He's behind you...

Thursday games at my place again and good to see all six regulars although this does restrict what games are available to play unless the group is sub-divided.














MaOldie had brought a simple little game of matching shapes and colours called Symbotica which she, Crabro, the Professor and I played until Petra Pan and MrWendall arrived, their having been delayed by family issues.

Sadly, colourful though it is, Symbotica wasn't getting much love and a second game was played with slightly tweaked rules. I believe I won the first but I handed my cards over to Petra Pan when the others arrived so that I could make a round of drinks, so I'm not sure how much I would have liked the variant.

With all of us now ready, we turned to an old favourite, and, as we recalled, the very first game I played with MaOldie some years before.

On that occasion I had been the wicked Saboteur but this time I was the dwarf in every round of both games that we played.





As usual with this game that didn't stop people questioning the motives of my innocent delver. Partly this stems from the fact that "all dwarfs are equal but some are more equal than others" when it comes to gold.

While all the dwarfs share in the spoils if the saboteurs fail (and they did every time), it still pays to be the dwarf who actually reaches the gold as he gets the lion's share. Delaying tactics to line this up can sometimes backfire as one appears to be sabotaging things and end up with ones tools broken as a result. Despite being on the winning side in the first game, I didn't win. More ruthless in the second game, I managed to win fairly comfortably.

 Owing to the numbers problem, all the games were fairly light and the other two we played were Der Ausreisser (aka Breakaway Rider), a bicycle race card game, and another old friend Midnight Party.

In Midnight Party the various guests of Hugo the friendly ghost play a chase game with him.

The "guests" having been positioned around the corridor, once Hugo emerges from the wine cellar they have to try and hide in one of the rooms before Hugo catches them. Hugo moves three spaces at a time and there are two of him on the dice so he can motor along hoovering guests up at times.

Brave guests can try and get the exact distance required to get into the two bonus rooms otherwise, since rooms cannot be shared, it is every man for himself as they try to avoid the minus points incurred when Hugo catches them and puts them on the wine cellar steps.

This was for a while the regular warm-up game for the Goldstone Gamers where our ghostly friend was encouraged by enthusiastic cries of "Huuugo-o". It is very light but fun and, together with the other copy I eventually obtained and gave to the Goldstone gang, is the best value for money of any of my "thrifting" charity shop haul, at least in terms of number of games played and enjoyed.

In this case I avoided Hugo completely for the first two rounds as all my experience told, but sadly the last round was a disaster for me and I finished no more than mid-field.

The other game played was Der Ausreisser, a very light game based on the Tour de France, with players trying to stay with the leader's speed or overtake to gain the "Maillot Jaune" (or in this case gelbe Trikot) which sadly is just a large yellow disc.

There were murmurs of dissatisfaction during this one as it appeared to require little strategy and a large dose of luck to do well. I believe I won again with MaOldie trailing in last with a pile of penalty points and the rest on zero.

It would appear unlikely from the comments that we will play this again as the theme meant nothing to half the players and the game was too luck-based to satisfy. The Professor did say that it could easily be turned into a good game with a few rule variations though.







All in all an enjoyable evening of light if not hugely satisfying games enlivened by a number of very giggly moments especially around MrWendall's fund of jokes in particular the ludicrous tale of the man with half an orange for a head...

Much talk of Essen too with half the group heading off there soon with sizeable shopping lists.