Tara’s heading for the win
Another night at the Jannali Gamerdome – this one a bit damp, as is most of the eastern side of the country. Wayne was hosting and Genelle supplied a mini birthday cake for El trez who had celebrated it the previous day – thanks GG.
Look at the scoreboard – it has now definitely morphed into something we’ve not quite seen before. The three potential trophy winners fighting it out at the top of the ladder, then a large gap of 335 points to the also-rans lumped together in a 35 point band. It looks like the number 1 trophy is almost in the bag for Tara with only an outside chance of being overtaken by Rob, and another outside chance of Genelle overtaking Rob. At the other end of the scoreboard, a late run by two or three of the also-ran group could see The Spoon go to any one of them.
We played one of the El Prez originals, Musicopoly, in which players act as entertainment booking agents getting gigs for their performers. It has not been played for some years, and a weakness in the game strategy was revealed which somehow hadn’t been noticed previously – or possibly just forgotten. It concerned the idea af an act getting a residency at a particular venue – the rules not conferring any advantage on the agent owning the residency if an act he didn’t own turned up to play there. Our work-around was to allow residencies to be dumped at any time, as the other disadvantage was that an act with a residency was locked in to the venue and couldn’t play anywhere else. We think it should be fixable with a couple of rule changes. Rob won Musicopoly convincingly, mainly luck by not scoring any huge bills. Louise was ashamed of herself for scoring the only WHP despite there being only five players present. Nicole had urgent work commitments, Ross was ill and heading for a Covid test, and Steve was celebrating his wedding anniversary. Happy Anniversary Steve!
The backup game Pass The Bomb went off with much fun as usual – won by Tara.
November is the month of the Beano prize – $50 cash to the main game winner, so get your deerstalker hats ready for the Sherlock Holmes extravaganza. Also in November we need to start thinking about finalising dues payments. I’ve made a guess at what the trophies will cost and a rough estimate shows that those owing back dues are Louise ($1.42), Steve ($21.74), Nicole ($21.73) and Tara ($13.63). You will all get an email with more exact figures as soon as final costs are known. The current plan for our annual dinner is December 5, to be finalised soon.