices in this devillishly complex method was Fellowship of the Ring (Adam T, Chris and myself), Babylonia (Sam, Adam H and Pete) and Mille Fiori (Hoe, Katy and Andy M). Although once Laura had arrived, both Fellowship and Babylonia had begun so she joined Mille Fiori. She seemed happy enough.

In Fellowship, the three of us took on Chapter 16 - a tricky hand for a trio containing two relative newbies. But we persevered at Adam’s behest (he wanted to complete all 18 Chapters before the end of the year) and, after three attempts we nailed it! I was quietly smug and keen to try Chapter 17, but Adam checked the game and discovered the next bit was Chapter 16a and looked like quite a long endeavour.

Since Babylonia had finished at the same time as us we decided to leave 16a to another day.

Sam 163

Adam H 156

Pete 127

I remember remarking that Sam’s position on the board didn’t look like a winning one - a couple of small disparate areas, until Pete pointed out all the cities Sam had taken with his strategy.

Mille Fiori was still in full flow, and I heard Joe take a turn that went on for so long that he apologised halfway through.

The six of us played Fuji Flush and I was quietly confident, since this game is - for some reason - my strongest game. Back when we had a Division charting our results, I had a win rate of 50% which is odd for a luck-based game that usually plays five or more. I didn’t say anything, in case I made a target for my back. Plenty of dick points on display and poor old Pete seemed to have a hand made up entirely of 2s and 3s. And I won again, adding my final card - a 7 - to an already existing chain of 7s.

Next up, the six of us bided our time with 6nimmt. Adam T was hesitant to play, but didn’t have the energy or inclination to veto it. And a good thing too, as he ended up a comfortable winner.

Adam T 12

Pete 23

Adam H 24

Sam 32

Andrew 39

Chris 41

And talking of comfortable winners, here are the results from Mille Fiori.

Joe 239

Katy 217

Andy M 167

Laura 154

Joe, Andy M and Adam T left at this point and the six of us played Ito, using the chevrons from Fun Facts as a handy way of keeping track of everyone’s numbers. The categories were vague enough for some details to be clarified. Is a “popular villain” one who is generally beloved by the public, or just very well known? Good job we did check, because we got that one 100% right.

Another curio that this game threw up was when Sam’s reply to “Things that give you goosebumps” was “thinking about goosebumps”. This is about as close to breaking the fourth wall that real life can get but then Sam explained that when he started to think about what might give him goosebumps, that itself gave him goosebumps. Perfectly valid, I suppose.

Things that give you goosbumps - the lower reaches of the scale

After that, I had enough in me for one last game. We split into two groups. I played Katy and Adam at Biblios, and it went pretty much as you might expect. Halfway through I got that sinking feeling that I wasn’t very strong in anything, but it was far too late to do anything about it. And I was right. Amazingly, though, no one finished the game with any orange cards at all, meaning that die was discarded, unscored.

Katy 5 (plus brown die)

Adam 5

Andrew 0

The other end of the table played Soda Jerk which I'm afraid I was completely oblivious to.

Whiskey and soda jerk, anyone?

With that, I was done. Many thanks to everyone for another exciting year. I’ll hand back to Sam for the final part of the blogging.

*

After Andrew left we were down to a quartet - or at least I thought we were. We set up for Misfits and and then saw Pete was quietly watching us, as though not wanting to interrupt. He'd decided to get a later train home and so we redistributed the pieces and set about it. I criticised Katy for going gong-ho saboteur on her very first turn, but the structure survived, long enough to grow big enough that when it collapsed on Pete and later Laura, they were handed enough wooden pieces to start a small fire. 

Chris then drove Pete off to the station and we were left as a trio. And what better way to end the evening than three cracks at So Clover. We kicked off with a 13/18, did about the same in the second game and then finished off with a triumphant 18 in the finale, by which point Katy was sure we had played four times but Laura and I demurred. 

Now a whisky or two to the good, there was even some post-game chat comparing dysfunctional families and putting the world to theoretical rights. Midnight was not tremendously far away by this point, and after a full shift of gaming, it was time to say goodnight. Thanks all for coming, it was epic!

