As we meet at The Jockey every week, for the last two years, we’ve decided to enter a team for their Quiz Night between Christmas and New Year.  Blue, Black, Purple and Pink rolled up at 7pm to give them time to play some games before food at the advertised 8pm.  They’d just started a game of くだものフレンズ aka Fruit Friends, a little card drafting and set collecting game when Pine joined them.  It’s a quick little game so, Pine perused the menu while the others finished playing.  Fruit Friends was an Essen Special, picked up by Black and Purple on the last day of the fair this year.  We played it a few weeks ago and it went down really well, so we were keen to give it another outing.  Pink and Blue had missed out on that occasion, but it’s not a complicated game as it is essentially it is Sushi Go! with a twist in the card drafting stage which is based on the “I divide, you choose” mechanism.

– Image by boardGOATS

It was a really tight game with a two-way tie for second place between Blue and Pink.  Maybe it was Black’s additional experience, or perhaps he played better or was simply luckier, but he took victory by just two points with his total of sixty.  With that game concluded, but people needing time to consider their food options, we opted for a quick five-player game that everyone knows, No Thanks!.  Despite having played it before, Purple wanted a reminder of the rules:  take the card, or pay a chip to pass the problem on—the person with lowest face-value total is the winner.  The catches (which are what make the game clever of course), are that for runs, only the lowest card counts, but nine out of the thirty-three cards are removed from the deck at random adding a sense of jeopardy.

– Image by boardGOATS

Perhaps Purple didn’t get the rules, or maybe it was a combination of bad luck and perhaps over-reached herself, or even an extreme gamble that didn’t pay off, but holding both the thirty and the thirty-five was always going to be a difficult gap to bridge.  Adding cards in the twenties made it even worse and despite holding almost half the chips at the end of the game she managed what was possibly an epic top-score of eighty-six—quite some distance from Blue’s winning score of sixteen.  Black who finished second with twenty points commented, “Second place is a good place to be.”  By this time food had been ordered and the question was whether there would be time to play again.  Of course, as soon as we began, inevitably food arrived, so the rest of the game was played between bites of pizza, tagliatelle and avocado salad.

– Image by boardGOATS

This second game was much, much closer.  Purple got it right this time with what might otherwise have been a winning score of seven and was just pipped by Blue with six.  It wasn’t to be for either of them though, as Black managed the extremely rare feat of finishing with a negative score.  It’s not the first time we’ve seen it, but last time was a while ago, nearly two years ago in fact, when Magenta also finished with minus one.  With the game over, people focused on finishing off their food and then there was just time for a trip to the bar before the Quiz started.  We managed a satisfactory eight in the first round and full-house in the second; the picture round started well too (“We all adora Kia Ora”), but petered out towards the end.  We got all three of the anagrams (including “Frosty the Snowman” and “Puppet on a String”) and got the Who-am-I? on the third try (William Webb-Ellis) which put us in a strong position, but sadly it was not strong enough to make up for the round where we failed to get more right than wrong, and we ended up with a creditable total of fifty-seven points.  That gave us second place (“a good place to be, but not as good as first”), six points behind the winners, the team At the Bar.

– Image by boardGOATS

After a bit of chit chat about “Monster Games” and New Year, there was still time for one more game and, since Pink had dodged Bohnanaza at the Christmas party, it was only right that he should have the chance to play it once more in 2018.  We’ve played this game loads, but although he clearly enjoys himself at the time, Pink always claims to dislike it.  This is odd as he owns more copies than anyone else including English, Spanish, German, and Dutch language copies as well as a special limited edition with “fan” artwork.  With everyone so familiar with the rules, it should have been quick to start except that the version Pink had with him was the Spanish edition.  The basic rules weren’t a problem, but the set up varies with player count and Blue’s linguistic skills were sorely tested as a result.  The game was very close with a four way tie for second place (certainly not a bad place to be).  Ironically, first place, by just one point, went to Pink, so he won’t be able to argue that he’s rubbish at Bohnanza any more.

– Image by boardGOATS

Learning Outcome:  Second is a good place to be, but first place is better.