All you guys care about is the Picts

I arrived at Joe's late to find a cupboard kitchen almost bereft of gamers - with hardy stalwarts Andrew and Martin not attending, and frequently-spotted peripherals happening on a collective absenteeism, there was just Joe, Katy, and Ian. Joe had no music playing and no offspring present. Even Sybil's tail seemed to wag with less mania than normal. But this was merely the calm before the storm...

They were playing Sheep and Thief, a new addition to Joe's collection. Because I only caught the end of it I can't give an entirely accurate description, but there was 7 Wonders-style drafting aligned to card-laying along with sheep moving, road and river building, and sheep rustling by virtue of a fox.

I know the latter because Katy stole three sheep from Joe, who was suitably unimpressed. The game did appear to fit the wolf-in-sheep's-clothing description, as it was feisty enough for a variant on the classic Dr Wall insult to come out more than once...

Katy 36
Joe 29
Ian 23

"At least it's more than zero" Ian said, heroically channelling Eeyore.

We debated what to play next, with Istanbul and Orleans both mentioned before settling on Jorvik, Stefan Feld's game of spiteful Vikings.  Well, they're not really spiteful, but it can sometimes feel that way. Like Beowulf it's a game whose mechanics fly in the face of its theme: this is a bidding game where however many people bid decide what the 'winner' - not necessarily the person who bids most - has to pay. What you're bidding on is cards, and they do various stuff in the way of point-scoring, but really the game is all about the bidding, broken up occasionally by raids from the Picts, who I usually saw off (for points) as Joe disdained mine and Ian's efforts at defending the collective - see post title.

We all enjoyed the swingy, screwy nature of it - but agreed the game is probably a little too long for what it is. Personally I felt an hour would have done it justice, but it took two. However repeat visits would probably bring that down substantially.

I didn't really play with a long-term plan, and went for short-term gains in the main, bolstered by my cards that gave me points for string (?) and one completed order, whereas the others each had at least two orders apiece. And Joe had a bit of string too. But my in-game chiselling had built me enough of a lead that I couldn't be caught:

Sam 52
Ian 41
Joe 29
Katy 25

We then blasted through a couple of attempts at Magic Maze, which has been explained in the previous post. Playing with Katy was a new experience - having grasped the logic of it all in our first (failed) attempt at pulling off the heist, she pretty much co-opted the Do Something piece and dictated events in the second game. It's supposed to be a co-operative really, but I think Katy won.

Then we played Perudo!

Ian needed a little convincing this was the best choice, so I offered him a lift home, and Joe broke out the dice. He also insisted that the cup lid could easily hide 19 dice underneath it, which brought much scorn from Katy and I. Oh, Joe, you hopeless optimist!

Katy was out first when she put too much faith in everyone else's numbers. It looked like Ian or I might be next, but then Joe got caught in a death spiral and went swiftly from the only person with five dice to the next one out!

At that point Ian was still palafico and I had the advantage of three dice. I played cagey with a low bid on twos and Ian - not unreasonably - gambled on a dudo - giving me my second win of the night.

I like these 4-player evenings!

All that remained was for Joe to prove that the cup lid could easily hide 19 dice, at which he failed miserably. Katy's opinion on fellatio, which came out candid and unbidden during Jorvik, is probably best left a mystery.

Who calls Wallace at 1am?

Andrew, Chris, Ian and I gathered at my house last night for some bank holiday gaming. Little Joe joined us at the start of the evening for a couple of games of Insider, which has been the hit of our household these past few days. Joe isn't as into games as Stan is, but like Spyfall he enjoys this one.

For those who've not yet played it, in Insider one person is the Master, who knows what the secret word is. Everyone else is trying to guess it - except the Insider also knows what the word is. Nobody knows who the Insider is, but it's their job to make sure the word gets guessed inside 3 minutes, without giving away they know it already. Our first word didn't get guessed, and Chris was revealed as the Insider. In the second game, I was the Insider - and I thought I'd done a pretty good job of steering us toward the secret word (advertisement). But clearly I hadn't, as despite some healthy debate, everyone pointed at me!

