A Steak in the Ground

With a plethora of drop-outs, hosts Anja, Steve, and Louie only had a trio of hardy gamers turn up at their doors last night to keep the orange flag flying: myself (Sam), Katy and Martin. After some brief chat, we quickly split into two groups, conscious that both time and players (Louie had to go to bed in an hour, and I didn't want to stay too late) were in short supply. Louie began setting up Robot Quest Arena with his mum and Katy, whilst Steve sat down with Martin and I to play Pioneers. 

While the Robots began barging into each other and snaffling up new powers, I talked Steve and Martin through Pioneers, which seems satisfyingly simple - at first. Each turn has three phases: get income, buy stuff (roads or carriages) and then move the stagecoach, 'delivering' pioneers from said carriages to matching spots on the board. Each spot has a bonus of some kind, so short-term it's about emptying your carriages (for points) and grabbing the rewards.

Long-term though it's also about building a network of roads; as your network (of your own roads) with the most pioneers in (of your own colour) will score at the end of the game as well. We all had to stop ourselves moving pioneers placed on the board and remember to add them from our carriages, and I think Steve and I had about three do-overs with minor gaffes to correct. Meantime the robots were getting a little hot under the metal collar, as Anja was heard announcing she would rivet-gun Louie, and he repeatedly grapple-hooked - if that's a verb - his enemies to fling them around the board. 

In Pioneers, we approached the endgame. I was optimistic that my biggest network was going to move me far enough up the track that I could claim a debut GNN victory: although Steve's carriage-focused points haul was strong, his pioneers were disparate. The stack of carriages we never thought we'd get through was running perilously low, but I ended the game by placing my last road. 

Steve and Martin had one last turn, and Martin's final move got two Farmers down, and it was enough to snake him ahead of us both!

Martin 59
Sam 57
Steve 55

While we were indulging in a post-mortem on the excellent mechanics and possibly not the most thoughtful theming, Robot Quest Arena came to a conclusion, with yet another win for Louie!

Louie 32

Anja 24

Katy 23

He went off to bed with the glow of victory whilst we played Wanted Wombats. What can be said about this strategically-rich game of wombat gangsters that hasn't been already? Well, Katy could have won when she predicted the $10k card and then banked it. She offhandedly said the next card would be a $5k though, and it was! So instead of Katy winning, I did. 

We played again and this time Steve took the victory. He was very pleased. 

After Steve's little dance we broke out Ito, the Wavelength-in-a-card-deck game of civilised discussion and occasional ranting. Our first spectrum was Important Things In Life, and we failed in the opaque space of subjectivity and pictorial representation as we discovered that we valued doilies more than slugs, but less than Eurovision. "Nobody is listening to me" Anja lamented, after her preferences were overruled by more shouty and obstinate folk at the table (me and Martin). 

We went again Things You Might Find Under a Rock, and were confident that Anja's steak - medium-rare, with pepper sauce - would be the most unlikely of our confections, only to discover it was only 55. To be fair though, at least a steak fits under a rock, and would be less surprising than finding, say, Andrew. Anja might have put a steak there. (And she did propose moving it lower, but we didn't listen). 

Our last salvo was Things That Are Hard To Do Alone, which went a disappointedly smutty direction. Anja's clue of synchronised swimming could not possibly be done with anyone else. An excellent high-number clue! But can sexual intercourse be done alone? Martin, resident latin scholar, pointed out the prefix 'inter' was a telling one. We flipped the cards to discover after successfully getting masturbation, singing and tree-hugging in ascending order (insert great weekend joke here) we'd placed these overtly plurality-based activities the wrong way around in our field of dreams... they were numbers 98 and 99! 

Great fun though, and a lovely way to end the evening. Thanks to all, especially our hosts, and particularly Steve for sacrificing his beloved Turkish Delight. After Katy and I both said we hated Turkish Delight, we ate five of them. 

Rolling with Alan Moon

It was a busy night in Fishponds with Joe, Katy, Martin, Mel, Ben, Anja, Steve, Louie and me (Adam) in attendance. Louie had just finished school for the summer and so bed time had fortunately become somewhat negotiable.

