Diamonds, gems and cold, hard cash

Tuesday games night at Joe’s was a packed affair. Nine of us (Joe, Sam, Martin, Andy, Katy, Ben, Ian and me) were in attendance.

We pooh poohed the idea of a big collective game to start with, and split neatly into two groups: Sam, Martin, Matt and Andy went off to play Diamonds: a trick-taking card game that Martin bought. The remaining five chose Lords of Vegas, with its new Up expansion, which allowed a casino to be raised up at a cost of $15 million per square, which meant it scored more points and protected itself from potential take-overs. Also, it allowed up to six players, which is a blessing, since the four spaces in a regular game tend to be over-subscribed.

Nine people in one kitchen needed two tables to hold both games. At one point, Joe had to get things for his family that they needed from the now-inaccessible other side of the kitchen.

Diamonds flew by without me following it. It ended:

Sam 37
Martin 34
Matt 32
Andy 25

In Vegas, it was quickly looking like Ben’s night. As it should be since, after all, he had bought a copy of the game so he could practise. I reminded everyone of this, and Ben had to keep insisting that he’d only played once.

The dice rolls went his way, too. When Ben took over a single tile casino belonging to Katy, she rerolled there dice to try and get it back. At first she turned a 5-2 loss into another 5-2 loss, and then on her next go, she rolled again and got a 5-1 loss. She stopped trying after that.

I got lucky too with the plots I drew from the deck. After a bit of sprawling, I soon found myself with the rare opportunity of getting a seven-tile casino, with only one opposing die to threaten me. And threaten me he did. In a glorious last-ditch attempt Ian reorganised my casino, hoping his one die would score higher than any of my six. It didn’t, but we all admired his optimism.

Joe never really got going. His early hopes of a large casino evaporated as the plots in between went to Ben and Katy. Ian’s winning run finally ended and the scores were:

Ben 29 plus $69m
Andrew 29 plus $28m
Katy 20
Ian 18
Joe 16

While we were finishing off our wheeling and dealing, the Diamonds crew had a game of Steel Driver. This new (to us) Martin Wallace game had its debut on GNN only a couple of days ago. Martin was not a newcomer to the game, but after five years, how much of its strategy would he remember?

Well, enough. He won a close match, and the scores made it look like a tense game, but Andy pointed out that they didn’t know how close they were while they were actually playing.

Martin $1,940
Sam $1,850
Matt $1,840
Andy $1,810

Finally, we all joined together to play Dead Man’s Chest. This is a new game of bluffing, not dissimilar to Perudo. Except there are only two dice. One player shakes a box with the dice in, looks at them, calls out a number, and then passes them on to the next player. If the new player thinks the dice show a value less than the number called (ie, a 2 and a 62 would become sixty-two: highest number always becomes the ten) then they can challenge. Whoever is wrong loses a gem. Doubles are higher than any non-doubles, except for 21, which is highest of all.

If he or she doesn’t think its less, they can simply raise the bet and pass on the box without looking. Or they can shake the box, look at the dice, say a new number (which must still be higher than the last) and pass it on. Or they can shake, look and then if they don’t like it they can shake again and pass it on without looking and say a number. Effectively, a blind bid.

However, it only plays eight. Joe said he was happy to act as referee, and he explained the rules to us. But then we realised we each had a different section of the rules on the back of our card detailing the different possible dice results. So we read out the rules to ourselves! Joe stood in the corner and watched the game unfold and he admitted he felt a bit like a games pervert, just standing in the shadows, silently watching.

Talking of shadows, Joe’s explanation of the rules seemed to have a lovely chiaroscuro feel to it, complete with a range of pensive expressions from onlookers.

The final standing were (from last to first)

8. Ben (out by Ian who blind bid 62, and it was indeed 62)
7. Sam (out by Martin who blind bid 61 and it was 63)
6. Katy (Ian bid 33. She bid 44 and passed it to Matt. Matt challenged.)
5. Ian (out by Martin who blind bid 44. Ian challenged. It was 55!)
4.Andrew (out by Andy who bid 66, and it was 21)
3. Martin (out by Andy who bid 55 and it was 66)
2. Andy (out by Matt, challenging a bid of 62)
1. Matt wins! With two gems remaining!

What an end to an evening.

On the Division, little changes, except for Martin’s lead getting ever longer.

Sunday drivers

Sunday. With a recent flurry of new games arrivals courtesy of the maths trade I (Sam) was keen to try out one of them, and as Steel Driver only had 3 pages of rules that felt like the right choice. I was marginally pushy enough to overcome Ian's mild reticence. Andrew is always willing to try a Martin Wallace game and Chris arrived late, so had no say. We set up.

The game sees you the players as brokers in the railway track-laying industry across the USA in olden times. Over five rounds you bid for control of train companies (there are six) and then, assuming you win, you both receive a share in that company and choose where to build the track using the value of your bid to pay for it. Where you build gets you different cash rewards, and as the ultimate winner is the richest player this is a fairly key part of the game. But - everyone who has shares in a company will get the cash rewards each round - and after the final round there's a kind of reverse-Railways effect where all the cities suddenly get populated with goods cubes. Players who have the most shares in a given train company can take a cube their track is connected to - the catch being that several cities have more than one train company attached to them, so you may be beaten to the punch. Cubes score in sets, so different colours are good and lots of the same colour offers a fairly paltry return.

It was interesting. Myself, Andrew and Ian all found ourselves unable to resist controlling the same company over and over, having invested in it early. Chris went for a more broad spread of companies and in another game that might have proved a winning strategy. What helped me in my ultimate victory wasn't the five green shares, but the fact that I had a wide range of goods cubes to cash in; having been the only player to start building track on the west coast I'd had licence to spread in three directions. The other train companies started in the east, and ultimately got under each other's feet in the eventual goods-cube-bunfight.

Thematically speaking it's perhaps less Wallace-y than Tinners' Trail or Railways, but I enjoyed it.

We then played Push It which I also won, albeit by default when Chris and I were both poised to win and somebody sent my disc spiralling into the jack. The game was also notable for a couple of other things - I broke the rules by rolling a disc between some others (fortunately this wasn't contested as it then rolled much too far to be relevant) and Ian's decision to go fairly aggressive, barrelling into everyone else with arms metaphorically flailing. Not successful, but quite amusing.

After that, Ian and Andrew retired and Chris and I bashed out a two-player Biblios. It was brutal for Chris - in the end the whole game hinged on the alphabet, and fortunately I was lexiconically younger:

Sam 9
Chris 5

Steel Driver gets a thumbs up from me. I'd be interested to hear the other's thoughts.