Author: Rob Askew

New shirts delivered! Thanks Tara

And there we all are in our new 40th anniversary shirts – except Steve who was away on holiday and will be photographed and published at a later date, probably at the same time he is presented with the 2023 SPOON award. A great big thank you to Tara for organising the shirt purchase and embroidery, and to Nicole, our resident graphic artiste, for coming up with the new SBGA logo.

As you might see in the photo, the main game tonight was SmartAss – played for the second time in as many meetings, but in two different years. As luck would have it, Rob won it both times! Tonight Genelle and Matt were the other place getters. The backup was the ever tricky Six Second Scribbles – too hard for us with that time limit, so we play it as Three Minute Scribbles. The placings were Tara, Nicole and Matt.

Before games began some people were glancing through some ancient SBGA News issues brought along by El Presidente. In the December 2008 issue it was recorded that at the annual Presentation Dinner I proposed Wayne to be made a Life Member of SBGA, an idea that was endorsed by the membership as it was then. It is also recorded that the instigator of the idea was ex-member Rob Harris. I remember none of this. Anyway, having read this item, there was a movement, carried unanimously, to declare another life member – yours truly!
Thanks to you all, and I’ll be updating my official SBGA email signature to include the relevant letters after my name ET,LM,SBGA. If you haven’t worked it out, this stands for El Tesorero, Life Member, Sydney Board Games Association. I bet you didn’t know El Trez is short for El Tesorero, the next most important office bearer after El Presidente.

Matt the Rookie wins!

This will be the last time this journal refers to our newest member as Matt the Rookie, as he has well and truly proved his talent for board games by winning the championship in his first year as a member. We think he is only the 3rd player in 40 years to do this – the others are Nicole and Rob.

It was a balmy night at Como as we gathered to play Smart Ass and Greed. The main game was won by Rob after a late run – Tara and others were already 2/3 of the way to the finish before he got past the dreaded “Kick Ass” near the start, then got Kick Ass another couple of times near the finish as the leader bunch were getting ready to cross the finish line – in fact the final Kick Ass square was heavily patronised. Tara came 2nd with Matt (still a rookie at the time) in 3rd spot. As it turned out, the 25 points for that 3rd spot was enough to get him the premiership, because he was running 2nd to Louise by only 5 points, and both Louise and Steve WHP.

Greed was well received as usual with only Rob and Genelle opening their score accounts on the first round (500 points are needed to start scoring). The second round was marked by Wayne opening his account by throwing $GREED. Thereafter the lead was swapped between Wayne and Genelle with Genelle winning out in the end, and it was Nicole who got the 3rd placing. Poor Louise kept on going bust until finally opening her scoring on the penultimate round! Tara fared badly too with no score till halfway through the game.

After the gaming there was much discussion about SBGA shirts and embroidery, and also about trophy policy given the rising price of such items. Nicole has designed a new club logo, only final colours to be decided for embroidery which depends on shirt colour. The concensus was that we should in future only award a first place trophy, and certificates for the runners up – certificates to be produced “in house”.

Finally, congratulations to the competition placegetters Matt, Louise and Tara.

Scribblers… – start scribbling!

A damp evening at Nicole’s was enjoyed by all except Steve who couldn’t make it. We discussed embroidery designs and sourcing of new club shirts – thanks Nicole for the new dice graphic and Tara for taking on the purchasing duties.

The planned main game Pictionary was off the table due to the odd number of attendees (it is a teams event), so Nicole‘s alternate choice was a new game called Six Second Scribbles – not completely unrelated to Pictionary in that one is required to quickly draw a list of items in a category nominated by your random card. You get points for how many of your little sketches are correctly labelled by your opponents, and your opponents get points for correctly labelling your sketches. Everyone agreed it was a good game and should be on the roster, and it will be on there after this item is published. It was determined that six seconds is nowhere near long enough for the task, so we played with a 3-minute timer. Rookie Matt won Scribbles by a mere 5 points from the tied Zarubin sisters, so Nicole got second place on a dice-off with Tara third. Louise was only one point behind the sisters, denied 3rd place by the dice-off.

The backup Pass the Pigs was its usual entertaining self with Tara and Rob both scoring not a single point – “pigouts” all the way for them. Louise won Pigs with Wayne second and Matt third. Matt may have done better but elected to “sit” on his final score of 57 due to a mis-communication with the scorer which made him think he was a point ahead of Wayne when he was actually a point behind. On the other hand he may also have been saved from a pigout! No matter – he still got 110 points total. If Louise hadn’t won Pigs he would be the new ladder leader. Check out the graph – there’s only 5 points separating the top two with Tara 130 points behind. Only Tara is within reach of stealing Matt’s or Louise’s trophy, and Rob is within striking distance of Tara’s trophy with Genelle a very outside chance if she wins both November games with Tara WHP. Can Matt win the coveted winner’s trophy in his rookie year? It has been done before, by his own father-in-law. We’ll find out in November.

Matt Makes his Move

This month’s news comes to you from Matt – our new assistant Web guy. Updated by Rob from the Radisson Blu hotel at Zurich airport. Updates to score graphs etc will be done on my return.

The first game played was Dracula’s Castle. Pretty decent game, easy to learn & fun to play. Wayne somehow had the luck of the dice on his side and was able to successfully challenge to win the movie titles he required. Fortunately for him he had a fair bit of assistance from other players, particularly Mother Theresa, so managed to score third place. Genelle did herself just enough favours as she only narrowly claimed second place by 135 points. Even after making two trips to the “Dungeon” (although one stay was cut short via means of Dracula making an appearance) and possibly setting a new record on low value dice rolls, Matt was able to pull off a win to claim first place by a measly 190 points.

