Bremen over with enthusiasm

 I arrived at 8, during a four player (Sam the host, Ian, Joe and Gareth)game of Kiitos. They cut it short for my benefit so I only got to see one word completed: "Codger" whose points went to Gareth.

Gareth 6

Sam 0

Ian -5

Joe -5

Since we were a fivesome we chose Hansa Teutonica as our main event. It’s a recent returnee to GNN and, after ten years, I needed a rules explanation and so did Ian and Gareth who were both new to the game.

We began in feisty mood, getting in each other’s way, hoping to have our counters bumped off routes so we’d be able to place two counters in adjacent routes. Gareth seemed to be a quick learner and made some shrewd moves but then, a few rounds later, he was still in last, with Joe a distant leader and Sam, Ian and I clustered around the mid-point between them.

We listened to Nick Lowe, who sounded like a number of different artists, and who Spotify believed only has a few songs. We were slowly getting to grips with Hansa Teutonica when Gareth completed the east-west route, pretty much in a straight line. We really should have stopped him earlier. This nabbed him a whole bunch of points and pushed him into joint first. Then my twin towns around a privilege action started scoring me pairs of points and I edged into the lead. In fact, the game ended when I reached 20 points, thanks to Joe completing a route with a town of mine on it.

But my lead was short-lived. Gareth’s bonuses pushed him further and further ahead, leaving us all with a sense of having been thoroughly schooled.

Gareth 51

Joe 37

Andrew 32

Sam 27

Ian 27

Next up was So Clover. Alas, we fell well short of perfection thanks to some unfortunate decoy cards. My clue for “feed/poison” was “Assassinate” but I was distraught when the decoy had “witness” on it, especially since it had a second word that kind of fitted another clue too.

Ian was also tripped up. His clue was “wattle” and we paired it with “rooster/mud” and just as we were congratulating him on such a clever clue, he reached over and removed the “mud” card. We got the right answer next go, but that was a cruel stroke of luck. Only Gareth and Sam got 6 out of 6, with Joe struggling with the pair “cream/needle” and finally he went for “vinyl”. Because of Cream, the band, see?

30 out of 36

Then Ian and I set off home while Gareth, Joe and Sam polished off a quick game of NMBR9

Sam 76

Joe 68

Gareth 38

And then finally, after Gareth had also departed, Sam and Joe played Kiitos again.

Sam 29

Joe -16

Thanks all. See you next Tuesday.

In space, no-one can hear you eating too many chipsticks

Long-mooted and anticipated, yesterday at the early hour of 3pm Ian, Chris and I sat down to play Xia: Embers of a Drift System (unofficial tagline: it rhymes with higher). Ian was new to it, so we spent about ten minutes going through the basics, before embarking on an odyssean journey through space, time, and shitloads of dice. 

In this sandbox game, everyone starts out as 'unknown' but, like needy D-list celebrities, have a yearning for notoriety, and seek it through a variety of ways: exploring, trading, completing missions, mining for relics, blowing stuff up, upgrading their ship, helping others, buying their fame, or even just being lucky: a roll of 20 on a d20 instantly pushes you up the Fame track. Whenever the points leader hits certain junctures on said track, events or titles are triggered: the former as you might imagine (things happen/parameters change) and the latter offer faming opportunities for whosoever completes the criteria: first to do three blind jumps (exploring without looking) on a single turn, say. 

Everyone's ship has room for outfits (engines/weapons/shields/etc)  and any un-outfitted ship sections are basically room for carrying cargo. The ships are varied, and each come with special powers options: Chris, for instance, could never be stopped by planetary shields (although he could take damage from them, as he was repeatedly reminded by fate) 

I thought I was off to a good start in my Puddle Jumper ship until I blind-jumped into a star at the end of my first turn and died. Chris and Ian began with more caution, and were rewarded with life. But Ian's Numerator ship attempted to mine and failed, taking on a huge amount of damage. Xia does not ease you in lightly...

