Monday 21 October 2013

Survival of the Fattest

Sunday, Portishead. Games weren't originally on the agenda, but after a beach walk and an enormous meal (this was nearly called Roulade for the Soul) Katie, Mark, Sally and I stuffed to the point of inertness, and communication was reduced to a series of gestural wheezes. We were ready to hand over the communal child wrangle to the television, so a screening of Despicable Me was set up and, a window of time opening up, we were struck by the urge to play a game.

Vegas was brought out. For those uninitiated, this cheeky little number has a playing area of six casinos labelled 1 to 6, that at the start of the game are dealt a bunch of dollars (minimum $50,000). On your turn, you roll all of your dice (you have eight at the start) and choose which ones to put in a casino in an attempt to win the money. The dice numbers and the casino number must match, so if you choose your three 4s you put them in the casino marked 4. And note: they all must go in; you can't split up matching numbers.

This continues until everyone has run out of dice, then the person with the most dice in a particular casino takes the highest showing money card. If there's a second card, the person with the second-most dice takes that and so on.

The potentially brilliant/agonising thing about it however, is that if two people tie for the same amount of dice they cancel each other out - so (as in our game) when Mark and Katie got into a battle for a $90,000 money card they ended up with four dice each, and Peppa and I (playing as a team) took first place and the cash with a solitary die.

courtesy BGG user Tonksey

I started well with a decent haul in the first round, snagging a small lead over the others. My tactic was to hedge my bets and put in a single die here or there, hoping to give myself a bit of choice when the others ran out of dice. But in the second round we were all blown out of the water by Katie, who picked up $250,000 while the rest of us ended with scraps.

At this point it seemed like The Chiseller was well on her way, but three things happened in my favour. First, Mark and Katie began fighting over the same casinos. Second, Peppa got bored with Despicable Me and joined my team as Official Dice Roller, performing the task with something akin to dark magick in terms of what we wanted. Finally Joe peed on the sofa and Sally's attention was distracted by admonishment and laundry duties.

Also I should add that I encouraged the others to go after Katie, like the sneaky little shit that I am.

As Katie and Mark got into a philosophical debate about how their shared love was or wasn't manifesting itself through die placement, and Sally chased a damp-crotched reprobate around the living room, Peppa and I cleaned up.

Peppa and Sam $520,000
Katie $450,000
Sally $330,000
Mark $240,000

All of which means, after a long period of playing second fiddle to Katie or Mark, I stay top on the extremely occasional KMSS leaderboard. Sally improves her numbers but stays fourth, and Katie leapfrogs Mark. I keep telling them we're going to play 7 Wonders so that will probably be next...

KMSS





Points
Sam

1
1
1
2
5
Katie

2
3
4
1
10
Mark

4
2
2
3
11
Sally

3
4
3
4
14

4 comments:

  1. Shouldn't Peppa be on the scoreboard too? And shouldn't Mark get a 4?

    And I can't believe you got everyone to pick on Katie - what a cad!

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  2. Ye Gods you're right. I will amend.

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  3. If Peppa's willing to put the time in and play High Frontier, then she'll go on the board.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Oh and I didn't really get everyone to pick on Katie. I just commented to Mark that she was in the lead. You know.

    ReplyDelete