Boarding nine to five

Just holed up for a week in Wales with Mark, Katie, and their kids. I brought a big bag of games knowing that if Scythe didn't get played, we would at least get through some lighter affairs. As it turned out, though, 8 and 9-year-old children seem to adore Scythe...

I've not written down all the scores but outside of a smattering of Love Letter and Pickomino and a one-off Lords of Waterdeep, the hits of the holiday were Bandu (grown-ups), Scythe (kids), and O Zoo le Mio (both). The days were spent body-boarding and sandcastle-building at the beach, and the evenings playing boardgames at the house. On the first night I introduced Katie and Mark to Bandu, which they liked a lot. I think we played it every night bar one, with a variety of winners. Most notable, however, was the night we broke Bandu - running out of pieces with everyone's tower still yet to crumble.

broke

The kids enjoyed Bandu too...

Peppa verges on winning

...although what Peppa and Stanley wanted to play on a regular basis was Scythe. We played it a couple of days in with me facing off against the pair of them in a team, and although I sped to six stars to trigger the game end, I was a vastly unpopular leader with the locals, and came a desultory second. For our second game I managed a win. Finally we played individually, and as the game progressed towards its close it was between myself and Stan. Not wanting to damage my (much improved) popularity, I demurred from knocking Peppa out of the central hex. I should have been a bit more hard-nosed:

Stanley 67
Sam 66
Peppa 53

The game that was a hit with everyone was O Zoo le Mio, which I picked up very cheaply from Area 51. It's a cross between Carcassonne and something a bit more screwage-y. Everyone is building their own zoo (laying tiles a lá Carcassonne) but the tiles are flipped over five at a time and everyone makes blind bids for them. What's on the tiles defines how many visitors will be attracted to your zoo, which in turn defines the winner. Over five rounds the points rewards escalate, so starting poorly doesn't write you off, but finishing strongly is a must. You're juggling a number of things - how the tiles fit into your zoo, how much you spend, and keeping track of how much everyone else is spending.

Just like a real zoo, you secrete your cash in the entrance

Just like a real zoo, visitors are attracted by bushes

On the last night we also played a few games of Knit Wit, where Katie insisted that "you're always safe with lard" and Mark said lightening is "tall" which, despite the seeming incongruity, you can't really argue with. I somehow smuggled pygmy soup through as a definition for organic, coarse, flavourful and wild. Again, a variety of winners, but the game was mostly notable for Katie's answers usually involving food in some way.

And in the morning it was time to go. Despite my occasional proffering, Lords of Vegas never got played! Sorry, Joe.

King of the Castle

Easter Friday, and the games began early. My mum had visited the night before, and having stayed over she joined me and the boys after breakfast for Keltis: The Dice Game. I think the last time this was played by any GNN member outside the Morrison household, it was Andrew and I watching Everton in a pub, back when they were a half-decent team. Long time ago.

It's a really simple game - you have four stones and you're pushing them up different tracks. If your stone stops on an emerald, you pick up an emerald. If it stops on a clover, you get to push any stone up an extra place. If it stops on a leprechaun, you get another turn... it's the sort of thing the Irish tourist board probably have nightmares about. As soon as five stones go past a certain point on the tracks the game ends. Stan and Joe played as a team, and with zero help they wiped the floor with us:

Stanley/Joe 22
Sam 14
Crysse 11

Crysse then headed home and Stan and I played Black Fleet. More easy-going stuff, albeit with the slight edge of getting your pirate ship sunk (by the navy, to stop it stealing goods) or your merchant ship stolen from (by the pirates, to gain doubloons). The game is super-simple: play a movement card and move three ships (both your own, plus one navy ship) and if you choose to, play a fortune card as well. Fortune cards do various bits and bobs. Your aim is to get enough doubloons to flip over all your cards in a tableau in front of you - and as each one is flipped it gives you a special power.

One such power for Stan was the ability to sink my merchant ship with the navy, a politically incorrect move he emptied to effect on his winning turn:

Stanley: all cards flipped
Sam: one card unflipped

In the afternoon Katie and Mark joined us with their kids Peppa and Lula. After a stroll around Narroways in the afternoon, an Easter egg hunt, and several unintended interactions with the mud, we returned for a roast tea.