It also doesn't offer enormous amounts of luck mitigation. Over a long game, it balances out to some degree - or one would expect it to - but Chris' ability to repeatedly roll low numbers for everything he attempted was something to behold. Even when he rolled high, Xia laughed in his face: 

"I get a fame point if I roll a 20?" he clarified.

"Yes" I said, before he rolled a 19. 

That said, Chris was first to upgrade his ship (The Krembler, which Ian referred to as the crème brûlée) and Ian swiftly followed with his new Skimmer. Whilst they pimped up their rides, I was taking a more opportunistic approach, zipping around the outskirts of space, picking up points for exploring and doing the occasional but of mining on the side. I was managing to keep a slender lead on Ian in the Fame stakes while Chris, aided by his relentlessly bad rolling, was still dawdling back at the start points-wise. 

After an hour of pootling around picking up the odd point, players (and the three non-player characters: trader, outlaw and law enforcement dude) start to get a bit busy. Titles are available to claim, Missions are being completed, and people feel confident enough to kill each other (and claim both points and bounty for doing so). 

I nurdled my way to the 15point winning condition, but we were all enjoying ourselves so much we agreed to play on to 20, which was when things got really political. Ian killed Chris. Chris respawned and killed Ian. He upgraded his engine and killed the trader by ramming into it at high speed. I ran away, and by exploring and being the first player to do X (eg use the space-jumping gates) pushed myself within reach of the win. But Ian and now Chris were both hot on my tail, and when I failed to successfully mine for victory Ian nearly grabbed the win by looking for Signs of Life on a dead world, but he didn't find it. I saw there was a way to triumph, but I needed to grab the final two exploration tokens on the board, and thanks to some fortuitous rolling, I grabbed the 20th point and victory with it!

But stop-press because as I write there's a stewards' enquiry: I realised last night (at 2am obviously) that I might have (literally) cheated death on my penultimate turn when a comet moved handily out of my way. I'll have to clarify that on the rules, but either way a rematch feels most welcome. 

Plus, it was extremely early in GNN time, so we had the evening stretching before us to dispose of, and dispose of it we did. Whilst I read a story to Joe, Ian thrashed Chris at Pickonimo:

Ian 15 / Chris 4

Not as shaming as my historic 18-0 drubbing at the hands of my brother-in-law, but clearly Chris' rolling hadn't improved on land. Then we played a new Ticket to Ride-style game of spies: Spy Connection. 

In Spy Connection you're completing missions by getting your spy (big meeple) to visit them. But your spy can only visit them if they're on your network, which is established by your agents (little discs). It's easy rules-wise: you either take another mission from the available four, or expand your network: when you expand you can move your spy before and after doing so. The catch is your only have fifteen agents, and they have to do a lot of work: as well as making your connections (which can cost two agents per connection if another player is already there) they also keep tabs on where your spy has been on your mission cards, and might also be needed to pay for taking a mission card in the first place.

Fortunately, you can drag as many agents back off the board as you need at any time on your turn. Unfortunately, doing so breaks up your network, arrgh! It's quite a nice combo of simple-rules and head-scratchy decisions that doesn't take too long. Ian completed the game-ending 7 mission target before anyone else, and Chris and I couldn't catch him with our last turns:

Ian 32 / Chris 29 / Sam 24

It was about 9pm now so we felt, with Andrew due at the unseasonable hour of 10.20, we had time to squeeze in a game of Quantum. We put together a tight, claustrophic board and were very quickly in each other's ways and faces.

 Ian was roaming around beating people up and pushing up his dominance. I established and early lead, and became Furious enough to hold off several Hickman-driven attacks. Chris seemed to be in neutral, but suddenly got a fourth ship out and a power than gave him four actions if any two of his ships had the same number. He powered past Ian and I for a win so fast we were packing away about 27 minutes after we'd started!

