Author: Rob

Tara Wins at Wembley – now joint leader

Even though the winner of Wembley Cup is determined by the richest player and not match results, the game went to the Cup Final winner and runner-up in the 4-3 victory of Watford over Stockport.  Watford was managed by Tara, and Stockport by Genelle.  El Prez came 3rd which sees him break away from the 3-way 50-point tie that existed at the bottom of the table – the Spoon is now a 2-way tie between Jordan (WHP) and Gill (absent due to the woes of late pregnancy). Gill has said she’ll make every effort to make the June meet depending on the status of said pregnancy.  Tara‘s win puts her right up to the top of the table tied with Rob, and he’s going to be absent from the June meet, so we could easily have a new outright leader by July – Louise is also within reach of the top spot.
The backup was Yahtzee which almost didn’t eventuate – the game dug out of Mark’s cupboard had only one die and no score sheets.  El Prez came to the rescue with 4 additional dice, and El Trez just happened to have with him some freshly printed score sheets.  It was a bit hard on some players’ OCD tendencies to roll the 5 dice – four of which were “normal” sized transparent lovelies, with one oversized white monster, but we got through it.  Rob won the backup convincingly by scoring TWO Yahtzies in the round with Louise and Mark in the minor placings.

Flop, flop, flop!

Sounds like a fish out of water, but that was the outcome of the first three movies released at the box office of tonight’s main game – Movie Maker. A quick calculation shows that the odds of making 3 flops in a row are 1 in 216, that’s rolling three consecutive “ones” with a single die. It was especially disappointing for Mark who went through complicated negotiations, receiving advice from right and left, stumping up the small fortune to make the film, only to end up with a flop at the box office. It was a case of ROFL for all. If you don’t know what ROFL means, ask someone younger.  Despite this setback, he ended up making a non-flop which won him the game.
Mark also scored points by coming 3rd in Uno, those 110 points moving him from the bottom half of the table to the top half, and within reach of the lead.
Louise also scored twice – 3rd in Movie Maker and 2nd in Uno. This has lifted her past Tara into 2nd place on the ladder, only 35 points from the leader Rob who tonight WHP, along with Jordan and Gill.  Although Genelle improved her score by 50 points for a 2nd in Movie Maker, she dropped a spot on the ladder due to Mark’s rapid rise.
Wayne has finally lifted himself off the floor by winning Uno in fine style. He joins the party with Gill and Jordan on the bottom of the table at 50 points.
Tara was absent due to the recent arrival of her new daughter Luka (see photo) – congrats to the Spence tribe from all of us.

Jordan Thomas Returns with a Splash

It was a beautiful cloudless autumn night as we filed into the residents’ common room at Wayne‘s place. His son Jordan had eventually sorted out his domestic infestation issues and finally met everyone (except Gill who couldn’t make it).  The splash came about halfway through the main game as Wayne knocked over an almost full glass of juice – most of it landing on Jordan – miraculously missing his phone and wallet that were on the table.

The main event was Gallop – an old favourite with the huge racetrack board, the silk-clad jockeys on their legendary mounts, and Mark in the Tote banker’s cap. Tara won it by a huge margin, finishing with almost eight times as much cash as the nearest rival Jordan, who was closely followed by Rob in 3rd place. Not content with blasting everyone off the track, Tara then won the backup Scattergories convincingly with Genelle in 2nd place. There was a draw for 3rd, so Jordan and Rob had the first ever “alpha-off” tie breaker – a roll of the Scattergories alphabet ball to see who got closest to A.  Rob won the 10 point 3rd place. Only four of us scored points, leaving both Louise and Mark on WHP.

Have a look at the progressive score graph, and it’s obvious who is the big improver – Tara, overtaking three other gamers and now within a backup game win of reaching the top.  Wayne is still to rise up from the murk at the bottom, then there are four people around 50-60 with three of them tied on 50 points, then a 90 point gap to the top three.