Whilst Sally began working her magic in the kitchen (Mark and I washed up later, honest) myself, Mark, Katie and Peppa began playing Trans America, the game of semi-cooperative track-laying. We only managed one round before the food arrived, but with a bit of help from Mark on her final turn, Peppa won it. I don't recall the exact scores but I think I was back in last place.

Next we played Linkee. It's a quiz game where four usually-easy-to-answer questions are linked in some way, so the game is really about that bit of lateral thinking. If you get the link you win a card, and normally you play until you have managed to spell Linkee, as the letters are randomly distributed on the back of the cards. We found at Christmas though this can take hours, so just played until someone had five cards.

Mark won every single time, with the rest of us usually back on one or no cards at all. I'd like to say I didn't win because I was questioner, but Peppa took over this role and I suffered the same fate as Katie and Sally before me.

About nine Sally managed to get the kids both into bed and asleep courtesy of a sedate reading of The Secret Garden. Downstairs I'd managed to get Castles of Mad King Ludwig set up and explained the rules to Mark and Katie, so when Sally reappeared we were ready to go.

Sort of.

King Ludvig wanted kitchens, gardens, exits and corridors, and my bonus cards rewarded bedrooms and corridors. So for reasons I haven't really fathomed, except perhaps mild drunkenness due to my inroads on a 5-litre keg of Gem, I started building cellars and utility rooms. Sally, as revealed at the end, was after one of every type of room, and like others before her fell agonisingly short. Mark built a string of gardens - broken only by a large meat locker - leading to a confection of living rooms. And Katie stared at the choices before her, seemingly more bewildered by every passing turn. I watched the equally bewildering sight of Sally explaining a game to somebody, as we chipped in to help.

I lagged behind early on, and lagged behind later too. The other three took turns in the lead, but toward the end Mark and Katie surged ahead of us and clearly wouldn't be caught. When we added up at the end, my bonus cards did was get me from a horrendous fourth place to a mildly embarrassing one. Katie's bonuses took her momentarily into the lead, but when Mark turned his cards over he overtook her again to claim the win:

Mark 96
Katie 90
Sally 73
Sam 70

With the clock approaching eleven, we broke out one last game - Timeline. New to Katie and Mark but as ever, very easy to play. Sally made the early running with her historical knowledge leading to educated guesses - possibly too educated, as Katie speculated on the privileges of private schooling. But Mark and I managed to catch up and at one point the three of us were hovering over a single card. Katie meanwhile was hampered by her rather ambitious card placements - going for a ten year gap in one turn and a three-year gap in the next. Unfortunately neither paid off.

Mark got his card down and as last player to his left, I had one chance to force a tied win. Could I determine the development of Euclidean Geometry? It was definitely after ceramics, but was it before the cork? I managed to get it down and we celebrated in our joint victory:

Mark/Sam: all cards down
Sally: 1 card remaining
Katie: 3 cards remaining

Including Linkee (with a joint second for the rest of us), it was still a clean sweep for Mark though, meaning he cleans up on the hugely-seldom KMSS leaderboard. Sally also sweeps past me, though The Chiseller, Katie, remains back in fourth place for now...

KMSS						Points
Mark		1	1	1	3	6
Sally		2	3	2	1	8
Sam		1	4	2	2	9
Katie		3	2	2	4	11

Taking it Easy

Last New Year's Eve was the scene of a gaming disaster for me, where I torpedoed the slim chances of Sally ever saying "I love the games of Martin Wallace" forever. The masochistic part of me was tempted to start a tradition; of attempting completely inappropriate games with the close of every year. But I couldn't face the opprobrium.

Instead, with Katie, Mark, Peppa and Lula in attendance, Mark and I scrutinised the cupboard. We agreed on a novel choosing strategy - games that weren't rule heavy (my department), and box artwork that appealed to Mark. Happily that coincided with the game I really wanted to introduce them to: Castles of Mad King Ludwig. Also in the pile was Black Fleet, Trans America, and Love Letter.

Trans America is a favourite of Katie and Mark's, and while Sally beavered away in the kitchen we played a three-player game. I got off to a great start when they built enough track to give me simple connections for my last three cities, and with Katie still ten links away, it only took another round for me to wrap up the game.