Chris - wins / Sam 2 cubes left / Ian 3 cubes left

With time on the clock we broke out (to my mind, the underrated) Menara, a co-operative tower-builder where you place columns to add levels and try not to make the whole thing collapse. Unfortunately, the levels were coming out at us in fairly unhelpful order, with a series of little ones followed by a series of big ones: it was like trying to construct an inverted pyramid, and we should have taken the option of expanding our base (if I'd thought to suggest it). Things were looking sort of navigable, if not easily-so, when I caused the entire thing to collapse right after Chris said "That should be fine". 

Everyone loses. 

We had a fairly average (15 points) crack at Cross Clues, and then Andrew arrived! Straight from work, I offered him a cup of tea but he said he would prefer whisky. Ian and I joined him as we played Cross Clues again, this time with an assemblage of words that seemed more fluid and the mind of Endersby to pitch in, strutting our stuff with an almost-entirely non-cheating 25!!!

Although Andrew had only just arrived, he was already making noises about going home, but we squeezed two more games out of him and ourselves. I managed a win at a fairly low-scoring NMBR9:

Sam 66 / Andrew 47 / Chris and Ian 42 each

Before we wrapped up an epic session with High Society. Chris came back from the dead here having spent the vast majority of the game with the "Minus one card" card in front of him. I was points-leader but spend too much. Ian compiled a decent score but then took the minus 5. Andrew sailed to victory through a stormy sea:

Andrew 18 / Chris 8 / Ian 5 / Sam BUST

And eight hours after we started, we were done!

∞≠∆≈≤µ

With Andrew a late-drop-out, Martin's suggestion of a six-player opener looked in danger, until Adam H became a late addition. With him around the table were Adam T (who brought After Eights), Ian, Martin and myself (Sam) with Katy en route, delayed by social activities. When she finally arrived we had Letter Jam set up and ready to go, Adam and Ian had been informed of the rules, and poor Katy barely had time to tell us she'd bought a chocolate yule log (which I hid from the boys) before she was sat down and the game began. Katy immediately looked at her own cards and had to be given a new word, but after that the game was relatively serene, apart Katy's insistence that she couldn't get her letters and Martin telling her it was obvious.

Ian also spent some time looking baffled, but as it turned out we collectively did rather a good job - everyone identified their words and Martin and Adam T added extra letters at the end: the game rated us delicious, which is our best effort yet. "How the fuck do you get 115 points?!" Martin exclaimed, looking at the scorecard, before realising we'd need to take on the six-letter challenge. One for next time, maybe.

It was all so exciting and After Eight-fuelled that I didn't take any photos, but here's one from another time.

I was going to try and tempt the Adams to try Ragusa, but Adam T had a game called Christmas Tree with him and all things considered it seemed inappropriate to pass on it. Katy joined us while Ian, Adam H and Martin played Azul and made pointed comments about their game finishing before ours started.

But Christmas Tree mechanically is rather simple - a drafting game where you add a tile to your tree and look for multiple ways of scoring: patterns of bauble colours or shapes, lights, candy, gingerbread men. Where it gets complicated is in the scoring, as some things will score and some won't, and you won't know which scoring tiles the other players have chosen until you've laid your first couple of tiles.

Adam went into an early lead, but Katy pulled him back mid-game. I'm pretty duff at these multiple-consideration games (it reminded me of Circle the Wagons in that regard) but it was rather fun all the same:

Adam 156
Katy 153
Sam 106

By which time Azul had concluded...

Ian 70
Martin 69
Adam H 65

and Adam had revenge in a game of NMBR9 which happened so fast I missed the opportunity to take pictures again...

Adam 81
Martin 59
Ian 40

Now back as a six, there was a brief chocolate yule log interlude courtesy of Katy, before we settled on the last game of the night: First Contact. It was still in its shrink-wrap and nobody knew the rules, but fortunately that didn't stop Martin diving in and teaching us on the spot. Here's what happened:

Ian, Katy and I were aliens who flew to Earth in ancient times and established contact with the Egyptians - specifically, Martin and the Adams. We managed to communicate the meaning of three hieroglyphs to them (for instance, metal, pointed, alive) before translation got more difficult, and we needed to communicate meanings via a kind-of process of elimination on a 5x5 grid of things (very like Codenames) that shared some facets of meaning.

