St Mary's Social Afternoon - Week 4

Well it was a riotous and fun filled afternoon of board games, the numbers were slightly down over previous weeks with only 13 people; a couple of people were unfortunately kept away by health issues.

Games played this time round included:

Incan Gold – A very good new addition to the games collection that is ideal for large groups (up to 8 players) and wide age ranges. It reminds you a little of the Indiana Jones films where the treasure hunters explore deeper and deeper into a lost Incan temple. The further you go the more treasure you find but you only get to keep it if the monsters in the temple don’t scare you and send you fleeing from the temple dropping all your loot as you seek to escape. This was played by two different groups, during the afternoon and one was a very noisy affair, in part because all the adventurers except Jennie had fled the temple. This left Jennie to continue exploring on her own with the potential of gaining lots of treasure all for herself. As she pushed on she found a vast wealth of precious gems that would have ensured she won the whole game. However sadly for Jennie she

Match Report 5th July

With the continued renovation work going on at our place the group was kindly invited to meet at Pauline’s with the added benefits that this is the home of possibly the best munchies in the UK and a unique and very cute beastie.

Apologies had been received from no less than 5 people on this occasion, Malcolm visiting his sister, Alex in Marseille, Julia working hard with American clients who seem to think it unreasonable to work in line with our time zone, Joe having finished exams is already hard at work on the coursework for next year’s exams and Josh travelling back south. Attendees were Ian (now the Black Knight), Helene, Crispin (Now Brother Crispin member of a new order of monks, the Crisponians - more on this and the Black Knight later).

Sushizock im Gockelwok (Age 8+, 2-5 players, 20 min playing time)

We managed three games on this particular outing. Starting with Sushizock im Gockelwok as Natalie and Daniella had not yet arrived. This simple game explained in previous posts saw the big plus numbers captured early and in my case a balancing pile of low negative numbers, things were set fair and then it all went wrong.

Ian - launched three (others may have been involved but in the session with my counsellor I could only remember his dubious activities) unprovoked chopstick raids, not only on my pile of plus tiles leaving me with none and then to add insult to injury he took one of my minus one tiles leaving me with no alternative but to take the remaining minus four tile. The net result of this

Match Report 21st June 2010

Well in the midst of chaos (to call Ian’s efforts decorating, given the that he is knocking down walls, boarding lofts, putting in loft ladders, covering our artex ceilings with plaster board, wallpapering and painting would be to significantly undersell his talents and the level of work he is putting in, more like house renovation - see inset photo of our bedroom) somehow we found time to play a few games and had a bumper turnout to boot, with many comings and goings but 8 yes that was 8 people at the high water mark of the evening.

Our team for the evening were our old favourites Pauline, Daniela, Natalie, joined once again by Ian and Helene joining us for her first evening, plus obviously myself. Malcolm sent his apologies being called away to a committee meeting. Again for the mathematically minded you will spot that makes only six. To find out who the remaining two were you will have to read till the end (ish).

As an aside Daniela commented on her arrival on the reason for the two very large white containers at the foot of our drive. My initial answer of we wanted something different from the standard lions and griffins met with a very sceptical response. Thankfully this was asked outside the hearing of Gwen who has been asking me to move them for a few weeks now. So having a guest commenting on these eyesores would have vindicated her frustration at the slow rate of progress I am making on this particular element of the renovation project.

Bohnanza (Age 12+, 2-7 players, 45+ min playing time)
Our initial game of the evening was Bohnanza played at a very sedate pace and with a much more open trading system than normal (i.e. most of us had our hands face up so we could explain to Helene how the game worked and how we played the various options presented to us). This game was notable for my