We started off with the coloured-line-matching joy of Take it Easy (Joe had ten boards with him just in case) and Joe was elected caller. A few of the newbies (I think Louie and Ben hadn’t played before, perhaps Anja and Steve too?) missed calls which led to a human megaphone system to ensure the integrity of the game.

We thought about scaling up further and between the sets owned by Joe, Martin and Sam it sounds like we could get 30 players. Do we know 30 gamers?

Anyway, somehow Martin and I managed to play the exact same pattern, but inverted, for all except the last three tiles which meant we scored the same:

• Adam/Martin 173
• Joe 164
• Anja 157
• Mel 154
• Ben 145
• Steve 129
• Katy 121
• Louie 110
  

We then split into two with Katy, Ben, Martin Joe and I picking Oasis by Alan Moon (Ben wondered if the game required dice, and would we need to roll with it, and was then forced to repeat his joke for Martin’s benefit.) Anja, Steve, Mel and Louie went for Robot Quest Arena. I know little of this game except that Louie picked his favourite robot, the heavy-duty Crate, loaded it up with weapons (“I love Tesla Coils!”) and as usual battered his way to victory, clanking four kills along the way:

Metal action!

• Louie 28 
• Mel 21
• Steve 19
• Anja 17
  

Over in Mongolia Oasis consisted of a mostly-dusty map with a few bits of green sneaking in at the edges. Amazingly the 20-year-old game which Martin discovered in a charity shop had never been played and to everyone’s delight tiles needed to be punched out.

Can you tell which bits are camels?

To play the game each player would turn over 1, 2 or 3 cards from their stack of five (replenishing 2, 1 or 0 cards respectively) and then in turn order we got the opportunity to take someone else’s offering with the first taken becoming starting player next time.

The cards could feature grass, gravel or sand tiles (which we could add to the map to claim territory), camels (which claimed a different sort of territory - the roady-sandy bit in the middle), bonus multipliers and extra-card cards.

Martin claimed it wasn’t like Kingdomino, but it is a bit. Joe and Ben went for early camels, the rest of us going after tiles and trying to block each other in dastardly fashions. In the end Katy quietly built up a pile of ten gravel-multipliers, meaning her eight gravel tiles scored more than any other player in the game.

• Katy 124
• Martin 66
• Joe 58
• Adam 56
• Ben 46
  

While we waited for the robots to stop clanking into one another we got So Clover to the table. It would have been a perfect 30 except that we thought Meteorology was meant to be Storm/Rain when it was obviously Log/Rain. Sorry Martin.

• 28/30

Then everyone (except Louie, who finally had to go to bed) was back together for a slightly truncated Just One. The first two rounds featured bonus points aplenty as we had two duplicates in both. Martin was somewhat puzzled by Manure, but when Steve changed Brass to Ass it seemed to help. Throughout the game Lego Aragorn helped to balance the clues as we pushed the game to it’s limits.

Lego Aragorn. Helping.

We were on a winning roll until Joe was subjected to a field of obscurity – what would you guess for Quadrophenia, Ray, Ali, Redford, Entertainer?

What if we added in Tantric?

No?

Highlight this text to find out:

Sting

At that point we decided that was quite enough of that. I'm not sure what the final score was, but probably loads.

And with that we congregated outside for farewells and adieus until next week.

Robot Bedtime

Anja and Steve were our hosts last night, and though the rain did its best, Ian arrived by bike to join Anja and Louie, Martin, and myself. While we waited for Steve - at work - and Adam - waiting out the rain - we cracked out a one-round game of Cabanga. 

There was a notable lack of Cabanga-ing. Everyone seemed to have a card that was adjacent, and when they didn't - see Anja's 16 below - nobody had the Cabangability. 

Ian won the round with three of us on 2 points and Louie on 3. But with the late arrivals now here, it was time to split into groups. Anticipating Louie's keenness, I'd brought Robot Quest Arena and he got that set up with Dad and Adam. Meantime Martin talked Ian, Anja and I through the quirky rules of Cascadero. Andrew has already covered this in the previous post, but it felt on first blush a bit like Reiner thinking How can I make Babylonia more thinky, and longer. The map is still dynamic and it's still about connections, but no longer predominantly focused on having a huge network - although it doesn't hurt. 