Both teams have the same 25 words to hand, but the Egyptians don't know the attendant hieroglyph and the aliens do. The Egyptians can work out a meaning by indicating a few cards (for instance the lion, spear, snake cards to get the hieroglyph for Danger) but as we discovered it is possible for things to get lost in translation.

Conversely, the alien team are trying to get the Egyptians to identify specific cards (see: Codenames again) by clueing them hieroglyphs - if the Egyptians identify the card in question, the active alien puts a token on it and gives another to anyone who successfully identified it. Note it's the active alien: although there are aliens and Egyptians in teams, the game is actually won by individuals: an alien wins by getting rid of three tokens, or an earthling wins by collecting three tokens.

Although it was the wrong time of the evening for Ian, who looked like he was starting to melt towards the end, I think we were all rather enamoured of First Contact in the end, although Martin caused a mini-contretemps when he changed his final guess after the Adams had revealed theirs - and Katy had given away some information! Martin insisted he'd noticed neither and was the winner, although the Adams did not look convinced.

To be fair though, ending the night on an argument about what was said and done in the distant past did make it really feel like a proper Christmas-themed evening. Thanks everybody!

Ten of the Best

On Saturday night, Chris, Jacquie and I convened over their kitchen table for what would turn out to be something of an epic night of short games. After tea - which also involved a discussion of tactical voting with the kids - the three (relative) grown-ups kicked things off with Azul. Chris mentioned that Jacquie was evil in Azul, and I noticed with some alarm that I was sitting to her left. As it happened though, Chris got the worst of the broken tiles in a fairly close-run battle:

Jacquie 82
Sam 80
Chris 69

Before we moved on to slightly sillier fare with Letter Jam. For the uninitiated, Letter Jam is a co-op where everyone is trying to help everyone else figure out what letters they have - like Just One, your own cards face away from you - in order to figure out their word. It's surprisingly easy to go wrong, even for seasoned Scrabble players like Jacquie. We tried again - Ashton joining us for the second attempt - but once again failed. A clever game though.

one I took earlier

By now it was approaching nine so we kicked the kids into bed and re-introduced Jacquie to the murky world of High Society. Despite our warnings, she spent too much money in our first game and ended destitute. I won with something like ten points, whereas Chris had both the x2 cards but with no points at all, it was double nothing. In the second I grabbed to early high cards but undid my good work - I bid to force up the prices of two subsequent cards and both times Chris and Jacquie deviously passed on me, leaving me points-rich but cash-poor. Chris won this one.

Jacquie then retired to bed and Chris introduced me to Jaipur, the game of trading for two in India. It has been around for years but I'd never actually played it, and I can see why it has a good reputation: the basic idea is collecting cards and cashing them in for chips (chips being points) but the way it works allows for safety-first or luck-pushing and spoiling tactics galore as you see what your opponent is picking up and play accordingly.

We liked it so much we played it twice, although in between them we also had a double-crack at Blitzkrieg!

This is another two-player, but rather than trading you are trying to kill each other in a "20 minute" reenactment of WWII. One player is the Axis, the other the Allies, and you are drawing chits from a bag and deciding where to lay them in five theatres of war across the globe, each subdivided into two or three campaigns. Adding a chit swings momentum your way on a battle track, and when a campaign is finished whoever is in the lead on the battle track claims the points. Most places on a campaign also give rewards as well, so although the mechanics are very simple, the decisions are extremely meaningful. I really like this and Chris seemed enamoured of it too, despite me claiming a win just as he was one turn from a 7point swing in his favour...

After our second play of Jaipur we realised it was rather late however, so we finished up with NMBR9, deciding halfway through to go through the deck twice and build some epic, high-scoring constructions. As always moments of delight and confidence were outweighed by our castigating fate, God, kismet and anything else you could mention as the pieces refused to align meaningfully. Kind of like life, one might say.

Ten games in one night - and very excellent games too. Thanks again!

