What dreams are made of

On Friday, Paul made one of his occasional journeys across land to join myself, Sam and Chris for some old-style gaming fun. And when I say “old-style”, I’m mostly referring to the jokes.

Ha ha!

My day of gaming began early when I had a dream that morning with the four of us in it. I’d invited them round to play games in my posh London flat. We were all sleeping in the same room, so we had to push the furniture to the walls, which I was a bit annoyed about, but never mind. We were playing a game where the board was illustrated with tree tops and a white hexagonal grid over them and we all had coloured cubes. Paul suddenly said “I’m going to sack all my butlers!”

That’s all I remember. I told the rest of them my dream, and they said that was a very Paul thing to say. Will Butler Forest ever become reality? No one knows.

As for the real games, we began with a couple of rounds of Avenue. This path-making game is simple to learn and even easier to get wrong. Sam showed us a solo game he’d done in which he ended with zero points.

On the final round of the first game, Chris realised he’d completely cut off the last scoring farm and completed the routes to his castles, leaving him with nothing to do. If only he’d played it a little different, he could’ve got a win on his debut.

Sam 42
Chris 41
Andrew 30
Paul 15

A second game was quickly arranged, since Chris and Paul felt they’d only just got a hang of it. If I remember right, Chris painted himself into a corner in the last round, finishing one point behind Sam again.

Andrew 55
Sam 41
Chris 40
Paul 30

None of us managed to go through an entire game without having at least one non-scoring round.

Next up we chose Council of Four. This game is not just a points salad, but also a bit of a gameplay salad, using ideas reminiscent of other games. Chaining, area-control, set-collecting, doing things. You know the sort of thing.

Almost the only thing it doesn’t have is a chance to trash your hand and draw new one. This caused Chris some anguish with his hand of all purples which were decidedly not fine. His options were non-scoring moves preparing the councils to be more purple-friendly in the future.

Sam started well. He explained to us newbies how getting the 5-point bonus for building in both blue cities allowed you to pick up an additional 25-point bonus tile for completing the first bonus. And then he went and did just that! You can’t accuse him of not giving us advice he wouldn’t take himself. Chris and Paul also got in the bonus tile action fairly early on.

I ignored the build-in-coloured-city tactic, preferring for a long chain of buildings that paid out like a malfunctioning slot machine every time I added to it. In the latter stages of the game it helped me put together a move that included two extra moves! Very nice. However, my extensive lead on the score track was not enough of a buffer against Sam’s end-of-game bonuses.

Sam 70
Andrew 68
Chris 56
Paul 42

We played a swift game of NMBR9 as a palette cleanser.

Andrew 87
Sam 74
Paul 70
Chris 69

Then we played Quest For Eldorado, another game new to everyone except Sam. It’s basically a deck-building race game. Since my opening hand allowed me to move four spaces, I decided I would. Sam and Chris hung back early, buying cards and Paul walked back and forth investigating the same cave.

In the middle, I struggled through villages, while the others used machetes to go the long way round. Then, when out of the village, my best machetes refused to come out of my deck, so was either stuck or forced down the winding path through the overgrowth.

Sam then, by his own admission, got a huge dose of luck. His last two hands just came out perfectly to get him across the last tile. Chris ended in a not too distant second while Paul and I seemed to be lost, no doubt shouting advice to each other in the darkest part of the jungle.

As eleven o’clock approached we dug out two old favourites. 6nimmt. After a low scoring first round, Chris picked up 26 in round two. I got stuck in a death spiral in round three for 31 points. After that things settled down until Paul and I crashed out together, like Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid bursting out of their hideaway to face the insurmountable massed guns of the police. Only far less cinematic.

Sam 43
Chris 53
Paul 71
Andrew 77

Then we played No Thanks. Chris went for a high-card strategy which earned him lots of coins. But he then found it much funnier to let 30+ cards go round until I had run out of coins and had to pick them up.

Sam 17
Paul 30
Chris 41
Andrew 77

And with that we were off to sleep in various rooms in Chris’ house. I slept well, dreaming about us playing board games again! No Butler Forest this time. Instead, it was all about ghost hunting. In this game, you first got the commission, then went to the place and then you had to chase the ghost. Chris must’ve played the game before because he explained to me that rolling a six after a one was actually sixteen, which was far too many movement points and I’d gone past it.

Thanks all, it was fun. And thanks to Daisy the kitten for keeping me entertained in the morning.