I'd helped them set up RQA but I didn't have time to do a brief overview as I was trying to hold everything about Cascedero in my head, a task I was to fail at. But Adam scanned the rules and they were up and running. Louie had a P2 W2 record at this, could he keep his 100% intact? As you can see, Steve had other ideas. 

We kicked off in Cascadero and despite Martin's clear explanation I had already rearranged a pivotal rule in my head, and I began what I thought was canny play only to subsequently notice everyone else was scoring points. For myself if nobody else: you don't score a point per envoy in a network that joins a town. But you do want to arrive later than the other players, with at least two envoys. Or one envoy with a seal. Where do you get a seal from? From Reiner's five available tracks up which you are pushing cubes for bonuses. 

Many of these bonuses are better for the first claimant, so each track has an element of racing to it. But Cascadero also has objectives - eg first to connect like-coloured towns, first to get all cubes to x spot or above on the track - and, lest we forget, the very Knizian bunfight taking place on the board itself, where there is racing-to, blocking, hoping-none-will-block and general chicanery. My head was hurting, but I was at least entertained by the play on Radio RQA transmitting from the other side of the table.

LOUIE

                I have a Tesla Coil, and you don't

STEVE

                You can sit on that coil and swivel

Pinter would be proud. I advised Louie to make a note of social services number and then wondered who I could call as Anja and I watched Ian and Martin sear off up the track, fifteen or so points ahead of us. Martin's blue cube had already reached the top of the track (should you not complete the track of your own colour by game-end, it's an auto-lose) whereas we were also lagging in the cube department. The board looked like a dog had eaten some Totterdown Lego and thrown up and Anja and I, united in our despair, agreed that discs would have been better than horsemen for 'legibility issues'. I insisted on lying my envoys flat, telling everyone that it made the board easier to read, but secretly feeling that they deserved no better, having disappointed me. 

In the Robo Arena, Adam was telling Louie "This is how it feels" in a tone of voice that suggested some kind of frozen dish was being served. In Cascadero, the end was approaching. Ian had few envoys left and Martin kept bemoaning his lack of seals. From somewhere, Steve had produced a cuddly seal and kept making it talk, adding a modicum of surreality to proceedings. But when things ended, they ended surprisingly. It was tense, so tense that when Martin mentioned closing the purple curtain nobody had the will to say anything juvenile. Anja and I had staged a mini-recovery of sorts, though we still lagged and Anja's cube hadn't reached the top of her orange track. I knew I needed to place just one envoy to get the yellow cities connection award (2 points) but I'd totally forgotten the 10 point bonus for connecting all coloured cities. I think Anja may have too; she got the reward but seemed remarkably underwhelmed by it, not even bothering to announce, or maybe even award, her big points swing after quietly placing an envoy:

SAM

(next in line)

                Is that it?

ANJA

(forlornly)

                That's it, yeah

Then I made my final connection and we both scored our points. It catapulted me past Martin and Ian to claim a very unexpected and, let's be honest, undeserved debut win:

Sam 43

Ian 41

Martin 39

Anja 34 (did not complete orange track)

And Robot Quest Arena finished at the same time! The final count-up took a while despite Louie's pressing bedtime, but if the reigning champ was concerned he had no need to be. It was another victory for the Man City of automaton wrestling:

Louie 33

Adam 31

Steve 28

A close thing. Louie was packed off to bed and we looked at the time and had the GNN classic of what-to-play next, before settling on Mille Fiori (Steve, Anja, Martin) and Via Nebula (me, Adam, Ian). Mille Fiori's opening was a classic: all three played into the same area, blocking starting player Martin in before he got going, triggering 45 minutes of almost constant swearing, at one point Steve yelling FUCK OFF loud enough to wake the kids. 

Via Nebula was equally spicy, if not quite as demonstrative. Apologies for hassling both my opponents on their first two turns, but I thought the game was going to be a lot longer (we finished before Mille Fiori did). Maybe my victory comes with an asterisk, but twice I utilised Ian and Adam's hard labour to complete contracts and build buildings. Once I even apologised for it. 