Memoarrr 49

The occasional Thursday Night Club was occasioning last night, but the faces were all different. With no Ian. Andrew or Adam there was no morose fatalism, pithy one-liners or emotionally hollow apologies for sneakily harpooning your best-laid plans. The gouty rules-bungler was present though (me), and so were Avuncular (not fat) Big Joe and sweary Katy, who kicked things off by yelling Shit! the first chance she got.

pic from Joe's earlier in the week

That chance was with Memoarrr! and an audience of two: Stan and Little Joe (less little by the day) and they added a tingling of performance pressure as we tried to remember where our walruses, penguins and lava were. I began as I left off on Tuesday, winning three of the first four rounds, but this was largely down to the assistance of Dirk as thrice I went random and pulled it off. However Katy's resurgence in the endgame - to a soundtrack of wails from Big Joe - proved decisive, as her three treasure cards outscored my eventual four:

Katy 8
Sam 7
Joe 0

It was bedtime for the boys, and I had to shout down Stan's protests as he was keen to play Memoarrr. I felt a bit mean but his first week in secondary has been a big one. Whilst he read upstairs, Joe introduced me to the joys of Mhing, the Mah-Jong variant in card form.

As with Mah-Jong it's a game of set-collection, with the inherent risk that whatever card you discard may help someone else make a set or even complete their collections (they get to shout Mhing if so). We agreed to play for 45 mins and I was unexpectedly the winner, having scored a measly 32 points. Officially you play to 500!

Sam 32
Joe 22
Katy 4

Next up was Men at Work, one of the hits of the summer in the Morrison household with even Little Joe admitting he liked it. It's a very simple stacker where on every turn you add either a worker or a girder to a growing construction on the table, but each one with some caveat regarding placement. Workers might carry bricks or beams, girders might transport things or have to touch certain other colours on the site. You have three safety certificates (lives) to avoid losing, and a quarter-way through the game can start earning Worker of the Month certificates by placing the highest piece on the construction.

This was the most geometrically-sound game of Men at Work I've played - lots of workers came out early (we ran out) and nobody placed a girder at a nasty slant, meaning our construction, despite being the product of a demented architect, never collapsed. Katy was a clear winner and I think Joe and I tied for second. Can't remember now.

Katy: P500
Sam and Joe: P60

After a brief debate we decided to play something we all knew, and settled on the Quest for El Dorado. I gave Katy a brief refresher whilst Joe set up a fairly tricksy route, and then we were off.

While Katy and Joe made slow progress over the first board, I lingered at the back picking up new cards. My plan was to get two Urenhwoners (probably wrong spelling; my edition is German) and reduce my deck so they came around quickly. Katy picking to up the Kartographer (add two cards to your hand) gave me the idea of combining with those two, but while I was busy admiring my plans I was falling behind, and in my rush to catch up had to somewhat reduce the idea of deck-reduction.

Katy, despite having to wait two turns to navigate the final jungle, sailed into the mythical city with Joe and I far behind: I kartographed my way into second place on the next turn but poor Joe needed two more turns to make it over the line. It was nice of Katy to wait for us though.

Katy
Sam
Joe

Joe got up from the table in going-home-haver, but I managed to reseat him with the offer of NMBR9, in a slightly abstracted return to building things upwards from the tabletop. The scores were 73-71-70 (I think) but I now don't recall who won at all. It's both reassuring and terrifying to know this is despite being almost entirely sober.

And with that, another Thursday concluded.

When you don't know your Mars from Uranus

Friday, and after a month pretty much out the GNN loop I (Sam) was looking to squeeze in a game or two, despite tonight's Time Of Crisis looming. Luckily for me, Chris and Adam were also keen, and after some debate over which space-themed game we'd play (Quantum and Sol were also under consideration) we settled on Orbit: The International Space Race. Three space agencies - Japan, USA and Russia, head for the stars to try and claim achievements of fly-bys, orbits, landings, and even the hard-to-do return to Earth. It was new to Chris, but the rules are pretty surmountable.

