St Mary's Social Afternoon - Week 1

Monday saw the first “St Mary’s Social Afternoon with Games”. It was a great start with 17 people turning up and as was my hope there were both young and old with 6 people aged between 8 and 17 and 7 over 60.

The first part of the afternoon saw the group split into three. One group with all the youngsters and some amused (or was that bemused) older people to play
Saboteur, a second group to play Patrician, meanwhile Peter and Peter enjoyed a good old game of Crib (and I know they would be keen to welcome some new participants for this next week if anyone else is interested).

The players considering their next action in Saboteur

Saboteur - In brief (explained more fully here) this is a game where each person is either a good dwarf (trying to dig tunnels and find gold) or a bad “Saboteur” dwarf (trying to hamper the efforts of the good guys). Your role is concealed until the end of the game which leads to much guesswork and false accusations. If the Saboteurs reveal their intentions too early then they are likely to find all their equipment broken leaving them unable to
achieve their dastardly ends, however acting too late can mean that the gold is discovered and the Saboteurs loose. It is a quick play game and there was much laughter and hilarity as the various sides tried to achieve their ends. Ian led this group and I think there were a total of 5 “rounds” of this played with the players roles changing each time; Liza emerged triumphant having accumulated the most gold throughout.

Patrician - This is a game set in medieval Italy where the players vie with each other to build the highest towers and collect the most portraits (explained more fully here). Led by Daniella, I think the honours in the first game went to Aida and in the second to Peter (who amassed a huge score), both Aida and Peter are newbie’s to these types of games.

With about an hour to go there was a change of groups and we split into four groups.

One played Castle Panic where the players have to co-operate to defend their castle in the middle of the board assaulted on every side by hoards of monsters coming out of the surrounding forests (explained more fully here). This game saw the monsters triumph relatively quickly, but Tom and Lawrence were keen to have another go next time and beat the bad guys.

The second group played a game of Carcassone a tile laying game where players build roads, castles and monasteries (described more fully here). A gentle game with quite a lot of collaboration (led by Crispin) which I think was won by again by Aidia.

The third group enjoyed the chaos and mayhem that is RoboRally. This is one of our favourites of the moment requiring little more than good luck and a clear ability to tell right from left. Something that I seem to struggle with once I start playing this game! L

Everybody enjoyed themselves and hopefully we will see yet more people join us over the coming weeks. There are after all many more games to choose from.

If you are curious why not come along to future weeks in August:
9/8, 17/8 (Tuesday), 23/8 and 30/8—2pm till 5pm in St Mary's Parish Hall, Crowborough