None of that Cheerful Nonsense.

John is busy catching up with 8 months of Emmerdale so hasn't had time to write his usual report. So it falls to me to put something up here that is vaguely accurate or insightful (I originally wrote inciteful, which it might be anyway. If it is a word).

I have very little idea what was going on last week. John seems to know what is happening on every table. And takes photos of it all. I can barely concentrate on the game in front of me. So I suppose I should talk about that. Brass. Hal brought it along and it was a welcome relief to be playing a proper serious game, rather than a vapid clone of Zombie Dice or a party-style werewolf variant, that seem to be the flavour of the month/year at the club.  Brass is a proper game with thinking and chin stroking. A proper game about the grim North during the Industrial Revolution. Build a canal between Bolton and  Blackburn. Or maybe a cotton mill in Burnley. Take a loan and develop a coal mine.  Get black lung. A good old fashioned dour game by Martin Wallace – who used to make superb dour games, but has since made frivolous Discworld games. Pah. Anyway, we all liked Brass and declared it to better than Age of Industry (which has since replaced Brass and is a touch more forgiving and jaunty). Owain won as he owns the most flat caps and lives in a derelict mine. He's also played it the most; almost 100 times! Hal came second as he once owned a whippet and had played 20 or so times. I came third as I have, on occasion, drank a pint pulled through a sparkler and had played 4 or 5 times before. And Alex came last as he had never played Brass before and cries at the sight of a hill.

Other tables played other stuff. There were about 25 in attendance.

Apologies. Hopefully John will have finished Emmerdale by tonight and can write the next one of these things.

SUKOTHAI, Brass and spilt drinks

Just a quick entry to say last week I played Brass with Jimmy Hal and Ruth. One of my favourite games with different strategys emerging, Hal went for the ‘do as many bad moves as I can think of strategy’ which surprisingly didn’t pay off for him, he always seemed to know exactly what he should have done and had we had the will or inclination to re-play the game I’m sure Hal would have done better. Both Ruth and myself where getting a large amount of money each round thanks to our build strategy and only because of my experience and diversification I ended up in front of her. Jimmy went for ship yards and for want of either of a few crucial cards could have won….but victory was mine.

Bondy, Rich, Lewis and James played Reef encounter. Some speedy coral eating and responsive play saw Rich win. This was followed by ‘King of Siam’ with the now infamous SUKOTHAI no idea who won that as I was too pre occupied with the spilling of liquid over a then abandoned game of For Sale. This had followed two games of ‘shadows over Camelot’ where Luke*, Jack and an unknown uni friend (sorry) kicked the games arse convincingly not once but twice. Well not suprising as they had failed to follow a crucial rule of playing 1 card at an event and had instead been putting down pairs and 3 of a kinds in the tournament areas. Ho hum, they will know for next time.

I mostly drank grapefruit and lemonade! Roll on next week (which is today!!)