He's so shell-fish

 I arrived at a little after 8 to find Ian, Joe and Martin sitting around a table of Polynesia, all set up and with Joe having already received a rules explanation, we were ready to dive in.

This game's special scoring criteria for today made masks and archipelagos very valuable and so it was no surprise to see Ian and Martin make a bee-line for the half of the board with the richest pickings. I, using the logic that you do well at games by not doing what other people are doing, set off for the less congested areas. Joe, not sure what he was doing, did a bit of both.

It was a quiet game, with a lot of pondering going on. I did ask, since it was us four, why we weren't playing Time Of Crisis only to be told it was still in the studio. But our thinking time was so long that it may as well have been ToC.

I found that I was frequently stranded, waiting for other players to land on my island so I could get a ride with them. This was usually Martin and I usually took him in a direction that he didn't want to go. Joe, meanwhile, found that most of his meeples ended up on the same island, which was swiftly dubbed "party island". Very sociable but no good for scoring points. Ian and Martin, who both played on Saturday, clearly has a better idea about what was going on.

In the end the game was getting perilously close to the full nine rounds, so in round seven we agreed that the next round would be the last, whatever the volcano did. Which was fair enough, since the tiles had all been taken and there was little else to do.

Martin 19

Ian 17

Andrew 13

Joe 11

There was a fair bit of ambivalence from Joe afterwards, who seemed to find it too opaque and it didn’t interest him enough to keep looking.

Next, we played Take The A Chord, which still baffled us. Joe explained the rules to Martin who must have done some research already since he filled in a few gaps in Joe's explanation along the way. As usual, playing a card was often accompanied by humming a note that may or may not have had some relationship to the note on the card.

I initially found myself frustrated because whenever I was about to win a trick, someone started improvising! Just like real jazz, that became quite annoying after a while. Nevertheless, I seemed to mostly have the right cards at the right time and scored highly on each round.

Andrew 125
Ian 95
Martin 60
Joe 40

After this, feeling somewhat tired and unwilling to play much beyond half past ten, I bowed out, leaving them to consider their three player options. Ra was mentioned, but I was out the door by the time a decision was made. Sorry to leave so soon, but thanks for the evening!

Archipela-go-go

 Tuesday games at Joe's new kitchen arena and seven of us (Joe, Adam T, Ian, Katy, Sam, myself and, at long last, Martin) squeezed around the table, looking for some fun and expressing mixed feelings about the tube of sour cream Pringles in front of us.

Our first game was Bliss20. A game where we all take it in turns to say consecutive numbers from 1 to 20. Except that after each time, an extra rule is added, eg, swap 2 and 17, or instead of saying 16, you have to trace the shape of the numbers with your finger.

At first we did okay. Certainly, well enough that the pile of twenty gems representing lives seemed hugely over generous. But as the rules began to build up, we made more and more mistakes. It was funny and agonising to see people forget which rule was for which number and also, after a run of consecutive rules, forget what number it was at all. A nice game and we cleared level 2. But as Katy said, not sure I'd want to play it at the end of the evening.

Next we indulged in a discussion about what to play next, featuring some games I'd never heard of. Did everyone stock up on games during the pandemic? Eventually, we went for Polynesia and Cosmic Frog, and once the decision was made Sam expressed relief that he could now stop saying "cosmic frog". 

Joe, Sam and Ian went on the coffee table but during the rules explanation, Sam felt that he wasn't as familiar with Cosmic Frog as he'd thought, so they changed to Hardback. This is a game I know nothing about but Sam won.

Sam 62

Joe 54

Ian 52

As for Polynesia, it was a pretty deep and thinky game, where points were scarce. I’m sure we all played sub-optimal moves as we explored the islands and archipelagos around Polynesia. I moved all my guys off one island, leaving one of Martin’s meeples stranded and unable to move. All very funny but, at the same time, now all my guys were in the wrong place. Katy didn’t realise about one scoring method until late in the game. Meanwhile, Adam seemed to be one step ahead of all of us but the final score had a familiar name at the top. Much to his surprise.

Martin 14

Adam 13

Katy 12

Andrew 8

Next, we play Snakesss, the game in which we’re all trying to answer a multiple choice question, except there are three snakes among us trying to slyly push people to make the wrong choice. I was pleased about my reasoning to make people think that “Rock em Sock em Robots” was a cartoon in the 1980s, but I was helped by the fact that the real answer (Rubik, the amazing cube, or something) was pretty outlandish. Joe and I were heading into the final round neck and neck and it was very exciting but then we were both chosen as snakes, meaning we crossed the line in joint first whatever happened. But then there was a tie-breaker: a game of rock paper scissors! How odd, but okay, then. My scissors cut into Joe’s paper, and I won. Sam was pleased with his late comeback, having scored nothing at all for the first half of the game.

Andrew 19 + scissors

Joe 19 - paper

Adam T 9

Martin 9

Sam 9

Katy 7

Ian 7

After that, I was exhausted and Adam and Ian left at the same time. Katy, despite having a job interview next day, stayed on for one more. According to Sam’s text, they played Scout.

Sam 33

Martin 29

Joe 12

Katy 11

Thanks all. See you next Tuesday.