Sam 0
Mark 5
Katie 13

After tea there was a brief hiatus as the kids put on a show upstairs, where Stan belied his status as a convalescent by embarking on an energetic drum roll that lasted about 11 minutes. Peppa and Joe played guitar whilst Lula danced. I have tried to upload a movie of it to show how startling the sheer amount of energy in the room, but Blogger has failed me. Here's Katie and Peppa post-huge dessert instead:

Having been blown away by the inaugural Zombie House gig upstairs, we ignored the game stack and broke out Raj. Peppa has played this before and joined us. We simply played one round = one game, and Peppa and Sally won the first. I think Mark won the second and I won the third.

After that I realised the situation was crying out for the simplicity of Take It Easy, and while Katie took a gaming breather myself, Sally, Mark and Peppa played a round. I tried to introduce the rhyming couplets of old, but I think I merely succeeded in looking odd. Or odder.

In compensation I won the first game (a single round) by a narrow margin, and then Katie joined us as we played twice more. I won the second round too, but the third was taken by Mark.

It was now 11pm and the four kids were still up - while Peppa played with us, Joe and Lula were roaming the house in their onesies and Stanley was doggedly watching all the extras on the School of Rock DVD. Mark and Katie decided it was time to head home - but we went out on a high, ending the evening with a rock disco in the front room - School of Rock soundtrack on the stereo, children on the coffee table. We even had the obligatory disco drama as Sally and Katie insisted on listening to the Stevie Nicks track: whilst Stan buried his face in disgust Joe sat it out on the stairs saying it was "stupid".

In the kitchen I looked longingly at Castles of Mad King Ludwig... was it really too late for a two-player?

It was. We watched an episode of Breaking Bad then saw in the new year watching the fireworks, and listening to a neighbour banging a saucepan with a serving spoon in celebration. 2015 was here.

I do normally update on the tiny KMSS leaderboard but I think this was all non-competitive.

Carcass: Four

Yesterday Sally and I joined Mark and Katie for a post-Christmas drink or two, and as often happens, post-kids-bedtime found ourselves congregating round the table for a game.

I'd brought a few options and subtly (ie transparently) mentioned that Tinner's Trail was my favourite game. Already a margarita or two to the good, nobody bit. Instead we played Love Letter, the game where each player is a suitor desperate to get a letter to the princess. Why she'd go for any of such a bunch of cut-throats  is anyone's guess, but after a tentative first round we were quickly up to speed, and it was Katie who won the Princess' heart:

Katie - 3 cubes
Mark/Sam - 1 cube
Sally - no cubes

courtesy Nekau, BGG

After that we moved on to hardy perennial Carcassone, the game of geographical and geometric discovery and possession. You place tiles; you hope no-one notices your farmer stealthily encroaching on someone else's. Sally spent the first half of the game picking up chapels and the second picking up roads, so much so that I assumed she was no threat and used the last tile of the game to complete her one city (benefiting my farmer). It was a mistake:

Sally 83
Sam 79
Mark 59
Katie 57

Sally's incomplete chapels and very long cul-de-sac (12 tiles!) were enough, aligned with one productive farmer, to cement her victory in a game of curiously few completed cities. When she realised she had won the look on her face was one of several competing emotions - I think shock won out over disbelief and awe.

KMSS						Points
Sam		2	2	1	1	6
Katie		4	1	3	2	10
Sally		1	3	4	3	11
Mark		3	2	2	4	11

All of which means my iron grip on the table has been loosened, and there's some jostling for position below me as Katie and Sally both climb past Mark, pushing him down to fourth.

Then we all slept really badly and woke up with margarita heads. See you tonight!

One wonders...

Friday night, and after a lengthy settling routine involving bribery, threats, stair-climbing and much cavorting from little people in superhero/princess pyjamas, we (myself and Sally, Katie and Mark) finally managed to get the children into bed.

This protraction isn't great from a games perspective for a couple of reasons - firstly, everyone is slightly jangly and nearing exhaustion. Secondly, to deal with the jangling everyone (bar Mark, who's driving) has drunk themselves to a point of post-Wallace cogency.