It felt like a speedy game. Having an extra contract in hand was helpful in giving me options, but the devil in the nebula is really the risk of loading up sites you share with someone else. Or sites that you're ready to build on before someone else swoops in. It has more than a smidgin of dastardliness, and as chief Dick I ended the game before the others could get their fourth building down:

Sam 27

Ian 18

Adam 16

While we were counting up they finished the other game too, with more chagrin from Steve and an exceedingly tight finish!

Martin 194

Anja 193

Steve 146

And that was that. No tapas night by any means and no So Clover to finish, but two significantly dickish main courses for everyone, with another Knizia-Wallace double bill! Thanks all. It was horrid. 

Fibonacci Secrets

With the family soon to move house, we joined Steve, Anja and Louie at Stepney Walk last night (Lennon was in bed) for the final time before they box up in earnest. Katy and I were a little late and arrived to find Adam H, Ian and Martin in a discussion about chairs. Louie went off to change into a onesie, Anja appeared, and we settled straight away into two groups, the hosts plus Ian and Martin playing Old London Bridge...

While the rest of us - belatedly joined by Laura, who formed a semi-co-op with Katy - went to battle in the Robot Quest Arena. 

This is apparently Louie's favourite game, maybe because of the lovely minis or maybe because of the moreish deck-building and rapid turns. But probably because he kicked the crap out of all of us, with only Katy and Laura getting anywhere close to competitive with him.

Channeling the anti-Martin, this is the first time in a long while I've heard anyone cry out that the game 'just isn't long enough'. It was for me though:

Louie 28

Katy and Laura 26

Adam 19

Sam 11

London Bridge was still ongoing/falling down (not actually sure what happens) and Louie had time for one quick game before bed. Despite its alleged 45mins playtime on the box, I was pretty certain we'd get through Tipperary significantly faster than that. Maybe the ticking clock is why I forgot to take pictures, but here's one I made earlier:

Over ten rounds players simultaneously add tiles to their bucolic Irish idyll, putting distilleries next to grain, lining up ruins to get towers and proliferating sheep with which to make jumpers/stew. There's a few different ways to score but a critical one is the fact your largest unbroken rectangle will get a point per square in it, something Katy had to be reminded of mid-game and spent the subsequent rounds in a state of crestfallen anxiety, occasionally casting mild aspersions at me.

Laura 89

Sam 86

Adam 79

Katy and Louie 61 each. 

While this was happening, Old London Bridge came to a conclusion!

Martin 54

Ian 44

Steve 42

Anja 38

Louie said his goodnights but Laura and Katy were both keen to go again on Tipperary, with Martin subbing in for our departee. Again, I didn't take any pictures, so here's another one from earlier, showing how tiles (a choice of two each round) get allotted, using a spinner:

While we polyominoed with intermittent cries of Banshee grief, the others played Misfits, and again, I neglected to snap pics! Sorry. I'm not even sure who won, but I think it was Steve. There was definitely a huge collapse at one point...

Over on our side of the table, Martin led the way on flocks for most of the game, but Katy herded some extras her way at the death to claim the biggest flock bonus. But with her geometric confusion now out of the way, she didn't even need it to claim the laurels!

Katy 89

Adam 78

Laura 75

Sam 69

Martin 68

Laura now left us as well and we shuffled seats, with Anja, Steve, Ian and Martin playing Gang of Dice. 

Whilst Katy and I took on the unenviable task of playing Adam at Ticket to Ride: Berlin. 

Somehow I managed to convince myself I was in with a shout, but I'd missed that Katy and Adam both had three tickets to cash in at the end. And unfortunately for Katy, she now realised she hadn't completed one of them. 

Adam 49

Katy 40

Sam 39

Fuelled by no more than resentment, jealously and immaturity, Katy and I both decided to pretend Adam hadn't won. But it got confusing when we couldn't agree on who had.

Meanwhile, despite "pissing around with a single die" (-Martin) Steve wrapped up Gang of Dice with a very convincing win. 

Steve 73

Ian 51

Martin 29

Anja 9

"Not my game" said Anja. 

We decided to round off the night with So Clover before realising nobody had So Clover. Similar confusion -mostly on my part - about Fun Facts followed, before we settled on a very funny episode of Just One, punctuated by Martin's slightly lewd grunting noises whenever he felt someone could use a prompt. 