What wasn't surmountable - for me, as the CCCP - was distinguishing Jupiter from Venus, and I set off into the outer solar system towards one thinking I would reach the other. Adam and Chris graciously allowed me a do-over, but the Russians struggled for the rest of the game, unable to shake off their status as laughing stock of the international astronomy community.

Chris left Earth and headed for Mars, only to find by the time he reached it Earth had appeared again and Japan (Adam) launched to reach Mars before him. "Sorry" said Adam, but he didn't sound sorry.

I, as the Russians, found myself lagging and so picked up Mission cards. All of them pointed to doing things with the inner planets, something Adam was already busy with. "Adam, you're doing all my achievements!" I wailed. "Sorry" said Adam.

Meanwhile Chris as the firmament-newbie was actually playing a rather canny game. I realised when I was giving him some advice that I was probably, having mistaken Jupiter for Venus,  not qualified to help and left him to it. I think Adam gave a couple of pointers, but Chris ran away with the game and it was mostly his own work. I spent most of the time focused on an 11 point mission card, and realised three turns from the end I'd need an extra turn to complete it. Bah!

Chris 41
Adam 28
Sam 18

I do love Orbit. Even when it goes wrong.

Next up, after some discussion, was Villagers. Here everyone is drafting and 'building' their own village, with the eponymous villagers represented by cards; the catch being that, just like life, craftspeople need materials to craft with, so you can't have a cooper without a carpenter, or a glassblower without a miner. Stan has repeatedly rinsed me at this, but at least those experiences stood me in good stead here, as Chris and Adam were both new to it.

something like
Sam 61
Adam 51
Chris 50

Both seemed to like it and I think it may be seen again.

We ended our trio of trios with a couple of cracks at NMBR9. I can't remember what happened now, but I think Chris won the second game, and Adam said he had finished second in every game of the evening.

Adam left for home with the clock chiming eleven, but Chris and I had one last game in us, which was Yokai. This is part-memory, part-Mind as you co-operatively try and move four randomly-dealt 'tribes' of face-down cards to orthogonal adjacence in a 4x4 grid: every turn you can look at two cards, you must move one card (any card, it doesn't have to be what you looked at) and then either place a clue card on top of a tribe card (hinting at its colour) or flip a new clue card.

The clue cards though mostly tell you what colour the tribe card underneath it isn't, rather than what it is, so you need to watch your fellow player/s carefully and remember what you've seen. Run out of clues and the game ends - or you can declare earlier if you think you've achieved a victory.

It's quite easy to get wrong but we ended the night on a triumphant victory. I didn't take photos, but here's me and Little Joe playing it in France...

And with that, we were done! Thanks chaps. 

Toad in the crokinole

On those rare occasions when GNN allows itself outside the confines of a single evening, it’s usually a cornucopia of different games. But this time, despite starting at eleven in the morning and ending after midnight, only six games were played in total.

I arrived at Sam’s in the morning, while he was strapping a bike to the roof of his car, sending his family off to a skate park while, inside, Coimbra was already set up on the kitchen table. This is a recent acquisition and seemed interesting enough that I asked to try it when Sam texted me at 10.10am to ask what I fancied playing.

Despite the board being the usual Euro smorgasbord of tracks, maps and icons, it’s pretty simple fare once you get into it. The storyline apparently concerns us being powerful families in the Portuguese town of Coimbra. Sam, determined to make the Pilgrim tactic work for once, sent his meeple off around various cities picking up bonuses while I dabbled in end-of-game scoring cards.

It was fun. The two-player version has spoiler dice placed in various sections, recreating the feeling of another player taking stuff you want, which makes for a tenser experience. I didn’t stand much of a chance but found it very enjoyable and suggested that it be put in Sam’s bag of games to take to Joe’s studio.

Clearly, this guy has just thought of a funny but entirely inappropriate joke

Sam 130
Andrew 101

Then, after poached eggs on toast, we had enough time for a game of NMBR9 before leaving the house. Sam shocked the gaming world by going up on only the third tile so I, foolishly, followed suit with the fourth.

