Ale's well that ends well

Tonight's games night was to have been a five-hander but the last minute apology from a potential debutant left us as a quartet. Sam was the host and myself, Ian and Martin were the eager gamers sodden by the rain.

But Ian was a late arrival, so we played a couple of quick games with Stanley. The first was a roll 'n' write game called Knister. This was Stanley's introduction to the genre and, by his own admission, he played pretty randomly.

The game is like a dicey Take It Easy, in that everyone writes the result of two dice into their 5x5 grid. The idea is to get pairs, three/four/five of a kinds, straights or full houses along the rows and columns and two diagonals. Sam had to explain to his son what a full house was.

The game itself was very odd, with the dice obeying the laws of probability to the letter, showing only results between five and nine. Martin even picked them up to check they did have ones on them. I suspect this meant we ended with some higher scores than average.

Martin 57
Andrew 54
Sam 52
Stanley 36

A fun game, but I'd like to play it again when the dice aren't so well behaved.

Next we needed a game to take us up to Ian's expected arrival and Stanley's bed time. Martin introduced us to Texas Showdown. It was Stanley's first trick taking game too. What an auspicious occasion. Two new game genres in one night.

This is a trick taker with a difference. Then again, aren't they all? In this game, the 60 card deck is split into eight suits. But the numbers are exclusive to each suit. For example, numbers 1-10 make up the black pistol suit. Then numbers 11-20 make up the orange cowboy boots suit (which look a bit like squid heads to me, but never mind). And each suit has fewer cards so that the highest grey buffalo skull suit runs from 70-74. Some numbers aren't included at all, which is why the highest is 74 in a 60 card pack.

So that's one twist. The other is that you have to follow lead but if you can't and you play another colour then that suit becomes another lead suit. For example, Martin plays blue but Ian has none so he plays green. Sam has the choice of blue or green to follow. If he can't and plays purple, then I have to follow blue, green or purple if I can. Ingenious.

And if that wasn't enough, the winner (and winning is bad in this game) is decided by the highest card on the suit which has most cards showing. Another example; in a round with three blacks and one grey, the highest black will win even though the grey will have the highest value. In the case of a tie, though, the highest value takes the trick.

The reason I'm going into such detail about the rules is that we kept commenting how amazing it was that new trick-taking games were still coming out with simple ideas no one had ever thought of before.

I loved it. It was so simple but so easy to screw over an opponent or, more likely, yourself that it had an appeal much greater than I'd expected during the rules explanation.

Sam looked like he'd sussed it immediately, going through the first round without picking up a single trick. But his clean sheet couldn't last and the game ended in a heart warming draw between father and son.

Stanley 9
Sam 9
Andrew 10
Martin 17

So after this Stanley climbed the wooden hill to Bedfordshire (with his sprained ankle and all) and Ian arrived shortly after.

We looked over Sam's games collection and Martin's suggestion of Heaven & Ale was quickly agreed upon. We set up, gave Martin a rule refresher and we were off.

Ian went entirely dark side early on, trying to build up some money making options. Sam began by picking up monks but then instead went for some low-value shed building instead. I forced myself to buy some monks, too, and after building a bit in the dark side, I focused on the lighter side of my game board. Martin focused on green, blue and yellow with a couple of monks thrown in there too.

As the game headed to a conclusion, we were all aware of the risk of a last round bun fight for the scoring tiles. Ian impressed us all with his monk's quarters and wide selection of barrels.

I got the two scoring tiles I needed and was especially pleased to learn I'd stopped Martin from making a mega move. I also managed to squeeze in a final shed right at the end. Sam sauntered on the final round, and did enough to fill his entire board. But Martin had a plan B. Unable to score his yellow tiles he picked up some barrels and this, along with his lofty biermeister, was the key in a victory every bit as convincing as the 5-2 score in the Liverpool-Roma game we kept checking on while we played.

Martin 49
Ian 28
Sam 24
Andrew 22

So there was time for one last game. Texas Showdown made another appearance and as we moved from a Michael Nyman soundtrack to a more suitable Johnny Cash backing, we delighted in the close escapes and cruel defeats of the game.

Martin 12
Ian 14
Sam 16
Andrew 18

And so we were done. The rain had stopped and, quite apart from the late hour, it seemed wise to leave while it was dry.