With Andrew one of a few late drop-outs, blogging duties fell to me (Sam) and unfortunately I missed the rousing opening of Strike!, Martin's new dice game, arriving only in time to see Adam T's triumph and Adam H's chagrin. The host was Joe, and arriving at the same time as me was Gareth.
Now a six and destined no longer for any more arrivals, we set up another new Martin title, called King Up. Essentially a series of elections, several wannabe monarchs - the discs - are positioned at the bottom of the board, and on your turn you simply push one up to the next level; assuming there's room to do so - each level can hold four wannabes. Naturally everyone has their own agenda: six aspirational nobles you'd like to either be king/queen, or at least still in the court when the round ends.
They might get jettisoned when you or someone else elevates them to the throne: as soon as soon as this happens, there's an election with everyone voting aye or nay: only a universal aye will keep them there, otherwise they're kicked out of court.
The problem is that although you always keep your aye card, you only have two nays to spend: once they're gone, they're gone, and everyone being hesitant to spend them can mean you end up with a monarch nobody wanted. There are three rounds and when a monarch is declared, all nobles score according to their position: on the throne is ten points, further down the board becomes a more paltry return. Although Martin scored the same as Joe and Adam T, he lost on a tie-breaker:
Joe/Adam T share the throne: 52
Martin - scheming Salieri: 52
Adam H - influential lord: 50
Gareth - noted dignitary: 46
Sam - nodding yes man: 45
A fun game. We then split into groups of three, with Adam T and Martin about to get schooled by Gareth in Rumble Nation and Adam H and I inviting a similar experience from Joe. Both are fairly simple games, but deeper than they first appear. Rumble Nation takes place in two acts, with armies added to the board before its territories scored in ascending order, and winning a territory allows you to add reinforcements wherever you have adjacent forces. Gareth took advantage of the domino effect and won something like seven or eight of the twelve available, as Martin and Adam looked on in despair, and the latter's embryonic winning streak was cut brutally short:
Gareth 49
Martin 37
Adam T 16
Meanwhile Joe, despite protesting he had no idea what he was doing, was trouncing Adam H and I at Tiger & Dragon. The game is super-simple - there are a bunch of numbered tiles; eight 8's, seven 7s. six 6's and so on down to a single one. There are two wilds (the tiger and dragon) one for any odd and the other for any even. Everyone draws X amount of tiles and tries to shed them quicker than anyone else, by playing a tile as attack. If the next player can defend by playing a matching tile, they do so (unless they pass) and now it's their turn to attack. If you play attack and everyone passes back to you, you get to discard a tile face-down, and attack again.
That's it. But critical is watching what's gone out already and gauging when to pass, when to play low and when to go high. Only the winner of a round scores and they get more points for going out with a high tile (in theory at least, easier to defend against) than a low one. The exception is the 1, with which you shoot the moon and instantly win the game; I'm guessing because although it's the best attack tile it's the worst defence tile.
We played three times, and Joe won every single round!
Whilst Adam and I were reeling at the dextrous hands of The Berge, the others played Piece O Cake, which they may tell you about in the comments. All I know is that it's the precursor to New York Slice. Whatever happened getting there, it was a resurgent Adam T who finished the experience with the biggest slice of the points:
Adam 42
Martin 38
Gareth 35
While they were finishing that, we'd blasted through a couple of games of Strike! and I now comprehended it. The inside of the box is basically the arena for dice-chucking and you're trying to get matching numbers. A single die starts in the arena and on a turn you throw one die at a time in there. If you don't get a match, you can either keep going - the more dice there are, obviously the greater chance of a match - or pass. If you run out of dice, you're out, and if your turn arrives with nothing in the arena at all, you must throw all of your dice! Additionally, there's no 1s but instead crosses. Any crosses rolled are removed from the game.
You've little decisions to make - basically, keep going or pass - but it's a lot of fun anyway. Surprising too how many of us managed to actually miss the arena (even the box, in Joe's case) and lose a precious die as a result. I won game one, and Joe game two, before we reconvened as a six and busted out So Clover. And what a triumph this was, thanks in part to the kind of smutty clueage we'd usually only see from Katy. Or Joe. Or Martin. Or Ian. Or me. Anyway, when we opened with 6/6 we felt satisfied. Then as we kept hitting sixes, we grew into optimistic, tense, excited, and finally as triumphant as one can after connecting mustard wand the way Adam did.
36/36! Joe wrote the score into the Legend of Legends or whatever it's called. Adam T had a drive home to think of, so left on a high note. Adam H was looking sleepy, but stayed on for a 5-player crack at Tiger & Dragon. It's not as good at it's maximum player count, as there's very few tiles not in play and the passing option feels less enticing. Adam H got his revenge on Joe though, winning in two rounds even though he was now professing to have no strategic idea what he was doing.
Then we played Strike! again! Joe won the first game after Martin was out on a single roll, announcing with joyous despair that it was his most fleeting involvement in a game ever. Then Gareth and Adam butted the three of us out to perform an epic, dramatic, swinging ding-dong finale as momentum swung about like a pendulum on time-lapse. Gareth's rolling was preposterous, but in the end Adam nabbed the win and like his namesake, went out on a giddy high. Gareth retired as well and myself, Joe and Martin tried out Lettertricks, where you win tricks to put together letters to then make a word. I wasn't bowled over by the competitive game: even playing badly (as I no doubt did) I ended up with a Z and an L. Joe fared a little better, making a three-letter word (I think) but Martin had multiple letters and trounced us partly by virtue of having lots of late-alphabet letter cards, if I recall. But apparently it's more suited to four.
We tried the co-op version, where you collaborate to spell words as you play, hampered by both a lack of vowels and having to follow suit. We succeeded in winning (scoring more than the required 12 words) but to me it felt like an unsuccessful cross of Letterpress and and The Crew. Maybe because I was getting rather tired though, and I bowed out, leaving Joe and Martin to finish the evening with a head to head of Hanamikoji. Martin won the sixteenth game of an action-packed night!
