Rhino Knizia

 I knocked on Laura's front door on a wintry evening, pleased to not have to negotiate the summertime entrance: the grassy side passage which, today, was pitch dark and featured plenty of scaffolding.

She let me in and I found Martin, Ian, Sam, Joe, Adam T and, apparently, Laura's young daughter Maddie all playing Skyjo. Then Laura took her seat and I realised that she and Maddie were a team. 

Skyjo seems simple enough. You want as few points as possible as you pick up and discard from the 4x3 grid of (initially face down) cards in front of you. But a column of three of a kind will vanish, making your chances of winning all the better.

Towards the end of the game, Adam discovered that cards that were still face down did not count as zero but would score whatever their hidden value was. He had five left and suddenly he looked in a very precarious position.

But he needn't have worried. Martin triggered the end of the game by having no more face down cards. But this game has a mean sting in the tail: anyone who ends the game but doesn't have fewest points will have their score doubled. And this is what happened to Martin. Adam discovered that his face down cards were all pretty benign. Laura and Maddie, on the other hand, had played a perfect game!

Laura & Maddie 0

Adam 15

Sam 18

Ian 21

Joe 29

Martin 46

Maddie was allowed to stay up for long enough to watch us set up the next game. What a treat! Martin suggested Zoo Vadis because it could play all seven. It's a negotiation game by Reiner Knizia where players move their meeples from area to area by convincing the other players to vote for them. If they do agree, they get one coin from the bank and whatever the negotiator promised. 

It's an oddly themed game. Apparently it was once about senators in Ancient Rome but then had a retheme whereby we are animals in a zoo. A zoo designed to look like a bit like ancient Rome.

Adam began by promising to be absolutely terrible at this game and then proceeded to be very adept at getting a good deal from Joe. Martin sent one of his meeples up a solitary track but that meant it wouldn't have to negotiate and therefore wouldn't make any money. This explains his shockingly low score.

Adam 28

Joe 18

Andrew 17

Laura 17

Ian 16

Sam 14

Martin 5

Then we split into two groups. Ian, Adam, Laura and Joe did some old school gaming with Zombie Dice while Martin, Sam and I played Big Top.

This auction game has you bidding on cards and if you bid a number showing on the card in question, that number is covered by a coin, making the card even more valuable.

Sam had a huge lead mid game. I ran out of money and Martin had few completed cards until later on. In the final tally, Sam's lead vanished as Martin had collected several big scoring end of game bonuses, pushing his score from a mere 15 up to...

Martin 71

Sam 58

Andrew 46

Zombie dice ended

Adam 15

Laura 5

Joe 5

Ian 3 (but almost 11)

They'd also played The Crew Deep Sea Adventure while we finished off big top. No idea how that went. But soon we were all finished and ready to mix things up.

Misfits was mentioned, but I didn't think I could cope so I joined Martin and Joe in a game of Accuse. It's a sort of cross between Coup and Cluedo. Coupdo, if you will.

It's a small game. So small that Martin had accidentally packed it away inside the box for Big Top, and that's already quite small itself. But there was some nice deducing inside that small pack. 

Joe was first to accuse but got the wrong suspect. After the first accusations, the other players have to (secretly) decide how many cards they need to reveal before they can make an accusation. I said one and Martin said none so he went first and was successful!

Ian won Misfits. It produced some typically crazy structures but Ian's winning move was simply to put a cube on top of two blocks z after Sam had a catastrophic collapse on his turn.

Adam left at this point and the rest of us played Team Rankster. This game of deciding who out of three random historical/fictional characters would be best in certain situations was new to me but very easy to learn. 

Interesting to note that Laura wouldn't want Da Vinci to design her house because it'd be too crazy, choosing instead Jon Snow. From Game of Thrones, not the newsreader.

Martin, Laura and Andrew 3

Sam, Ian and Joe 1

After this, even though So Clover was on the table, I had to leave. It was difficult to resist, especially with Sam saying “I'm taking the lid off!” as I put my coat on, but I was strong.

I later got the score (27 out of 30) and a photo from Sam with the note: “Martin, at one stage: All I can see is cabbage”

Thanks for hosting Laura and hope to see everyone again soon!

Roll for the soul of the undead

Tonight, as with Tuesday, the Easter break saw a dip in our numbers at the fortnightly Roll For The Soul gathering. It began with just the three of us: me, Sam and Ian, like a little reunion of the meet from earlier this week. The three of us chose a table and ordered food. With this in mind, we began with a little Decathlon to fill the time until the table was clear enough to host a full game.

We played a truncated game of five rounds, and because time was short we eschewed the usual method of adding up the scores to see who’d won in favour of a medal table, with ended in a draw! Thanks to a tie in the high jump, we all one two events each. I was most impressive in the 100m, though, scoring 31 points (compared to Sam’s 17 and Ian’s 15) in only two rolls. That’s the closest I’ll ever get to feeling like Usain Bolt.

After this we considered playing Castles of Burgundy, but with a live gig schedules for later and a need to move tables at some point, we chose Hansa (lent to Sam by Joe). It was new to me and Ian, but it’s not very complicated so we were up and running before long.

Hansa is quite a dry, thinky game and didn’t lend itself well to the hubbub and noisy ambiance of Roll For The Soul. It was hard to concentrate, or be very engaged in a game as abstract as this. Ian said he liked it. We had to stop halfway, to make room for the musician to set up. I didn't mind when we were interrupted.

During the game, two other people arrived: Gareth and Katy. We told them we’d let them know when we were going to start the next game. Then we realised we didn’t have any five-player games. Without Joe or Martin to supply the games, the pickings were pretty slim.

Sam decided he’d go back to the studio to do some work, leaving me, Katy, Ian and Gareth. Gareth brought a few games: Pandemic and Dominion (plus expansions) and Zombie Dice. We went for Divinare, since I thought it was the right length with the option of a quick game to finish with.

I bought Divinare years ago and then didn’t play it for ages, but recently it’s come into its own. It fits that niche of light but challenging and you don’t have to play all rounds if you don’t want to. But we did. Katy was excited at first, insisting that she was a bit psychic, but then complained that the game had nothing to do with psychic powers. Time after time, she was on the correct space, on a board only to have to move since she had the card for that particular board in her hand.

I enjoyed it, and the musical accompaniment wasn’t too distracting. Gareth won, and Ian came last with no points at all. I suspect he was playing for zero in the last round once he realised he was way off the pace with one point. The fact that he got it is quite impressive in its own way.

Then we ended with a couple of rounds of Zombie Dice. Collect brains, while avoiding gunshots. That’s the basic aim of this dice game. You can stop your go at any time, and take the brains you’ve collected. If you get three gunshots, then you lose all the brains you had.

Katy sped into an early lead with an impressive eight brains on her first go. But then she didn’t score again for the next three rounds. I won, with 17 points.

The second time, Katy tried to encourage Ian by saying “This is your time!” when he began to roll his dice. At first, it didn’t look to be doing much help. In fact, it looked like a bit of a jinx as Ian was still in last in the fifth round. But then suddenly his luck did change, and with two good rounds, he ended the game in first place with 19 points.

Although the music was still playing, the games were over. We left the sticky table and set off home.