For Goodness' Saké

Like a rare planetary alignment, every year or so four increasingly aging board gamers meet to catch up and share news, ancient in-jokes and some dubious double-entendres.

I arrived at about 1.30, and Sam told me that Chris and Paul were running late, still picking their way through Bristol’s bank holiday traffic. We drank coffee and chatted while I idly looked at the packaging for Tokkuri Taking, a game that would be our first once we were all here.

The packaging promises a bacchanial party of sake with dinosaurs. In practice, we were playing cards to either represent a clay bottle full of sake (the tokkuri) or the amount of sake each player will drink.

You have to play cards which will empty a (or many) tokkuri(s) exactly. If you achieve this, you flip the tokkuri card, action any text that you may see and keep it as a point. Unless it is a Dummy card, in which case the card is removed from the game and everyone else chuckles at your bad luck.

In fact, the revelation of a dummy card remained funny until the end of the game. It was a nice little game but, as Chris pointed out, where were the dinosaurs?

Sam 20

Chris 13

Paul 4

Andrew 0

After this game, to commemorate the day, Chris took a selfie of the four of us and unfortunately demonstrated how age turns technology into a mystery. We all posed and smiled and, instead of taking a photo, Chris promptly turned his phone off.

Never mind, we got there in the end.

Then we chose our next game. At least, me, Sam and Paul did. Chris stayed at the kitchen table, declaring himself too tired to make a decision. And so we played Tower Up, in which we were rampant civil engineers/town planners, intent on placing our roofs across city skyscrapers. Each of us had a player board with four scoring tracks in white, black, brown and grey which gave us the first childish sniggers as we spoke about “one up the brown” or a lack of “brown movement.”

Sam did impress mid-game with one move that got him three bonuses at once, but Chris’ slew of prominent yellow domes across the city pushed him into first place.

Chris 53

Andrew 50

Sam 46

Paul 40

Next up was Azul. I explained the rules to Paul and we were off. Sam kept picking up the first player token for minus points, insisting that he liked going first. Paul started slowly, with disparate tiles on his board, but managed to weave them all together with a final round that scored over 20 points by itself.

Paul 76

Sam 72

Andrew 70

Chris 66

We discussed food and, since Sam’s son Joe was going to get pizza for him and his friends, it made sense for him to get some pizza for us at the same time. That plan didn’t go down well and not even the promise of a side salad could persuade Joe.

Then we played Scout. A sort of trick taking game with a really light Circus theme. Not as tenuous as dinosaurs drinking sake, but still very tangential. I tried to bring the circus motif into play: when I put down a pair of tens I introduced it as “Lisa and Rebecca with their two cannons” but it didn’t really catch on.

Chris 38

Paul 34

Andrew 27

Sam 18

Next up was Misfits. Chris started with a cylinder placed upright. Then he sat back and smirked. We carefully placed piece after impossible piece until the entire edifice collapsed, leading Sam to declare “every c*nting piece!” as he ruefully swept the debris into his reserve.

We played twice and Chris won both times. After Chris’ second win, we kept playing Speed Misfits for second place, with Chris counting down the time limit in a vague German accent. I placed second.

After this we played Ito - the pocket version of Wavelength where everyone gets to make a guess. We didn’t do too well, with some pretty close calls. 

“Places to have a secret lair” did okay, with some nice distance between our guesses but in the category Imaginary Worlds to Visit we failed to differentiate the two-point gap between The Planet of Stale Farts and Pubic Hair World.

Following this we gave up on pizza and decide to get curry delivered. After that was ordered, we played Pina Coladice. Yahtzee mixed with Noughts And Crosses. Each square of a 4x4 grid has a target to achieve with five dice rolled three times. Place your meeple (if there’s still room) and four in a row will instantly win the game.

It was okay. I felt a bit like I was watching myself play, but there’s a certain amount of strategy as first Paul then Sam found their paths to glory blocked by other players taking the spaces they needed. But in the end, Chris won with four in a row.

With the curry imminent we played a couple of quick games of Toy Battle. A very simple war game with basic mechanics but a nicely balanced range of soldiers at your disposal. Sam beat Paul on a tie-breaker and Chris beat me outright, having successfully stormed my HQ.

Next we broke for food and then I chose the next game - my last of the day.

