So you can’t keep keen gamers down, and some of us decided that as it was games night, we were going to play some games anyhow.  First up was a Dixit which was was the first game of the new year, played in the early hours of New Year’s Day.  In this game, the “Story Teller” chooses a card from their hand and uses a word, phrase, noise or even action to describe it.  Everyone else chooses the card from their hand that they feel best matches the “clue”.  These are shuffled together with the Story Teller’s “answer” card and turned over, before players choose which one they think was correct, i.e. the Story Teller’s.  Points are awarded to players for guessing correctly, to players who’s cards were picked by other players, and to the caller if some people (but not all) managed to guess the correct card.

Red fell behind initially, but after Blue had taken her place at the back she managed to rejoin the pack, moving into second place.  It didn’t stay that way for long, however, and as the group closed up everyone (except White) took their turn at the rear of the group.  With two rounds to go the rabbits were all lined up one behind the other with only only three points between first and last place.  Red was the first to slip up and failed to score in the penultimate round, followed by Green in the last round, which left White and Blue to move ahead, with Blue taking it by a nose.

Red had to leave, and the rest of us played another game of Tobago as two people had missed out last time. This is a very pretty treasure hunting game  where players take it in turns to play clue cards that successively narrow down the location of the treasure.  Players can then try to position their vehicle in such a way that, once the location of the treasure has been uniquely identified, they are the first to get to it.  Treasure is then distributed amongst those who played clue cards and the player who found it, but beware!  There are two “cursed treasures” which as well as damaging the current treasure also cause unprepared players to discard their most valuable treasure.  In this game we had fun finding the “Grey” treasure as all the clues were very non-specific and it required seven clues to locate it.  Despite all that effort, however, the first treasure card revealed was cursed and nobody got anything!  In contrast, the other nasty treasure also required a lot of clues, but it was the last card revealed and nobody had passed so nobody missed out.  As the game was nearing the end, it was Green’s turn and only one treasure had any clues, both of which were his.  With the aid of an amulet, he managed to locate the treasure and travel to it collecting keeping all the treasure for himself.  As before, we ran out of treasures making it necessary to take cards from the discard deck.  This time, the cursed treasure was not drawn though and Green picked up a massive 14 points, giving him a clear win with 46 points in a game that had been very close with only a few points in it until the final turn.

Learning Outcome:  Beware of the Cursed Treasure:  A lot of hard work can be wasted!