Steamy Tuesday

First Tuesday games day of the year saw us playing Martin Wallace's Steam: a refinement of the old Age of Steam game shorn of some of its complexity in order, we hoped to give it pace and wider appeal. I quickly discovered that my route planning skills were rusty (and the were never much good to start with) so Crabro gave me a thorough trouncing. I do enjoy these train games (and I know that Crabro absolutely loves them) so after lunch I pressed on, as we tackled railway building in the Isle of Wight. I find something about the Isle as the basis of train games satisfying as I enjoyed this and formerly enjoyed 1860...but sadly I still wasn't very competitive. I did improve considerably though with the scores about ten apart at the end.

Looking on my games shelves for a filler to finish the day Crabro discovered the ancient "Plus or Minus" and asked about it. In the end we had a very enjoyable game of it despite its age (possibly seventy years old or more).

 It is a simple but satisfying game of trying to get four pieces "home" by using a set of eleven cards in combination with the last card laid by the opponent. Probably never very colourful when new, it is now a symphony of browns but nevertheless quite a smart design and still pleasant to play. We played a rubber of 5 games and the overall winner was...not me again.