It was Quest for El Dorado. Paul’s first game, and he got a rules explanation from, as I recall, most of us at one point or another. It was pretty close throughout, apart from the usual early stages of one playing hanging back for tokens (Sam) while another sped off into the jungle (Chris). But Chris was no amatuer just pegging it and hoping for the best. He neatly balanced his deck and picked up tokens as he went. An purchase of the Captain just as he reached the watery fifth hex was probably pivotal.

I tried to think like Adam by buying a Travel Log (or Travelodge, as Paul called it) to whittle away the flab from my hand, but when I appeared I really didn’t know what to do with it. Nevertheless I actually thought I had a chance until quite late on. False hope.

Chris 1st to arrive, wins tie breaker

Sam, arrived same turn

Paul, only a few spaces short

Andrew, at least I reached the final hex.

*                *                *

mysterious change of narrator

*                *                *

Sam here. The hour was around 9pm, I think, when Andrew left us, and we had a couple more hours of ludological frolics ahead of us. We began them with Rebirth, the game of cathedral and castle construction in post-apocalyptic Scotland. I can't help thinking that if all the efforts going into these rebuilding games went into avoiding an apocalypse in the first place, maybe these great designer minds could come up with something. But anyway. This was new to the ever-patient Paul, so I went through the fortuitously-simple rules and away we went, brick by brick. 

Whilst I set about cathedralling like some kind of Ken Follet enthusiast and Paul remarked that he kept pulling the same type of tile, Chris sped off into a chunky lead, passing 100 points way before we did and enjoying saying the word 'dirigible' in celebration. But his momentum slowed in the final act, and my haul of highland castles and completed objectives got me a vanishingly rare win - by a single point! Chris threw his cards on the table in disgust. 

Sam - can't remember

Chris - can't remember -1

Paul - a few points further back

We celebrated/drowned our sorrows in the Milk Tray chocolates Chris had brought with him. There was no flavour reference so I tried one at random, which turned out to be a hazelnut whirl. I enjoyed it so much I had another, before discovering they were everyone's favourite, including Jacquie, who wasn't even here, but added to the chocolatey shame. Apologies all. 

We played Fantasy Realms next, and any crowing I might have been tempted to do in my Rebirth triumph stuck in my throat as I proved abysmally bad at realming fantasies. 

The game is super-simple: you have a hand of cards that score in different ways, and on your turn you pick up a new card and discard one to the table. You can pick up either from the table, or the top of the deck, but the catch is top-decking hastens the end of the game, which happens when a tenth card is added to the communal cards. Chris more than doubled my score, I think it was something like

Chris 190?

Paul 140?

Sam 80

I poured myself another gin as Paul asked me if I was getting tired. "He's got to wait up for his kids!" Chris pointed out, as if we needed an excuse to keep gaming. Little Tavern was next. 

Chris started and immediately parked an elf at his table. I advised him this was maybe not the best move, because elves in this game are racists and only like sitting with other elves. Chris nodded that he understood and immediately picked up three more elves to score 16 points in the first round. In the second I gave him a face-down romantic and he paired it with another face-up to win! Stupid game. 

We finished off with So Clover, of course, but whether it was the marathon games, the gin, the chocolate, the red herrings or the late hour, did appallingly badly with a 3-2-4 haul giving us 9 points from a possible 18! 

By this time, Joe and his pals were home and Stan was on his way back too. It had been ten hours of gaming and with midnight not too far off, we elected to end it there. Thanks all! Sorry about my foul-mouthed breakdown in Misfits. 

A Steak in the Ground

With a plethora of drop-outs, hosts Anja, Steve, and Louie only had a trio of hardy gamers turn up at their doors last night to keep the orange flag flying: myself (Sam), Katy and Martin. After some brief chat, we quickly split into two groups, conscious that both time and players (Louie had to go to bed in an hour, and I didn't want to stay too late) were in short supply. Louie began setting up Robot Quest Arena with his mum and Katy, whilst Steve sat down with Martin and I to play Pioneers. 

While the Robots began barging into each other and snaffling up new powers, I talked Steve and Martin through Pioneers, which seems satisfyingly simple - at first. Each turn has three phases: get income, buy stuff (roads or carriages) and then move the stagecoach, 'delivering' pioneers from said carriages to matching spots on the board. Each spot has a bonus of some kind, so short-term it's about emptying your carriages (for points) and grabbing the rewards.