Louise – most improved player

Louise won Trivial Pursuit convincingly with 5 cheeses, very pleased with herself for beating Rob on his home ground – he left his run far too late and was lucky to make it to 2nd place with 4 cheeses shortly before the time limit.  Mark came in 3rd with 3 cheeses.  It’s worth noting that Louise finished last season on 85 points with the Spoon, and here it is only February and she’s already at 150 in 2nd place.  I doubt the Spoon will be spending a second season at Illawong.
The new backup game Digit was a success, placings Rob – Tara – Genelle.  So the ladder positions are chaged only by who is tied with whom – Mark has caught up to Gill, Tara has caught up to Genelle, and the Thomas father & son duo are fighting it out in a nil-all draw at the bottom of the table.
The only WHP scorers were those who weren’t there; Wayne came down with a tummy problem and stayed home, hope you feel better soon El Prez.  Gill attended an award ceremony at which her mum was being honoured, and the elusive Jordan is having terrible problems at his flat which has been invaded by some kind of bug infestation, he’s looking for alternate accommodation.

New record – TWO pregnant gamers!

First of all, big congratulations to Gill on her successful IVF implant – she is expecting a baby boy in 6 months or so. With a heavily pregnant Tara also in attendance, we have two simultaneous special dispensations in force for rule 7.8.1 violations. Remember during Tara’s previous pregnancy we amended the wording at rule 7.8 to say “Unless there are extenuating circumstances as decided by the membership at the time” to allow temporarily shape-altered women to avoid shirt penalries.

The 2018 season got off to a bit of a slow start with everyone re-learning Sherlock Holmes as if we’d never played it before. At one point when Wayne urged everyone to play faster (“C’mon, a fast game’s a good game!” he said), Rob replied with “Do the words pot, kettle and black ring any bells for you?” El Prez was rewarded with a WHP score for this month.
It seems we always need to have the Sherlock rules handy when we play, so those rules will soon be available via a link on the Games List page, and Gill suggested we might keep multiple printouts of the most looked-up pages in the package with the game. Good idea Mrs Wilson.

Tara seemed to be under the spell of pregnancy hormones and not playing up to her usual standard, although she did manage 3rd in Slapzi. Those hormones haven’t kicked in for Gill yet, she scored 50 points for 2nd in Sherlock which was won by Rob. Louise was not feeling 100% but soldiered on and made a good start in her quest to rid herself of the dreaded Spoon by winning Slapzi – a new game introduced by Genelle. Speaking of new games, Genelle gave us a quick preview of another new one called Digit which will be played as a backup at Rob’s in February. Mark also scored points by getting 3rd place in Sherlock. Our new member Jordan was not in attendance, SBGA was trumped by the Australian Open tennis at which he is a spectator. We hope to meet him in February.

Mother Theresa wins the Grand Final

It was just as exciting as promised – with 75% of us within reach of the Championship it was bound to be a corker. Genelle retained the lead she grabbed in October, she won the new game Dumb Ass – well done Mother Theresa, her first Championship. Tara won the main game Brisk Bizz and also got 3rd in the backup – those 110 points were enough to overtake 3 players and get her the runner-up trophy, well done Tara. Gill scored 50 points by coming 3rd in the main event and 2nd in the backup – this was enough to retain her slim 5-point lead over Rob who also scored 50 points, and get her the 3rd place trophy. Nicole would have been another contender, but alas, logistic issues prevented her from attending – her husband’s Midnight Oil tickets trumped SBGA. Wayne was very hopeful of winning a 2017 trophy, and might have been in contention except for a successful Brisk Bizz bankruptcy summons issued by Tara which decimated his cash and real estate with only a couple of turns remaining. Up to that point he looked to have the largest real estate portfolio of the game. He ended up WHP – c’est la vie! The dice were not kind to Mark – he too fell victim to the WHP epidemic, but did a sterling job as the Brisk Bizz banker, he also made and lost a fortune as a result of the vagaries of Challenge cards. Then there was our host Louise. She scored her 7th consecutive WHP! That’s right, no points at all since April. A quick perusal of Wayne’s history book showed that Louise’s 85 points is the lowest whole-season score this century! From here the only way for Louise is up, perhaps a trophy in 2018?