Steve's first word as guesser was 'Series' and two of our clues (Television) were duplicates, leaving him with the following:

Steve said 'sequence' aloud, but not in a way that sounded like his final guess. Apart from his occasionally wailing "Thrones?" at the ceiling, this ten-minute chapter of the evening was largely Steve's Existential Crisis and the rest of us being Increasingly Unsympathetic. 

Sorry Steve. He gave up in the end, only to find that his next word was similarly tricky (Crepe) and Katy's clue of Póo was apparently no help, especially in that it seemed to combine with other clues of tissue and paper in a possibly misdirectonal way. Nevertheless, Katy kept saying Poo in an exaggerated French accent, hoping Steve could make the breakthrough... but no. In fairness to Steve, both tricky words and probably not helped by us all giggling and Martin's sexually suggestive noises. 

We scored a pretty shabby 7/13, I don't remember how the rulebook judges that but I don't think it's very effusive. A very entertaining end to the last night at Stepney Walk though! 

Dominoes in excelsis

 I arrived at Laura’s house in the rain to find an even wetter Adam H locking up his bike. We were let into the house by one of Laura’s children and went down to the kitchen where we found Katy already excited about reliving her childhood with a game of Ghost Castle, currently being constructed by Laura. Sam, Ian, Joe and Martin watched from the other end of the table, clearly not convinced of the joys of MB Games.

While Katy, Laura and the two smaller gamers began playing Ghost Castle, Joe, Sam and Martin set up Azul and Ian, Adam and I squeezed a game of Kingdomino in the space between them. The cries of excitement from Ghost Castle were mirrored by our cries of disappointment, as we drew tile after tile of crownless-countryside. But Adam didn’t mind, as his forest expanded to absurd proportions. 

Adam 74 (50 for forests alone!)

Andrew 53

Ian 37

At this point, Azul was still in full flwo but Ghost Castle had been replaced by Dragonimo. During that game, Maddie kept calling out “cracked eggs!” and I thought she was saying “crackhead!” until I looked at the board, saw the egss and put two and two together.

So we played Kingdomino again. By chance, I made Adam pick up a tile that he couldn’t place thus ruining his 5x5 bonus. I wish I could say I did it on purpose, but I’m not that cunning. 

Ian 56

Andrew 49

Adam 46

The other games ended:

Dragonimo

Katy & Riker 15

Laura & Maddie 10

Azul

Martin 83

Joe 79

Sam 39

“That was pretty close,” said Martin. Sam begged to differ, although his board was only two tiles away from a big payout.

The two youngest gamers were sent up to bed and we turned our attention to more grown-up matters: cats in space! Martin, Laura, Ian, Sam and I buckled up for a trip to deep space. It was a first play for me and Laura, so we got a rules explanation, but it was all pretty clear. Roll certain dice values to move, and then land your cats (each with its own special ability such as x2 planet score, x2 moon score, Parachute to safety even if the rocket explodes, etc). Our first journey was the most successful for a long time and Laura reached the last planet before deep space.

Joe, Katy and Adam were more grounded. Literally – their game, Renature, seemed to be all about reintroducing wildlife onto a board that initially resembles a Pac-Man maze made of grass. It was the third game of the evening to use a domino-placing mechanic. I didn’t really follow this game, apart from the occasional cry of surprise like “Double tortoise!” and also a request by Katy to go over the rules a few minutes before they ended. But it was fine.

Katy 86

Adam 67

Joe 58

“I didn’t gloat, and I didn’t ask you to thank me,” she said after the game.

As for Mlem, our poor rolling was getting out of hand. Laura rolled five twos and a booster when we needed ones and fours. On Sam’s first turn as commander, he turned up with his parachute on while Ian went one better – when he was commander, he chose his Saboteur Cat to represent him. A lot of fun.

Laura 28

Ian 26

Sam 21

Andrew 20

Martin 19

There was also a game of Misfits at some point during the evening. I'm not sure when, though. Most likely while Renature was finishing up. Misfits doesn't really play five and, apart from the photos, my only note about the game was "Martin loses."

