I arrived at Sam’s a little late: the other players around his kitchen table (Pete, Martin, Tanya and Joe) were playing Triangulation. I was parachuted into The Pete and Martin Team and told they were minutes away from losing. As an example of their lack of connection, Martin told me that for the clues “white,” “hat” and “fuck” Pete had guessed Ku Klux Klan but the answer had instead been Gordon Ramsay.
My arrival didn’t turn things around and the game played out for one more round, ending as expected. The Sam, Joe and Tanya Team won.
After this, we were still waiting for Laura and her nephew Sam so we banged out a quick Cross Clues. And what a food-centric Cross Clues it was! Suffice to say that the post game discussion veered very close to a discussion about whether Lentils or Chicken were the best match for the clue “Protein”. But top marks to Joe for his clue “useless” leading us to the answer Chocolate / Armour.
21 out of 25
Laura and Sam got here just as we were discussing our failed attempts.
We split into two. Martin explained Gold Country to Pete, Joe and I and Sam talked Laura, Sam and Tanya through Survive the Island.
Gold Country is a game where you collect shares in mining companies but in this game there’s more chances to undermine (pardon the pun) the values of the shares as each company carves a path across the board, picking up tiles of plus of minus numbers that then affect their share price. This means things can get mean. And they did. Martin was first to exploit the board in this way as he plunged blue shareholders (me and Joe) into dispair with a number of repair tiles almost bankrupting us. Soon after this, Martin reminded Joe of the rule that your all of you money should remain publicly visible. “Yep,” replied Joe. “Is that it?” responded Martin, perhaps a little cruelly.
Late in the game, Pete did something similar that made also made his large collection of white shares unassailable. It may not have been as pivotal as I recall but I certainly remember realising at that point who was going to win.
Then Survive The Island finished. I had been mostly ignoring it while I focused on my somewhat ineffective attempts at insider trading.
Our Sam 28
Tanya 19
Laura 11
Laura’s Sam 10
The four of them then started on Misfits while we continued to drain Gold Country of its natural resources. Our game was coming to an end, mostly mopping up final tiles. Laura won Misfits and Sam went to the toilet in disgust. We were still in our final stages when he got back, so they started a game of Heck Meck. During this game, we final totted up our final scores:
Pete 108
Martin 90
Andrew 60
Joe 36
With that, I set off home.
At this point, the report would seamlessly segue into Sam’s continuation of the evening but blogger deleted it and any attempt at hitting undo or ctrl+Z did nothing.
