Games Night

Saturday saw my turn to host a games night for the collective - a full turn out apart from Tiger-King, who apparently had something better to do with his time than play games. 

I had settled on playing Catan and Munchkin as fairly light social games, rather than a more brain burning game (and the fact that these are the only games which can accommodate 5/6 players). I had planned on using some of the scenarios from the Traders and Barbarians Expansion - but I only have the expansion for 4 players and am too tight to spend £25 on the 5/6 player expansion. However we did use the friends of Catan expansion (which was a good addition to the game). There was a short recap of the rules, as everyone had played the game before - although DK claimed ignorance of this at one point. We worked through the game fairly quickly - stopping for a Cheese board break, with garlic jams (thanks for those Steedo) and crackers - always a quality part of a games night. 

There was a couple of controversial moments in the game - one where I wouldn’t let DK pick up some missed ore in retrospect - fog of war and pay attention! This was where he claimed not to know the rules… and the moment where Sylon picked the bricks (which were in short supply) that DK had just collected - DK claimed that Sylon had seen what card to pick in the mirror … shocking allegations. A game full banter and in the usual way for the group how can you stop someone else from winning. The game was fairly tight with Steedo making the early running, but falling back with DK being the threat, until I got to the required 10 points with 4 cities and 2 points from Development cards. Go me!

I would like to get Catan back to the table with some of the scenarios from Traders and Barbarians, sometime (but a max of 4 for that - but that brings Risk:Europe and Raiders of the North Sea into the equation).

I was planning on Munchkin next (mainly because I haven’t really played it), but the rest of the collective decided that we would play Ticket to Ride Europe - which is a fine game. So we set about setting up and clarifying the rules - where there some dispute over the picking up of cards, but fortunately DK was on hand to read the rules out loud to show that he was wrong (sorry DK but it was funny). So we started off in the usual way of getting in each others way - again lots of banter as we raced for our routes. 

This time Steedo was out in front as the winner of this game, with Snake-eyes and myself following him. 

 At this point DK had to head off to a local festival to pick up his eldest sprog, but the rest of us (me obviously) stayed for another game - Snake-eyes,  had brought Skulls. Another entertaining game, with Steedo down to one card fairly quickly - which was a skull, which limited the bidding process somewhat. Snake-eyes came out on top in this game. 

A good night of gaming - not necessarily the most taxing of games, but they allowed us to enjoy the company and have a good laugh, without the Analysis Paralysis, which sometimes occurs with the “deeper” games. 

Morts