Bearing all that in mind, and remembering that Joe had had success - against the odds, I felt - with it in the Berger household, I broke out 7 Wonders. It's easy, right? You just play a card and pass your hand on. Or cash that card in. Or use it to build your wonder. But remember, you need the correct resources to build your wonder (or indeed a card) so you need to get those from somewhere. Maybe your neighbour. (Not your non-neighbour) But you have to pay 2 coins. Unless you've built another card which means you pay one. Also remember the military, and the fact the science cards are scored by squaring the amount of them you have, and that the cards are revealed simultaneously and card rotation switches between rounds.

And then of course there's chaining buildings together. And each wonder's special ability. In fact, the more I attempted to convey the rules, the more I realized that it's actually quite a lot to get your head around first play, and the bafflement on Paul Jefferies face came flooding back to me when I first tried to explain it.

The best that can be said about it was that it wasn't too long. I think if we'd played it an hour earlier, I might even have been able to coax another try at it. Mark said he was getting the hang of it by the end...

Anyway I nabbed first place from Mark despite his strong showing on guilds:

Sam 48
Mark 46
Katie 44
Sally 30

Which means I stay top of the occasional KMSS leader board, but Mark leapfrogs Katie into second on the most recent result rule. I don't think I can take much pride in those '1's though, as I force everyone to play a new game almost every time.

KMSS						Points
Sam		1	1	1	1	4
Mark		2	4	2	2	12
Katie		3	2	3	4	12
Sally		4	3	4	3	14

Survival of the Fattest

Sunday, Portishead. Games weren't originally on the agenda, but after a beach walk and an enormous meal (this was nearly called Roulade for the Soul) Katie, Mark, Sally and I stuffed to the point of inertness, and communication was reduced to a series of gestural wheezes. We were ready to hand over the communal child wrangle to the television, so a screening of Despicable Me was set up and, a window of time opening up, we were struck by the urge to play a game.

Vegas was brought out. For those uninitiated, this cheeky little number has a playing area of six casinos labelled 1 to 6, that at the start of the game are dealt a bunch of dollars (minimum $50,000). On your turn, you roll all of your dice (you have eight at the start) and choose which ones to put in a casino in an attempt to win the money. The dice numbers and the casino number must match, so if you choose your three 4s you put them in the casino marked 4. And note: they all must go in; you can't split up matching numbers.

This continues until everyone has run out of dice, then the person with the most dice in a particular casino takes the highest showing money card. If there's a second card, the person with the second-most dice takes that and so on.

The potentially brilliant/agonising thing about it however, is that if two people tie for the same amount of dice they cancel each other out - so (as in our game) when Mark and Katie got into a battle for a $90,000 money card they ended up with four dice each, and Peppa and I (playing as a team) took first place and the cash with a solitary die.

courtesy BGG user Tonksey

I started well with a decent haul in the first round, snagging a small lead over the others. My tactic was to hedge my bets and put in a single die here or there, hoping to give myself a bit of choice when the others ran out of dice. But in the second round we were all blown out of the water by Katie, who picked up $250,000 while the rest of us ended with scraps.

At this point it seemed like The Chiseller was well on her way, but three things happened in my favour. First, Mark and Katie began fighting over the same casinos. Second, Peppa got bored with Despicable Me and joined my team as Official Dice Roller, performing the task with something akin to dark magick in terms of what we wanted. Finally Joe peed on the sofa and Sally's attention was distracted by admonishment and laundry duties.

Also I should add that I encouraged the others to go after Katie, like the sneaky little shit that I am.

As Katie and Mark got into a philosophical debate about how their shared love was or wasn't manifesting itself through die placement, and Sally chased a damp-crotched reprobate around the living room, Peppa and I cleaned up.

Peppa and Sam $520,000
Katie $450,000
Sally $330,000
Mark $240,000

All of which means, after a long period of playing second fiddle to Katie or Mark, I stay top on the extremely occasional KMSS leaderboard. Sally improves her numbers but stays fourth, and Katie leapfrogs Mark. I keep telling them we're going to play 7 Wonders so that will probably be next...