We reshuffled for the next games. Joe, Martin, Laura and I played Big Top. Ian, Adam, Sam and Katy played Robot Quest Arena.

Katy 21 or 22

Sam 20

Ian 17

Adam 15

While Big Top was a little odd in that we rinsed the bank of money, meaning me, Laura and Martin all ended the game with a lot of cash. Joe, alas, ended the game with no stars. I needed Martin to add up my scores for me, since he refused to believe I’d only come second. He was right. Of course.

Andrew 56

Laura 53

Martin 37

Joe out.

At this point I left, but not before the Robot people began playing Stomp The Plank. After carefully setting up the board, Katy ruined everything by winning in the least fun way possible: draw six different symbols on the first turn.

Katy wins!

Of course, they had to play again and, although Katy could’ve won in the same way again, she bottled it at the fifth card. Adam didn’t so much Stomp the Plank as Shuflle Forward Slowly. 

Sam won the rematch!

And, I’m told, they ended with So Clover.

Thanks all, see you next week!

Lexicon of Laughs

 Joe was this week’s host and I arrived at his place at 7.30 with Katy following shortly afterwards and Joe and Sam were already there, idly kicking around a game of League of the Lexicon. Adam T arrived soon after too. The game is like Trivial Pursuit but without the board and all the questions are about words. Maybe there are rules involved, but we just rolled a dice and tried to answer a question like “what’s the literal meaning of umbrella.”

Then Martin and Adam H came in, with Steve somewhere outside looking for a parking space. He’d get here after another ten minutes.

We kicked off the evening with Phantom Ink, the supernatural game of communing with the dead (in this case, Katy and Sam) and trying to deduce a word using obscure questions and unfinished answers. We split into teams. Katy was with Martin, Adam T and Steve while Sam was with Adam H, Joe and me.

We  asked questions like “What would happen if you ate it” and Sam wrote down “D” and said the letter outloud, as per the rules, but I think he said “D” with such finality that we were able to guess he was going to write “die” (which is was). The word in question was Mountain (which would certainly kill you if you ate it) which Adam H, Joe and I got on our second guess. The other team were leaning towards “Tent” - something to do with there being a tent in the film Brokeback Mountain.

Then we split into two groups of eight.

Adam T, Martin, Katy and Sam played Maskmen. As they went into the penultimate round, there was a possibility of everyone ending on 2 points, but instead the tie was between three people and Katy was left grasping at straws by asking if tied scores maybe cancelled each other out.

Adam T 3 (wins with most +2 tokens)

Martin 3

Sam 3

Katy -1

Then they played Accuse! which Adam T won and then Misfits with it’s by now gravity defying constructions astonishing everyone. And Adam T won that game as well.

During these three games, Adam H, Joe, Steve and myself had been playing Pass Pass, a trick-taking game that encourages loose informal alliances because players who came first and second in a hand get to pick up cards. Cards are points (and so are diamonds on those cards) but most importantly, if a player picks up at least one of each colour then that is a Pass Pass, and three Pass Passes means you instantly win.

Steve was distracted by phone calls from his son and also kept playing his cards on top of previously played cards, as if he were playing snap, and we had to keep separating them.

Joe was closest to getting his third pass pass but just fell short.

Andrew 34

Steve 32

Joe 28

Adam H 19

At the end of Pass Pass we watched the end of Misfits ...

... and then we all reorganised into new groups. Sam, Adam T, Joe and Steve played Robot Quest Arena while Adam H, Martin and I chose Havalandia. But first we squeezed in a game of Trio with Katy before she went off home for an early night. 

We played as teams and Adam H and I won. I forgot to take a photo until it was over…

Once Katy had gone, we three played Havalandia. I had the rare pleasure of blocking Martin so he couldn’t make his super high scoring launch, but honestly, it turned out that Martin was the least of my troubles. Mid-game, Martin said we should never let him have a corner to himself, and so it turned out to be.

Adam H 105

Andrew 83
Martin 81

RQA sounded like fun. Joe bought some advanced AI but then later he simply attacked Sam with a hammer. Adam T must have had a lot of power-ups because he apologised that his turns took twice as long as everyone else.