He then had issues with keeping his tiles flat on the table. With all these distractions, it was a low scoring game.

3D NMBR9, anyone?

Sam 67
Andrew 32

Then we had a walk into town to Joe’s spacious studio, complete with shelf of daunting two-player strategy games at one end. One of the boxes wasn’t even a game – it was the rule book to a game you had to buy separately.

The three of us had a little time before Adam, the fourth and final gamer for today, arrived so we played a game of Ticket To Ride: Switzerland. This three-player version of the old familiar has a smaller map and much greater emphasis on getting tickets to score bonus points. In the end, I only had six tickets while Sam had fourteen tickets and managed to complete each one. But even this wasn’t enough to beat Joe.

Joe 145
Sam 131
Andrew 105

Then Adam arrived and here we all were: the core four, as we used to be. I couldn’t tell you how long it had been since the four of us crossed swords, but it seemed like a historical moment. So why not reflect that in our game choice: Time Of Crisis since now seemed like the only chance to introduce Adam to the joys of Roman upheaval.

Complete with dice terminus at the end of the table

I was the only one to not begin in Europe and from the start tried to defend myself with support rather than armies. This was mostly fine against the other players (apart from Egypt which Sam and I ruled on some kind of time-share basis) but the Nomads, Sassanids and even Goths didn’t seem impressed. In fact, it was a very barbarian-y game, with at least three of all types massed on our boards at one point.

Adam started well and was first Emperor after Joe couldn’t take advantage of the neutral emperor’s low support: he had five blue points, but no spare governor.

We paused for Sam, Adam and I to go out to get pizza and pop into Tesco (where I found someone at the back asking people if there was still a group of boys hanging around outside) to get more crisps. By the time we got back, Joe must have been studying the map since he soon pulled off an impressive move where he knocked Adam out of Thracia, beat Sam’s army in Italia and became Emperor despite forgetting that he had two basilicas.

Sam became emperor for the first time ever, when he unseated Joe using a Pretorian Guard, getting eight votes with nine dice. I pootled about in North Africa and the Middle East, far from any real action, constantly worried by the ever-increasing sassanid horde on my border. When the game ended there were five of them and a barbarian leader.

Joe was reinstated as emperor on the turn he passed sixty points and, at 8.00pm the game ended. I think it might have been a bit too long for Adam but I found that those four and a half hours flew past.

Joe 78
Sam 62
Adam 58
Andrew 45

Next up was Team Crokinole, Joe & Sam versus Adam & Andrew. J&S won the first round and A&A won the second, perhaps because Sam was distracted by trying to find evidence online of his belief that the hole in the centre was called the toad. He found it.

It looked like A&A were going to win the whole thing when we sped to 80 points in round three, but J&S are nothing if not persistent and they whittled our lead away. The score went from 95-55 at one point to 95-65, 95-85, 95-100. They’d stolen the win right at the end!

Joe and Sam 2 rounds
Adam and Andrew 1 round

At this point it was half past nine and Sam left for home, mindful of a drive to Devon tomorrow morning. The remaining three broke out Railways of the World: Mexico.

An early delivery bonus to Culican pushes up the opening player bid, and Joe finally got it for $9,000. He then built somewhere else, allowing Adam to take the delivery bonus and get an early lead. I went bond heavy which had the unintended effect of convincing Joe it was okay for him to take bonds too. I think my income only very briefly got into double figures.

But a railway executive and a delivery bounty to a city I was already connected to saved my bacon, and mid-game, I was the one to beat. Joe and Adam upgraded their engines in an unseemly display of funnel flaunting. My end of game strategy was to get the last route and complete my baron bonus, but Adam kept getting in my way. I spent a little more money than I’d anticipated but it turned out to be worth it.

Adam in my way part one

Adam in my way part two

Andrew 50
Adam 49
Joe 42

Although I think my best move was an early depot card, meaning I shared in the points from Joe’s network. That move must have got me ten points by itself.

And now it was almost midnight, it was time to pack up and go home. Thanks for a lovely day, and thanks to all for a lovely year!