We began with a game of Rhino Hero: Super Battle, which is a combo of the fun building game that is Rhino Hero, and some utterly random dice-rolling game from the 1930's. On your turn you add a floor, supporting it with a set of/combo of large or short walls, and possibly a monkey. Then you try and move your super-hero up the floors, because the highest super-hero (unless they knock the building over themselves) will be the winner.
However the movement is decided by a single dice roll, so the actual building is almost secondary. It was a lot of fun to build, but I think even Steve and Katy would admit their collective victory was down to fortune. Good fun, but ripe for a house variant. Steve did come up with one, but I'm not sure his stepladder will fit in the box.
Our building built (and packed away) we moved on to meatier fare. Martin led the Discworld group on one table, with Katy advertising it as the game that "Martin can lose". This was enough to tempt in Ian and Steve, whilst Adam, Anja and I joined Joe to play Downforce. This was my first visit to the racing game bunfight that's a cross betwixt trying to push your car over the line and trying to back the genuine winner.
I optimistically backed myself, but as the race continued it was a fight for first between Adam and Anja, with Joe nabbing third. I didn't see what everyone else backed, but my betting spread was a disaster, with only one of the three cars I backed placing - and in second, rather than first. Anja, despite spending big on a car that came sixth, grabbed the win:
Anja 21
Joe 18
Adam 14
Sam 11
A lot of fun. Discworld finished around the same time, and Katy's prescient words echoed around the room as Martin protested that he finished last "Because it's random". Outside of taking a picture though, I'm not sure what happened. Hopefully the comments will fill us in...
Steve 83
Ian 68
Katy 60
Martin 47
We'd started playing Kingdomino though; familiar to everyone but Anja. The early game was notable for Anja seeing what Adam was after and taking it, something she openly admitted to relishing "even more" when it's Adam she was preventing from scoring. I set about building wheat and forest, and to my delight, no-one seemed too concerned about it. I felt pretty confident about the win, but it wasn't as cut and dried as I thought...
Sam 76
Joe 64
Anja 61
Adam 42
Ian and Joe swapped groups and when Martin suggested Flipships there was consternation when Katy said there would be no point playing it with Joe, because of his rubbish flicking would cost the Earth. How Joe must have laughed (possibly inwardly) when his first two flicks hit the mothership! Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha, for instance.
He was accused of practicing, and merely shrugged. But it was all to no avail, as the penultimate round saw them destroyed by a bunch of kamikaze nutters as Joe said "It wasn't even my fault":
Aliens: win
Joe, Katy, Martin and Steve: Lose
"Maybe they won't destroy the Earth" Steve said optimistically. "Maybe they'll make it a better place". His optimism almost made me feel like perhaps there is hope for humanity. But the evidence against is rather compelling.
Oh well. On our little table Adam, Anja, Ian and I were playing Blueprints, the tactical architect game of dice-building.
In each round you're building to a blueprint, and completing it gets you six points. But you can go off-piste, architecturally speaking, and risk building the tower. I recommended against it, at least in the first round, but come the second round Ian had decided to go for it: building the tower got him the best building and bonuses for both the tower (it was a tower) and the fact it was made with lots of stone. In the final reckoning, it wasn't enough, but if only all architecture was as dramatic as this! (Maybe it is. I don't know)
Adam 28
Ian 27
Sam 24
Anja 19
We ended with some rousing Fuji Flushes, as with Luther away with grandparents there was no chance of waking him with our cries of delight and talk of dicks. Both games were notable for Martin's consistently picking up appallingly bad cards and Katy and I obsessing over the (lack of) clockwise dealing. Beyond that I don't remember much about them now. Luckily, I wrote down the scores:
Fuji #1
Joe wins
Anja 1 card
Sam/Steve/Adam/Katy 2 cards
Ian 3 cards
Martin 5 cards
Fuji #2
Ian wins
Sam/Katy/Joe/Steve 1 card
Anja/Adam/Martin 2 cards
And that was it! I'm not sure about the context of the post title, except I heard Katy yell it during Discworld.
Did Katy say it in the style of "I hate you, Butler!" from On The Buses? I hope so.
ReplyDeleteThat new Rhino Hero game looks mad. And I'm keen to try Downforce. Hopefully it won't have gone out of fashion by the time I get back.
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ReplyDelete?
DeleteI'd be up for both. Rhino Hero was fun, just felt a bit underdeveloped in the rules department. Hope Japan is great!
ReplyDeletewhoops> I was responding to Andrew's comment, not yours Katy!
DeleteWith Rhino Hero there is some logic in not building up when you're stuck at the bottom (as Anja and I and Martin and Ian were) as you're creating more levels for the teams above you tp move into.
An excellent night of gaming! I enjoyed Rhino Hero and although it was random I do think me and Steve deserved our win, we were the only team to consistently build upwards. I really should have been hating Steve, or actually myself, in Disc World and Joe's flicking was probably the best (of a bad bunch)! Apologies for my misdirected criticism and thank you all for a good evening :D
ReplyDeleteA great evening, lovely to revisit Stepney Walk after a long while.
ReplyDeleteI enjoyed all the games, and even I was amazed by my super-accurate flicking at first - but the potion wore off fairly quickly.
I enjoyed Downforce - and was better at it this time; you do have to be fairly cautious in your bidding, and confident in your betting - and we definitely should have stuck the cars on the grid before we auctioned them. Pole position is a big plus, it seems to me.
I really enjoyed playing Kingdomino again, too.