Sam 24

Adam T 20

Joe 19

Steve 18

Then Adams T and H and Steve left. Because I had the day off work tomorrow, I was able to stay until the end.

We tried Stinker. Always fun and offensive, but somehow not as much fun with fewer players.

Sam 3

Martin 2

Joe 1

Andrew 1

Finally we played So Clover twice. We scored 22/24, just falling short of perfection due to Joe’s clever clue being too clever. He wrote Gazpacho, which we struggled with. It was not helped with “diet” and “tomato” both being on cards but we should have been looking for “revenge”. Because, as Joe later explained, they are both best served cold.

In the second game we got a perfect score. Again, Joe’s was last to be served and he had another classic clue: he wrote “asswipe” for tail/soap. Poetic.

See you all next week.

Oregon and on and on

 After a long queue at a late night pharmacy and google maps vague awareness of Easton’s backroads, I arrived at Steve and Anja’s house at almost half past eight. Around the table were Adam H, Louie, Anja, Martin (one team) and Katy, Ian, Sam (the other team, which at this point, now included me).

The game, Rankster, was already halfway through when I joined in and everyone was trying to guess who Ian thought would give the best wedding speech out of John Lennon, LeBron James, Julius Caesar. Ian chose Lennon, by the way. Caesar would be too dramatic and LeBron would contain too many bouncing balls. 

Steve arrived and he was put on the same team as Anja. Her selection of famous people included Hamlet and Steve immediately put this particular Prince of Denmark in last position because he knew that Anja hated Hamlet. To prove it, he told us about a time he took her to see Hamlet – a highly regarded production directed by Jonathan Miller – and afterwards her verdict was “If I’d wanted to see a man dithering about for three and a half hours, I’d have stayed at home.” A brutal judgement on both Shakespeare and Steve. (Plus, Steve was wrong. Anja put Hamlet second.)

Adam, Louie, Anja, Martin 7

Andrew, Katy, Ian, Sam 6

Then we split into three groups. Louie was allowed to stay up long enough to join Ian and Sam in Robot Quest Arena. They were at the far end of the room, and I know nothing about the game except that it is now Louie’s favourite.

Louie 28

Ian 21

Sam 17

Martin, Steve and Anja played London Bridge. At least, they tried to but a determinedly not-sleepy Lennon kept creeping in. Eventually, Anja had to abandon London Bridge so she could get him back to sleep, so Martin and Steve played it as a two-hander. This, apparently, made it quite speedy. And that’s all I know about this game too.

Martin 56

Steve 46

The reason for my general ignorance about the state of the other games was because Adam, Katy and I were playing Oregon. It was my suggestion, even though I had only the vaguest memory of the rules. “It’s like noughts and crosses,” I assured a skeptical Katy.

Long story short: it’s nothing like noughts and crosses, but frequent references to the rules by me and Adam guided us through the early stages. 

Despite the interruptions from Lennon using us as a shield to hide from his parents, and from me trying to find my phone (during this search Katy found Anja’s credit card), the game was fun. Coal mining was inevitably accompanied by a burst of “Workin’ in a Coal Mine” by Lee Dorsey. I don’t really remember but Adam must have sung it most often. Katy also did her fair share of mining, generously removing all of the 1 tiles from the pile!

Adam 80

Katy 67

Andrew 59

While we populated Oregon, Robot Quest Arena ended and Louie went to bed. Sam, Ian and Anja played Misfits and Sam won. 

Then they played Bag Of Chips. I think it’s mostly to do with condiments and fried food, but my notes tell me that, halfway through, Anja said “Do you see my point about Hamlet?” Don't know why.

Alas, I didn’t see how it ended. After an evening of sitting on a sofa that kept threatening to make me fall asleep, I gave up on the evening and set off home and so did poorly Adam. But that wasn’t the end for the rest of them. Goodness me, no. Thanks to Sam for the timely updates.

After Ian won Bag of Chips and then they played Just One. Sam discovered that his name upside-down is “Wes”

And he also sent a photo of the remaining clues from one round so I was able to guess.

I got it right (and so did Ian) but they didn’t do too well overall, with a score of “average.”

Thanks to Anja and Steve for hosting. Hope to see you all next week!