KMSS						Points
Sam		1	1	1	2	5
Katie		2	3	4	1	10
Mark		4	2	2	3	11
Sally		3	4	3	4	14

Saturday Night Farmer

Last night Sally and I made our way to Mark and Katie's for our irregular games match-ups. I'd brought a few 4-player options, but as Katie's son Jack was there - and willing to participate - we ended up playing blast from the past Carcassone. Once upon a time this felt the promised land of gaming, only to pale slightly as more complex, or thematically interesting games took its place. But it still retains something - even if your strategy is pretty much decided by luck, it's so simple to pick up and play, and looks lovely. My recent match-up with my own boys meant I was a little fresher than the others:

Sam 98
Mark 80
Sally 52
Katie 47
Jack 35

Carcassone cake, courtesy of Toniemn

After that most of us we still perky, but fancied something a bit faster-moving, so Mark brought Las Vegas to the table. This is even more down to chance, and lady luck smiled on me - as Katie and Jack fought an intergenerational battle, I managed to pick up some hefty first places (- their dice were tied, meaning they cancelled each other out). In mitigation of Sally, she at this point was trying to stay awake:

Sam $540,000
Mark $350,000
Katie $320,000
Sally $240, 000
Jack $130,000

Lots of dice, courtesy of diddle74

Full of good food, games, alcohol and company, we collapsed into bed.

But wait. Today was Father's day, so after a slap-up breakfast Mark and I found ourselves with the special treat of a couple of hours to ourselves as the ladies took the kids out. We decided to fill it with a couple of games, and Jack - now slightly jaded by the pirate-themed Soft-Play world - joined us.

First up was Samurai. Andrew and I can vouch for how more-ish this game is. And I think Steve can too, as he trounced us if I recall. But at the same time as having a simple rule-set it also has the head-scratching element of trying to work out your optimal move. Mark really liked it, though his appreciation was often expressed in cries of despair.

1 Sam
2 Mark
3 Jack

It was really close between the three of us, so we played again:

1 Sam
2 Mark
3 Jack

Again it was very tight, and Mark and I were probably lucky that Jack was focusing half his attention on his laptop.

Thanks, Club Amatent

Finally we bashed out three games of No Thanks. I won two and Mark the other, as Jack placed second each time. We all had at least one completely duff round, scoring overall (over 3 games):

Sam 126
Jack 127
Mark 184

magyar kiadás

And that was that. On the KMSS table (recording the Saturday night games only) I surge into a healthy lead as the incessant nerdiness finally pays dividends. Admittedly not the kind of dividends that pay for anything, anywhere, ever, but I'll take what I can get at this stage,

KMSS						Points
Sam		1	1	2	1	5
Mark		2	2	3	3	10
Katie		3	4	1	2	10
Sally		4	3	4	4	15

Mammoth Fun

With the coming of the sun it can be a bereft time for gamers. Suddenly the boys want to play outside in the garden - Stanley likes football, Joe likes mangling the plants - instead of healthier pursuits like Scripts and Scribes or Alhambra. Often the closest I get to a game at the weekend is sticking my head in the cupboard and breathing deeply for a few minutes.

Last night, however, the cavalry arrived in the shape of Mark and Katie, our occasional sparring partners. Actually as we went to their house maybe we were the cavalry, if the cavalry have ever dashed to Portishead with a selection of worker-placement games in the saddlebags. Anyway by the time we'd caught up, drunk our first drinks, and eaten some lovely parma ham with melon, there was a tight hour-and-a-half gap for gaming. I'd brought a few options but was open to anything. Katie suggested Carcassone. Sally was indifferent by this stage, but Mark plumped for Stone Age, as we'd not played it together before and he had a hankering for something new.

For anyone unfamiliar with it Stone Age's basic premise is simple - use your stone-age followers to gather resources, then use your resources to build huts or develop your culture (the latter in the shape of cards that give you end-game bonuses). But no-one ever explained the basic rules of life to a caveman after his (or her) third mojito, and there was some confusion over the games finer aspects, manifest through some facial communication and single-syllable grunting. And with time a-pressing I felt the burden of chief-chivvier was upon me, so I game-managed (okay, bossed around) everyone else in order to keep things moving, to their indulgent tolerance.

Texting the cave to say there was no clay

Maybe it was my whip-cracking, or maybe mojitos give a belated clarity, but suddenly everything fell into place and people had strategies and tactics. Actually I don't think I've ever played Stone Age with quite such a gamble-y feel to it before. There were lots of single or double followers trying to dredge up  gold, for instance, and Mark in particular felt the pinch on a number of unlucky rolls.

