Sam, Joe and I came prepared, for a selection of games that could be played by almost any number from two up to eleven. There were seven of us to start with, and so Joe tempted us with a new experience: Panic On Wall Street. The game of investment and deal-making.
It was a lot of fun, but also quite frantic. There are five rounds, and only two minutes during each round for actual wheeling and dealing. Within these one hundred and twenty split seconds, your plan must be executed.
It’s effectively two games in one. The managers were competing against each other to see how much they could get from the investors. The investors battled according to how well their firms do in the stock market.
Joe invested big style in the volatile but potentially lucrative red shares. This turned out to be a mistake, and mid-game saw him with only $10,000 to his name. Green shares looked like the safe bet, and Hannah and I did well on them in round two or three, before Sam swooped in to close out as many green shares as possible in the following rounds. The plan worked perfectly. Meanwhile, Joe recovered enough to take an impressive second place.
Investors
Sam $615,000
Joe $365,000
Andrew $355,000
Hannah $280,000
Managers
Adam $485,000
Lizzy $360,000
Miles $255,000
We suspect that neighbours Adam and Sam had a little insider dealing situation going on. They certainly seemed very chummy as they celebrated with a feeble high five, just glancing off each others' little finger.
Next, Lizzy retired for the evening, and while we pondered our next game, Sam got out Cube Quest. The new craze that’s sweeping Sam’s kitchen table is a kind of war flicking game, with knights. Joe repeated his “Sir Butteo” jokes from a previous post on this blog. We didn’t laugh, per se, but we all appreciated the effort he put into that pun.
We played three games. Sam beat Adam in a bit of an epic, picking off Adam’s king last, Joe beat me, after flicking a cube deep into enemy territory where I couldn’t get rid of it, and the Adam beat Sam, sending a cube down a narrow avenue of opportunity to take out Sam’s king. An addictive, fast-moving game that, Sam estimates, has been played seventeen times in the last 48 hours.
Then we split into two groups of three. Hannah, Miles and I played Maharaja in the front room, while it was a clash of the Titans in the kitchen, where Sam, Adam and Joe chose to do battle over Tinners’ Trail.
I explained the rules to Hannah and Miles, and noted that Miles – much like his relative, Adam – seemed to grasp concepts frighteningly quickly and make sensible points (plus, he chose yellow for his playing pieces). Hannah, too, got into the swing of things. At one point, she quickly got up, checked something in the rule book, and then put it back down without saying a word. Quite unnerving.
I was doing fine until the closing rounds when both Miles and Hannah chose to take my character card making it difficult to plan ahead. In the end, they completed all seven palaces, but Hannah won on money. I trailed in last.
Hannah 7 palaces and 16 money
Miles 7 palaces and 1 money
Andrew 6 palaces
Next door, Tinners’ Trail had turned into Adam’s Parade. According to all concerned, he took the lead from the start and never looked like letting go. Sam came second and Joe third in a high scoring game.
Adam 154
Sam 127
Joe 114
And then they played Biblios. Joe’s run of non-wins continues.
Sam 6 (wins on tie breaker)
Adam 6
Joe 2
We stumbled out into the night, with Joe crying “Will I ever win at Biblios?!” into the warm summer night. That is probably something we will never know...
And as for the Form Table... Jeez, guys, did anyone realise how close Adam got to the Perfect Five? Just foiled by a tie-breaker on Biblios! We gotta keep an eye on this guy.
| Points | ||||||
| Adam | 2 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 6 |
| Andrew | 3 | 3 | 2 | 2 | 1 | 11 |
| Sam | 1 | 2 | 1 | 5 | 5 | 14 |
| Joe | 3 | 3 | 2 | 3 | 3 | 14 |
| Hannah | 1 | 4 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 20 |
| Miles | 2 | 3 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 20 |
| Lizzy | 2 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 22 |
