Get Cartel!

Barely 48 hours after the Games Weekend, three hardy gamers, Sam, Ian and me, met for the regular weekly session along with non-weekender Martin.

I arrived a little late, and found them deep in a game of Funf Gurken, another example of Martin's beloved trick-taking genre. And the trick to this game is that you don't want to win the last trick, because if you do, you'll pick up gherkins. Get five, and you're out.

I was dealt into the second hand with Sam already looking perilously close to going out. And so it was, with Ian then myself. Martin won, without picking up a single gherkin.

Martin
Andrew
Ian
Sam

Next to the table was Ethnos, a game that fits the rare sweet spot between deep/strategic and swift/short. At the start of the game when choosing the races, we deliberately discarded any that we were too familiar with, and Ian made a special request for no halflings. And so, we did battle with mermaids, giants, minotaurs, etc across a map that Martin reliably informed us was based on Slovakia.

I started very slowly. In fact, I barely scored at all in round one. "It's very close," said Martin, clearly referring to the three-way battle for first in the mid thirties, and not me on six points.

And it stayed close until the end. Martin, Ian and Sam all battled to the end, with Sam just scraping a win.

Sam 120
Martin 118
Ian 104
Andrew 77

After this, we chose another new game. Star Cartel, with a neon font on the box that suggested tatty eighties nightclubs, not intergalactic trade. But that's beside the point. The game involves picking up various goods and putting them in your ship, a bit like Medici.When your ship is full, you have to make a delivery. The item you have most of goes up in value. The item you have least of goes down, but you don't keep either: you keep one of the items in the middle.

It was a lot of fun, although maybe I didn't quite get the hang of it. Ian, though, almost pulled off a Derren Brown-esque piece of misdirection. When it came to count up, he revealed one red item after another and no one had noticed him take them. Almost a tactical masterstroke.

Martin 94
Ian 93
Sam 69
Andrew 59

There had been talk of Polterfass, but Martin had yet another new game to set before us. And it's a Knizia! It was Voodoo Prince, another trick taking game. This time, the theme was once you'd won three tricks, you were finished for that round. Your score was the total of all tricks won by everyone else. But, if you are the last one in after everyone else is out, you only score your own tricks. In other words, you have to judge it so you go out third.

There are a couple of other rules to liven things up a bit, but it's pretty simple. But devilish, as you'd expect from a Knizia. Ian took an early lead, and then Sam was first in the fourth round out of five. It looked hopeless but in the final round I was out third (for eight points), while Sam was last man standing (for two). This pushed me from second into first.

Andrew 26
Sam 24
Ian 21
Martin 21

Maybe it was half past ten by now, but none of us showed any signs of slowing down. The aforementioned Polterfass was brought out and we played a remarkably even game. No one crashed out early with hopeless bets and no one stormed into an early lead on blind luck. By round six, the score was 32, 33, 35, 37. It could barely be closer.

But then Martin got hit by an unfulfilled order and fell away, so in the latter stages it was a three way race. In the end, Sam won when he bet just enough to hit 75, while I bet low and Martin unfortunately (for me) didn't bet high and go bust, giving me lots of points.

Sam 76
Andrew 70
Ian 52
Martin 29

It was now 11.30 and time to call it a night. But what a night. Four corking games for four cracking guys. If I had been apprehensive about gaming so soon after a weekend, my doubts were firmly dispelled. Thanks all. It was special.