We didn't finish - agreeing to quit at the end of a round about two-thirds of the way through. I'd like to think I would have been in the mix with a few more rounds played, but I can't be sure. The Chiseller was way out in the lead having started building huts early and getting into the card-buying late on:

Katie 81
Sam 65
Mark 39
Sally 30

Which means while Mark - with a series of wins under his belt - stays in first place on our mini-table, Katie jumps up to second. I think I've actually amended an old table here but it's seven am on Sunday and I'm buggered if I can find the most recent one.

*Table now correctly updated, and Arch-Chisel-Wielder Katie is out in front!

KMSS						Points
Katie		1	2	4	1	8
Sam		2	1	3	3	9
Mark		3	3	2	2	10
Sally		4	4	2	4	14

Infamy, Infamy

Last night was mine and Sally's overdue rematch with Mark and Katie, Hotwell-dwelling gamers. There was cheese and wine, and smarties, and the catch up on all things family, including the current commodity of choice in our respective homes (sleep at ours, egg ownership at theirs). Then we broke out the cardboard.

I'd taken along Pompeii, Ra and Stone Age as options. I'd assumed as Sally had played it last week Ra might appeal to her in a non-rules-learning fashion, but she pooh-poohed it like the seasoned gamer she pretends not to be. Nobody fancied Stone Age, so after Carcassone was ruled out we set up The Downfall of Pompeii.

I think all GNNers have played this by now, but for anyone who's missed out: the first half of the game sees players repopulating the city of Pompeii after the earthquake of 62AD, and the second half comes after Vesuvius erupts in 79AD, when your families have to come scurrying out again. Apparently Klaus-Jurgen Wrede is planning a sequel where fascists chase you into Naples before the Allies drop bombs on you for four years.

We went through the rules and started quickly. What's nice about Pompeii is it's so easy to pick up, yet as we all noted it wears it's theme very well. Certainly Sally went through a roller-coaster of emotions, unable to decide if the lava raining down on us all was thrilling, or if it made her sad.

Some people strayed too close to the heat

I did well in the card stage, getting heaps of relations on the board that even the serial chucking of them into the volcano by the others couldn't halt. Katie fared poorly in contrast, and when Vesuvius erupted she still had plenty of family who hadn't made the post-quake return to the city.

It was now time to get out. Having a big presence on the board made me a likely target for any sentient lava, so I made an early decision to get out fast, without thinking about who to move too much. I reckoned that any thinking would be undone by A. giving away what I was planning and B. the lava tiles being so unpredictable. Sally and Katie both had issues with family members being wiped out in the chaos, during which I was unpalatably compared to an Guantanomo Bay guard.

Mark's yellow family run out of time

Mark meanwhile was doing what I'd done the last time I'd played Pompeii - amassing family by the gates. My undoing in that system was the lava tiles - in Mark's case though he unfortunately ran out of time, as the one completely nonsensical element to the game (no more lava = survivors in the city all perish) kicked in:

Sam 11
Katie 9
Mark 8
Sally 7

So no ties to resolve, but we looked in the volcano for carcasses anyway, and discovered that despite my many sacrificial lambs during repopulation, it was Sally who had suffered worst at the hands of the lava, possibly due to what she described as cardboard karma. A good game though, and a very nice evening.

On the occasional KMSS form table Mark hangs on to top spot, but I jump from 4th to second. Katie's impressive second place from a lowly presence on the board sees her stay ahead of Sally.

KMSS						Points
Mark		3	2	2	1	8
Sam		1	3	3	2	9
Katie		2	4	1	3	10
Sally		4	2	4	1	11

Trans-Datum

Friday night Sally and I had Mark and Katie over, which meant I was allowed to raid the games cupboard. Sally has an interesting take on games, in that if you don't talk all the way through them you're not playing properly. Usually this talk will at some point hit upon the appalled realisation that the game is lasting 'ages'. But we chose a fairly speedy game so I was spared opprobrium.

The actual choosing of the game was a game in itself, inspired by my wonderful present from Katie, the delightful 70's piece Madame Planchette's Horoscope game, modelled coquettishly here by Sally:

Both of these women got paid for this

In what was either an inspired bit of improvised gaming or a deviously pre-planned scheme to play Trans-America, Mark laid out four crisps on the table and secretly assigned them a game: Alhambra, Ticket to Ride, Carcassone and the aforementioned railway game.

