Four games in a day, and not a leaderboard in sight

I spent a tranquil afternoon as I played through a game of Troyes by myself, just to get an idea of how it works, with Final Score on the TV to keep me company. And, despite Garth Crooks' increasingly theatrical sighs of dismay at Newcastle vs. Wolves or whatever, I enjoyed my first walkthrough of this dice-based game (but in a good way) of disaster-management.

Soon after that I got a text from Sam about a impromptu games evening, and so before long I was sitting at his kitchen table, complete with red and white polka dotted tablecloth (not a patch on Joe's green felt, frankly) learning another new game.

We began with Portobello Market. In this, one has to build up market stalls along streets and then score them according to the customers (normal, aristocrats or the baron) with an option to score districts, too, which scores big but can reduce the number of actions you can do in future turns. In the first game, we were just warming up, unsure of any tactic.

Sam 195
Andrew 180

On the second go, we were a little more canny. We paid more attention to the position of the policeman (which lets you place market stalls) but it was still too early to fully compute the role of the baron, who appears automatically when the last customer is placed on the board. Is it worth leaving a space on the board where you are strongest, hoping that he'll drop into your lap on the last go? Or should you play safe, use an aristocrat and get the points early? Such is life for the Portobello market-stall holder circa 1901.

Sam 209
Andrew 200

After this, we decided to squeeze in one last game. Mord im Arosa. In this game, players have to solve a murder using only their sense of hearing. Cubes are dropped into a cardboard tower and by listening, each player has to guess where the murder took place. A wrong guess means the player has to add their own cubes to the murder scene, which increases the odds of them being unveiled as the murderer.

It's a silly game and a lot of fun. I turned out that I have quite the aptitude for this game, as my guesses regarding the location of Sam's suspicious cubes was unerringly accurate. The game ended with a large enough margin of victory for the heinous crime to be solved.

"Solid Alibi" Andrew 5
"Blood on his hands" Sam 14

Both games were a lot of fun, although would probably be more so with more players. Especially Portobello Market which has potential for quite a bit of Analysis Paralysis if four are playing, I think.