With six of us, we played Mord Im Arosa. This game of gravity-based sleuthing was new to many of us, but it was swiftly explained and before long we were hunting up and down the seven-floor hotel looking for clues or trying to cover our tracks. With more than two-players, it's quite a different game and does need a little more concentration that before. However, late in the game a detached flap on one of the floors caused a blockage which made sleuthing easier than you'd otherwise expect, which pushed someone over the "ten suspicious cubes" limit and ended the game.
1. Anja 10
2= Sam 11
2= Andrew 11
3. Adam 14
4. Steve 15
5. Joe 16
After this, we split into a group of four and a group of two. Joe and I played Troyes (and I found out that the only reason he gave it to me for my birthday was so he'd have someone to play it with) while the others settled down with Portobello Market. I'll leave it to them to fill in the details of their two games, but the scores were
Adam 105
Steve 95
Anja 82
Sam 65
And in the second game...
Sam 106
Steve 84
Adam 82
Anja 79
Meanwhile, Joe and I reintroduced ourselves to Troyes. I discovered a couple of rules I hadn't got right first time round, but I think my recent practise helped me. Joe started by pushing me out of my positions on the buildings, so I got fewer dice, but with only four rounds it didn't seem to make too much difference. And even if I do say so myself, I made some canny decisions in the final round. When the victory points were counted up, I found that I'd won by the slimmest of margins.
Andrew 33
Joe 32
Since it was still early(ish) and we'd all finished our games at the same time, we reconvened for another six-player game. This time, 6nimmt was brought out, and despite its confusing rules (at least until you play it) and Sam's instance it should be called 5nimmt, since you take five cards and leave the sixth, it was a fun game.
Despite his previous good form, Adam did badly from the start but quickly recovered. My form dropped dramatically after the first round, while Sam managed to dodge most of the damage being given out to the other players. By the end, we admitted that no one really had a strategy and Adam said that he did worst when he tried to plan ahead.
Sam 20
Steve 31
Adam 45
Anja 47
Joe 49
Andrew 66
So five games and four winners. And hats off to "Second Place" Steve for his consistency, which sees him up to third with Anja hot on his heels. Despite picking up a sixth place, I stay on the same number of points, while Joe falls due to his habit of coming in fifth.
| Points | ||||||
| Sam | 1 | 1 | 4 | 2 | 1 | 9 |
| Adam | 3 | 3 | 1 | 3 | 1 | 11 |
| Steve | 2 | 2 | 2 | 4 | 4 | 14 |
| Anja | 4 | 4 | 3 | 1 | 2 | 14 |
| Andrew | 6 | 1 | 2 | 3 | 3 | 15 |
| Jonny | 1 | 3 | 5 | 3 | 3 | 16* |
| Quentin | 1 | 3 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 19 |
| Joe | 5 | 2 | 5 | 2 | 4 | 19 |
| Hannah | 2 | 3 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 20 |
* the decay rule –people with five results registered, after a while, will find their score go down one point per week if they don't attend for three weeks. It may sound harsh, but it stops the regulars getting resentful. If they attend another evening, all decay points are removed.
Meanwhile, I've been keeping the old style leaderboard up to date. To be honest, it's suffering from the same trouble as last season. Sam is leading with 101 points, Joe is second with 86, Adam has 78 and then I'm fourth with 65.5. After that it's the usual large gap to fifth (Steve, 38.5).
However, the Olympic style leaderboard is looking much more exciting, with a real three-way battle for supremacy. Joe may have fallen to eighth in the form table, but he's still in the running here. And form is transient. Medals last forever. If we gave out medals, that is.
The Olympic leaderboard...
| Gold | Silver | Bronze | |
| Sam | 8 | 10 | 1 |
| Joe | 7 | 4 | 6 |
| Adam | 6 | 3 | 6 |
| Steve | 2 | 4 | 0 |
| Andrew | 1 | 4 | 7 |
| Anja | 1 | 2 | 1 |
| Jonny | 1 | 0 | 5 |
| Quentin | 1 | 0 | 1 |
| Hannah | 0 | 1 | 1 |
Great night Sam - and great write-up Andrew. Despite deciding to play 3 rounds of 6nimmt rather than until someone got 66 bulls as the rules state, look what went and happened! Spooky.
ReplyDeleteMy strategy in Troyes was "more is better" - more people in the buildings, no dice left un-used. I guess I wasn't using them to accrue VPs, but influence and money. I like it though. And portobello market looked rather lovely too. Ah, Tuesday.
Very nice evening, thanks all. And a nice write-up too, as ever.
ReplyDeletePortobello Market: Thankfully the rules didn't suffer too much from my summarising and everyone seemed to click very quickly on what to do, bar some initial confusion over whether moving the Bobby costs you action points (it doesn't). Steve and Anja made the early running while Adam and I lagged behind, but as you can tell form the final score Hillmann was far from out of it. We were all suprised when the game abruptly ended - me especially, having only played a two-hander where I'd had about twice as many stalls to place. My tactic of picking up high-scoring ends-of-lanes was far from a canny one, as the scoring also shows.
I faired better in the second game, playing a little more aggressively - and Adam suffered for sitting to my left as I saw what he was planning and Hillmanned it! Again the game seemed to end suddenly, as Anja took the last customer from the bag, and as she was the last player in turn order, that was that. It's a deceptively deep game, I feel, and looks lovely.
6nimmt is an awful lot of luck - I had crappy cards in my first ever round, whereas last night there usually seemed to be an obvious option to me. One vague thing I had going - I dunno if you could call it a tactic - was if I felt I was going to pick up cards, I would try and get a card down that I had a good follow-up on. So rather than putting down a 57, say, I'd put down the 67 knowing I had the 69 in my hand for the next turn. That worked once or twice, but it also backfired too; when someone else slapped a 103 on the top of my 'seed' card....