Where's Tinner's Trail?

Katie then chose a crisp (the big one) which turned out to be her favourite, Trans-America. There was talk of playing Madame Planchette herself, but nobody was in the mood for learning rules, even if the first line of them is the delightful "Before play begins, everyone makes a secret wish."

So off we went, railroading our way across America, only to tear up all our good work in disgust and start again whenever someone made their connections. The classic sensation of playing Trans-America is when you look at your cards and think "how in the wide world of sports am I going to link these up?" - and certainly that was pretty much how I felt throughout the game.

Hands across America

Staring forlornly at the board appears to make no difference, however, so I simply cursed the urban development of San Diego, Houston, Duluth etc and watched as Mark and Katie gallivanted their way to convincing 1-2 finish:

Mark  3
Katie  6
Sam   8
Sally 14

Sally's suggestion that we get Andrew to write up the night felt just a bit too presumptuous though, so here I am.

On Saturday we played games too; this time with Becky and Dan, who had come from Chesham for the night. I discovered that Becky loves games! Perhaps that was the moment when they became respectable in Sally's eyes. We'll see.

I didn't take any photos that night, so here are Stanley and Joe.

Anyway, Becky, Dan and I managed a 13-all draw in Mord Im Arosa as Sally was collared for the murders with 15 points. Then Becky won Tsuro, with Dan second and Sally third as I crashed out first, giving me a weekend wide 3-1-4 spread. This is all non-leaderboard though, right?

The Poison Palace

On Saturday night we had friends over for games, and I was feeling nervous. These friends - Mark and Katie - are gamers, but gamers in the sense of splashing about in the sunny, healthy shallows, while we lunatics are 100m down in the depths, comparing mechanics, writing blogs, dreaming of meeples etc. Only the other night we had a 5 minute conversation about Stabcon without actually mentioning it by name.

So the reason for my nervousness was that I had dangled, carrot-like, several gaming options to lure them away from the comparative safety of classics like Carcassone, Ticket to Ride or Trans-America. But having done so I'd had a fit of panic when they chose Poison and, specifically, Tinner's Trail.

"Tinner's Trail?" Joe's face fell. "Are you sure?!" - one of Joe's many large steps toward social pariah-dom was taken when he attempted to inflict this game on his family and friends. "It was a disaster" he related grimly. I was thrown. A disaster? Really? Auctions, time-tracks, copper, tin, water, adits, historical themes, a slightly complicated scoring system involving investments that recoup less over time... what's not to like?

Well, I supposed compared to say, Settlers, it might seem a little complex. I borrowed Alhambra from Joe as my Plan B. As it turned out, Mark seemed to take Plan B as an affront on his gaming prowess, and was determined to play Tinner's Trail, but after a curry and chips, several glasses of wine and three rounds of Poison it was simply too late to crack open anything Martin Wallace might have thought of, so Alhambra it was.

Poison scores first: We played each round as an individual game and I think I won the first two. Mark definitely won the last one with a big fat zero. I'd managed to Jefferies-curse Katie by suggesting via email she'd be good at this, so naturally she came off worst in every game.

But in Alhambra the Carcassone-Chiseller of old was cracking her knuckles (except for the one dodgy finger) and going for a healthy spread of second-and-first places in medium buildings plus a fancy wall to pull off a debut win:

Katie 110

Sam 103

Mark 95

Sally 93

Mark, who had been lagging behind after the first two scoring rounds, snuck past Sally despite having the most erratic wall-builder in all of Spain, and hit me with both barrels on the Towers, nabbing the last two in one turn to sneak into first and deprive me of a possible win. Sally was the victim of fatigue; having led after round one and two, her game went to pot as she - well, all of us, to be fair - got too preoccupied over whose turn it was to concentrate on tactics.

Nevertheless, both games went down very well. Mark threatened to buy Poison for Katie (instead of knickers) and Katie said she was tempted to come to Stabcon. Mainly to see how weird it is, it must be said, but in this church we'll take our members by stealth if we have to.

So no Tinner's Trail this time, but was it a missed opportunity, or a near-miss? I guess the only way to find out... is to play it next time.