It was now time for Joe to go to bed, so the rest of us went and perused the Alcove of Infamy. I proposed a system of everyone choosing two games as a shortlist, but that proved unnecessary when someone suggested Railways of the World. All debate evaporated and we set up.

Chris needed a quick refresher of the rules, which we did collectively. Then the fun began. It was a game of much standing up - heightened tension for some, or simply in order to see the other end of the board for others. Ian went a bond-heavy route early on, and swiftly regretted it. Andrew and he started laying track in the wide open plains of the mid-west, whilst Chris and I fought it out on the jumbly East Coast. I managed to deliver the first goods cube, and get the bonus for four different goods. Andrew delivered the first good over three links.

Chris busily built around the Tri-State area. I stayed involved but decided not to get into a fight over any longest routes, instead building further south with an eye on the Jacksonville service bounty. Andrew and Ian seemed to be fixated on Chicago, and Ian's bond-heavy start was now lingering in the air like Marley's ghost. As the rest of us chugged along the scoretrack and took delivery of cash, Ian was back near the start picking up the odd grand, paying the odd grand and once having to take a bond during income.

As the game continued my good early start waned as Chris made delivery after delivery and overhauled me, building a ten point lead, and then more. Andrew's strong mid-game dropped off and he and Ian became involved in what would be a fight for third place that was complicated by Andrew building not one, but two western links! Every time Andrew delivered cubes from them though, Ian seemed to benefit from the new goods cropping up in Chicago.

As Chris and I pushed ahead on the scoretrack though, our income was dropping, and this Knizian element led Andrew into a recurring motif about Reiner phoning Martin Wallace in the middle of the night to suggest tweaks to his game designs. Poor Wallace got into all kinds of trouble with his wife.

Meanwhile Chris' lead was building. He insisted I was going to catch him, but with the game only a round or two from finishing, I wasn't convinced that my shipping options would be enough. Instead I embarked on something that had been at the back of my mind for the last few rounds - a long-distance New York to Kansas link. Fate smiled on me in that the first couple of links I built gave me obvious shipping rewards, so it didn't look too suspicious. Then in the very last round I spent all three turns building a nine-hex link to complete the route, with the others unable to block me. The twenty point haul took me narrowly into the lead - I was pleased with this haul, especially as we'd only witness Adam achieve it before - and we all agreed that there was every possibility he is a robot.

But then Chris shipped again, finishing the game in front!

In a tense finale once bonds were counted up Chris was two points in front. However, as the only person to complete their Baron card, I won it at the death!

Sam 115
Chris 111
Andrew 72
Ian 58

It had been a beast in every sense, with the time fast approaching 11pm. But we were keen for a another game and I was drunk enough to pour Andrew some saki whilst he was in the loo to stop him going home. I was also drunk enough to refer to it as 'scampi' when he returned - but a game of Magic Maze soon sobered me up.

In this madcap mayhem all the players control all the pieces - adventurers trying to pull off a heist in a fantasy shopping mall. There are three catches - one is that each player can only move each adventurer in a certain direction (or do a certain special move). The second is that the game is against the clock - you only have three minutes on the timer, although certain spots on the board allow you to flip the timer over at opportune moments. The third is that the game is played in near-silence, so if someone is failing to spot a move, all you can do is tap/bang/wave the Do Something piece in front of them, as a prompt. There are no turns, so everyone is scrambling to move something when an objective is obvious - and alternatively staring in stumped confusion when it isn't.

We played twice, failing abysmally in the first attempt, but succeeding - albeit with a little cheating - in the second. It's a hard game not to cheat at!

Reaction was mixed, with Andrew and I big fans (Stan loves it too) but Ian finding it too "energetic". But maybe he was just jaded from his Railways experience. Chris isn't a fan of co-ops but seemed to like it okay.

And with the maze back in its box we called time on proceedings. Until tonight!