We kicked off with Trans-Europa. Everyone but Steve had played this before, and indeed Matilda had beaten her dad at it. If anyone thought this was indulgence on Joe's part they were soon relieved of that impression as Tilly won the first round, completing her routes before anyone else and leaving us - Andrew and I in particular - trailing in her dust. But come the second round Adam began to show dominance in what would be a winning campaign for him. Round three - won by me - pushed Tilly over the edge and the game finished with Adam in a comfortable first place:
1 Adam
2 Joe
3 Steve
4 Sam
5 Andrew
6 Matilda
Tilly wanted to stay and play 7 Wonders but bedtime intervened, so we were down to five as everyone set up their wonder and began the brain-drain of calculating which card to keep versus which cards to avoid passing on to one's neighbour and competitor. Joe had started collecting the green science cards early, and sitting to his right I found my hand filling up with science and I was forced to keep handing him the good stuff.
Come the end, however, Joe's focus on the sciences - despite scoring big - meant neglecting the rest of his game, and he slipped to fourth. One is tempted to mention the unwritten rule of 7 Wonders - diversification! - as his downfall, except that winning player Adam had no science cards at all. He'd pursued an aggressive route, taking army points off both Joe and Steve, and picked up points in every category BUT the sciences. Having followed a similar path I snuck into second:
Adam 57
Sam 52
Andrew 49
Joe 48
Steve 34
I'm not sure what happened to Steve, who's usually a good 7 Wonders player. He was on the other side of the table and my only interaction was heckling him for taking too long to choose his card...
As we debated our gaming options, Joe brought out a new card game called Mu and we gave it a trial run. It has a good reputation, but we found it a little unintuitive. It's a trick-taking game, and before each round there's a an auction to decide both Chief and Vice, both of whom decide a trump suit form the five available (the chief's trump trumps the vice's trump) and the Chief picks a partner and then has a predetermined target of 'pips' to win based on how many cards he or she used at the auction stage, while the vice and the other players try and stop him making that target. If the chief makes his target he gets a fabulous bonus to go with his pip score.
But wait. There isn't always a chief after the auction, trumps can be numbers not suits, and pips do not appear on every card. And if the chief doesn't make his target there is a penalty based on how many pips he failed by, according to a ranking system.
After our trial round (which Andrew, as Chief, and me as his partner, lost) the general feeling was that it was one to revisit with more time and fresher minds, so we rounded off the evening with a game of Poison.
To be honest I still don't really have a handle on the tactics of this game. The only thing I did differently last night was being more amenable to picking up one or two colour cards early in the game, thinking perhaps a few points was worth having more flexibility in how I played my hand. It might have been coincidence, but I managed to finish in second - first place was taken by Joe, who should have a hat with 'The Poison King" stitched on it. At the back end of the game Steve, who'd not played it before, manage to sneak ahead of Andrew by a solitary point on the final round.
Joe 19
Sam 21
Adam 24
Steve 36
Andrew 37
With a 1st/1st/3rd record on the night, Adam's grip on the leaderboard will give him cramp at this rate, but it was also a good night for Joe with a 1st/2nd/4th finish. The rest of us lagged behind a bit, with Andrew's 5th/3rd/5th not doing his points ratio much good at all. Still, early days. Maybe Adam will go on holiday for six months, or just get bored of winning and take up extreme sports instead...
The leaderboard...
| Played | Points | Ratio | |
| Adam | 5 | 28.5 | 5.7 |
| Joe | 5 | 20.5 | 4.1 |
| Sam | 5 | 19.5 | 3.9 |
| Andrew | 5 | 14.5 | 2.9 |
| Jonny | 2 | 10 | 5 |
| Steve | 3 | 9.5 | 3.16 |
| Matilda | 1 | 1.5 | 1.5 |
It's a good job I didn't write this up, because I would have found it hard to resist naming it after a phrase murmured by Andrew during Poison; "Mmmm . . . balls".
ReplyDeleteI have to say a special thanks to everyone for giving Mü a shot — I really appreciate you all giving it a try. It would feel wrong to make it the big game on a games night, but perhaps opening with it would be worth a shot, while we're all fresh. While it's new to us, Mü came out in 1995, and still occupies a respectable 156 in the strategy board games rank on BGG, overall board game rank 272. Those numbers speak for themselves. Listen . . .
. . . actually no I think that's Andrew again.
Tilly enjoyed her first foray into the GNN lamplight — mostly she enjoyed munching through an entire pack of salty Doritos, which seemed to interfere with her strategy in round three. I'd love to know what her overall plan was, building along one edge of the map. She may have been heading for the Haribos.
I like the recent trend of getting a fair few games in on a games night — four last night including Mü. And on tuesday, a few rounds of Tsuro and a 4-player For Sale before TtR I believe.
Well done everyone — more games, more of the time.
Highlight of the evening for me was Joe's dog saying "hello" in a posh accent.
ReplyDeleteI remain doubtful about Mü. It feels like a game that had been devised over many months amongst friends, and they kept adding new rules to keep themselves entertained before finally releasing it. It's like the Battlestar Galactica of card games.