Macaw*

Last night Andrew and I had one of our pretend meetings where we say we're going to write and instead we play games. To be fair we did talk over some stuff but after a short while we felt it was really time to play Cube Quest, seeing as I'd set it up on the table before he arrived. This game has been out of the box so many times, if I labelled every game I ever played (which has an appeal) it would have ousted Biblios already in the stats department.

It does divide the genders, however. Hannah last week was unwilling to try it at all, and Sally was exactly the same; when I suggested it on Friday she proposed something "a bit more intellectually stimulating". I don't know what's shocking here, Cube Quest appalling her as it did or Sally foregoing a short game for a longer one. (We ended up playing Biblios)

Anyway I guess flicking just satisfies something in the male gene, as Andrew and I played three quick games, punctuated by my cries of anguish as I aped Joe's Ascending Empires tactics of inadvertent suicide missions. Andrew won 2-1.

image courtesy of Cabbage Dan, who is presumably a boy

Then we played Macao. This hasn't featured in the previous post's discussion of 'best game on spiel des jahres criteria' but perhaps it should - it ticks a lot of boxes, but suffers I guess from being a little unintuitive to new players. I love the dice rolling mechanic.

On this occasion Andrew did what I normally do and plump for those interesting cards like the Abbott, whereas I started going for the easy-to-build cards. Fate smiled on me - as both of us were exasperated (in a nice way) by the dice rolls I was able to find a way around things as my cards, while not having the rewards Andrews potentially did - were easier to get out of my tableau and make use of. Despite some late-game shenanigans from both of us, it was a victory for me on the two-player division in a game that isn't Biblios - hooray!

Sam 82
Andrew 68

*sorry, no idea