Long-term though it's also about building a network of roads; as your network (of your own roads) with the most pioneers in (of your own colour) will score at the end of the game as well. We all had to stop ourselves moving pioneers placed on the board and remember to add them from our carriages, and I think Steve and I had about three do-overs with minor gaffes to correct. Meantime the robots were getting a little hot under the metal collar, as Anja was heard announcing she would rivet-gun Louie, and he repeatedly grapple-hooked - if that's a verb - his enemies to fling them around the board. 

In Pioneers, we approached the endgame. I was optimistic that my biggest network was going to move me far enough up the track that I could claim a debut GNN victory: although Steve's carriage-focused points haul was strong, his pioneers were disparate. The stack of carriages we never thought we'd get through was running perilously low, but I ended the game by placing my last road. 

Steve and Martin had one last turn, and Martin's final move got two Farmers down, and it was enough to snake him ahead of us both!

Martin 59
Sam 57
Steve 55

While we were indulging in a post-mortem on the excellent mechanics and possibly not the most thoughtful theming, Robot Quest Arena came to a conclusion, with yet another win for Louie!

Louie 32

Anja 24

Katy 23

He went off to bed with the glow of victory whilst we played Wanted Wombats. What can be said about this strategically-rich game of wombat gangsters that hasn't been already? Well, Katy could have won when she predicted the $10k card and then banked it. She offhandedly said the next card would be a $5k though, and it was! So instead of Katy winning, I did. 

We played again and this time Steve took the victory. He was very pleased. 

After Steve's little dance we broke out Ito, the Wavelength-in-a-card-deck game of civilised discussion and occasional ranting. Our first spectrum was Important Things In Life, and we failed in the opaque space of subjectivity and pictorial representation as we discovered that we valued doilies more than slugs, but less than Eurovision. "Nobody is listening to me" Anja lamented, after her preferences were overruled by more shouty and obstinate folk at the table (me and Martin). 

We went again Things You Might Find Under a Rock, and were confident that Anja's steak - medium-rare, with pepper sauce - would be the most unlikely of our confections, only to discover it was only 55. To be fair though, at least a steak fits under a rock, and would be less surprising than finding, say, Andrew. Anja might have put a steak there. (And she did propose moving it lower, but we didn't listen). 

Our last salvo was Things That Are Hard To Do Alone, which went a disappointedly smutty direction. Anja's clue of synchronised swimming could not possibly be done with anyone else. An excellent high-number clue! But can sexual intercourse be done alone? Martin, resident latin scholar, pointed out the prefix 'inter' was a telling one. We flipped the cards to discover after successfully getting masturbation, singing and tree-hugging in ascending order (insert great weekend joke here) we'd placed these overtly plurality-based activities the wrong way around in our field of dreams... they were numbers 98 and 99! 

Great fun though, and a lovely way to end the evening. Thanks to all, especially our hosts, and particularly Steve for sacrificing his beloved Turkish Delight. After Katy and I both said we hated Turkish Delight, we ate five of them. 

Windy Plops

Adam was our host last night as Katy, Joe, Ian and myself arrived at the magic hour of 7.30pm - well, actually, Katy was there earlier and had a strange tale about a mystical shadow that she told us out on the deck. However, it cannot be shared in full here, as we were sworn to secrecy on the details just in case any strangers read the blog. 

We stepped inside and began the evening with Ito, a kind of micro-Wavelength in that each round - and a game is a single round - has a spectrum from 1-100 (for example, Things You Might Do When You're Happy) and everyone is dealt a number card and must give a bespoke clue for their number. We discuss and arrange the cards face-down in what we hope is ascending order, before revealing, in the hope we are right. 

In four attempts, we were never right, often beginning well before falling away catastrophically. Our most confusing spectrum of the night was Popular Board Games, as our subjectivity needles were all over the shop. Everyone apart from Adam felt Snakes and Ladders was far more popular than Carcassonne. But Snakes and Ladders was his clue - we should have listened. In Things That Will Last Until the End of Time, I immediately regretted my clue of YouTube, but we successfully decoded that the video platform would be less durable than the Concept of Sausages (- Joe). Martin joined us for the last couple of games of Ito, which seems to have a high quotient of accusation in it for a co-op game, but then I guess a modicum of righteousness is not necessarily always a terrible thing. 

Martin pulled Ali Baba and the 40 Thieves from his bag and we set up, optimistic that the game would come into its own with 6 players rather than the trio of last week. Certainly there was more tabletalk, which was good, but the verdict after a couple of rounds was that maybe six was one or two too many. It was fun while it lasted though, and Katy took the mildly-asterisked win - as Martin took Explainer's Curse right in the face.

Katy 63
Ian 45
Joe 41
Adam 28
Sam 24
Martin 1

The reason we stopped a little early was that Steve, bereft of moustache but equipped of tooth, had arrived and it was time for the evening's main courses. There was some hopeful proffering of various titles before we eventually settled on the equally various win conditions of Living Forest for Adam, Katy and Steve...

And Ian was talked through the vagaries of Free Ride USA by Martin and Joe. The latter began his business in the east, Martin more westerly, whilst Ian and I - leery of being too isolated - started track-laying in the swing states. 

Martin's criticism of Free Ride was that it feels like it should take an hour but play is closer to 90 minutes, and I kind of get that. For me though turns are - usually - so quick that I can forgive the playtime because of the pace. Notably here Ian ran low on cash, I picked up long routes, and Joe seemed to be - to our dismay - the recipient of a lot of short routes that popped up just as his train chugged into a nearby station. Because of that, I at least was anticipating that he might be the man to beat. But I was very wrong. 

Martin 119
Sam 113
Ian 105
Joe 103

Another Explainer's curse? Joe had a lot of completed routes, but little cash. Living Forest was yet to reach its sudden-death finale, and the tension was palpable, if somewhat undermined by the regular invoking of the phrase 'windy plops' - so we busted out another newbie from Martin: Viking See-Saw. He doesn't make many dexterity games, but this is a Reiner Knizia title. 

We all begin with a bunch of stuff in front of us:

And on your turn you must add one of your stuff to whichever side of the viking boat is titled upwards - onto to deck proper: you cannot use the two central areas with the brown blocks (chests) in. The goal is to be rid of all your stuff first - an instant win - but if you cause the boat to tilt, you have to take anything that falls off it, plus a chest the from the middle. What adds an additional level of intrigue is the fact that the bits and pieces you add vary considerably in weight: the large plastic gem is considerably lighter than the bronze cubes, for example, which weigh quite a bit. 

Martin came a real cropper here as his very first turn caused the ship to flip over, and the same thing happened to him later. Joe and I also took a hit each, which meant the cantilever king, Ian, sailed to victory:

Ian: all stuff gone 
Sam and Joe: one thing each left
Martin: had loads of stuff left

By now Living Forest was over, and Katy - lamenting - and Steve - stoic silence - were both coming to terms with Adam's tree-based victory. I mean, they knew the risks when they sat down, but sometimes that just makes it worse, I suppose.

Adam - King of the Forest
Katy and Steve -  Jacks of all Trades.

Arthur materialised before us and wanted to play Wavelength, but the hour was such that Adam had to veto and take him upstairs to bed. While we waited on his (Adam's) return, we first played Wanted Wombats, new to Steve, Katy and Ian, but quick to teach and almost as quick to play. 

Katy and I managed to pull off a $10k draw, but I bust on each subsequent turn, whereas Katy didn't.

Katy $15k

Sam $10k

Ian and Steve $3k

Martin $1k

Joe $0

Steve then took his leave. Adam hadn't returned yet, and the word was that he wasn't imminent, so we cracked into So Clover. There was some moderate harrumphing over words but we got off to a good start with a couple of sixes and kept going in that vein. It was so exciting, I forgot to take pictures here but we came a cropper in the last clover - Joe's - through no fault of the clue-giver as we failed to combine circle/base with Joe's clue of Standee. A shame, as that would have given us a perfect 30/30, but no mind. Adam hadn't reappeared yet but as he had seemed tired earlier, we decided to vacate the premises and, hopefully, see him next week. Thanks all!