Backup game was Genelle’s new purchase – Just One. Securing a lead was tough and separating the standings was not easy, though Genelle did enough to scratch through with a 2 point lead and claim first place. It was decided that a dice roll off would determine the fates of Louise, Steve and Wayne. The first round saw Steve and Wayne tie and sadly, Louise was eliminated. After the second dice off, Wayne emerged victorious to claim second with Steve walking away with third to avoid a WHP. Leaving Louise, Tara and Nicole as September’s honorary WHP award recipients.

After tonight, there has been a bit of movement in the table. Matt has jumped two places from fourth to claim second and be only 65 points off the lead! He would also like to humbly state that he has now won the most majors this year (3)…… so far 🙂

PS: Thanks to some late night computer work by Matt I was able to update the scoreboard graph and placings widget. It shows Matt overtaking both Rob and Tara to be second by only 65 points behind Louise. As advertised in the headline – the rookie has made his move! We’re still in Zürich, departing for Basel tomorrow.

Snakessssssss – all tied up

Six of us convened at Como for Matt‘s first outing as games host – El Presidente himself was absent due to a bout of gout, his thumb badly swollen and causing a great deal of pain at the slightest touch. Steve was also missing, called out to attend to a power outage just before the meeting. He sent his apologies and remarked that at least he was getting well paid.

The main game Snakesss went well – Matt picked it because it sounded interesting. The game scoring was in small numbers – in each round players scored either 0, 1, 2 or 3. Despite playing about 14 rounds this resulted in multiple duplicated scores, and for possibly the first time in SBGA history there were ties for all placings – Matt and Louise tied for 1st, Tara and Nicole tied for 2nd and Genelle and Rob tied for 3rd. Two quiz-offs were used to decide the final placings; Matt, Louise and Nicole in that order. There followed the usual mayhem in Ride ’em Cowboy which had a much more varied scoreline. Poor Genelle was caught using two hands on her first ride, and was thrown off on all her other turns. There were a large number of “buck offs” – at one point we counted eight in a row. Nicole started off in fine style with a 260 point ride followed immediately by Louise with 245, but then the rot set in. At one point Tara was bucked off on the first square out of the starting gate! Rob won despite completing only one ride, but it was the best of the night worth 450 points – he was thrown from his mount on two of his other rides, and ran out of time on one (damn that Reverse square). Nicole was beaten into 2nd place by only 10 points with Matt 25 points behind in 3rd place. Sadly, Tara and Genelle both WHP.

The big scoreboard shows Louise well in front 135 points clear of a buch of three – Tara, Rob & Matt, then a 125 point gap to the rest of the field.

Louise surges further ahead

All eight of us were present for the mid-winter meeting with the wood fire burning at Tara’s. In the background we could hear mighty shouts from upstairs each time Australia scored a goal in the Oz vs Canada women’s world cup football (we won 3-0).

The games were Sherlock Holmes and Uno Flip (the schizophrenic stepdaughter of Uno). It was Matt’s and Steve’s first time playing Sherlock, and it seemed they enjoyed it, but not so much that they got any points. In fact Rob, Matt and Steve all scored a big fat WHP, with no points in Flip either. There was a draw between Louise and Wayne for first place in Sherlock, the first time anyone can remember that happening. It was decided by a “villain-off” – take turns drawing a card off the deck, first to draw a villain loses. Wayne lost while Louise surged ahead to improve her ladder lead from 25 points to 85 points above the second placing Tara. Mind you, those 50 points that Wayne got came in handy – for the second time in as many months he swapped places with Steve for SPOON position on the ladder. Nicole was 3rd in Sherlock by only 14 points. The scores in Flip were quite closely spaced – only 3 points between Tara and Genelle, with Louise getting a second helping of points for 3rd. Wayne provided two books as prizes for each game winner – thanks WT.

In an interesting aside – Genelle‘s recent trip was disrupted somewhat when she experienced an earthquake and the eruption of Mount Fagradalsfjall volcano on the same day while visiting Iceland. (OK, I looked up how to spell that)

Next month (August) Matt will be hosting for his first time at Como, see you there.

Steve opens his account

A cold winter evening at the Jannali Gamerdome saw six of us battle it out at Wembley for the Cup Final which was won convincingly by Steve with the grand final contenders both under his management – so went Wembley Cup. Steve‘s 100 points moves him away from the Spoon position to overtake Wayne who did pretty well too, winning points in both Wembley and Billionaire, but not enough to stop Steve overtaking him on the ladder. Louise won Billionaire which changed her from trailing Tara by 25 points to now being the leader by 25 points. The only WHP was Matt, with Tara and Genelle away out of town. It’s tight at the top with only 40 points between the first three.

Matt gets first Main,
Watergate revived from archives

Once again at the Jannali Presidential Gamerdome, it was a cold evening – aircon required. Seven of us (Steve still detained but expected back soon) played Scattergories and Watergate.

Scattergories was the usual scramble for unusual words with several attempts to get dodgy words past the jury. It’s a game at which yours truly has never excelled, but this time scored a PB by getting 12 points for one round, followed by a lousy 3 points in the following round. The scattering was won by rookie Matt in a tightly scored game – the winning score 53 and last place (no names) just 39.

Watergate has not been aired for years, in fact it seems to have fallen off the official games list, an omission I will soon rectify. Fortunately it is a quite simple game and was quickly picked up by all.

There have been quite a few changes on the leader board, Rob’s WHP has seen him demoted from a brief appearance at the top to 3rd place, overtaken by Louise who was also overtaken by the red hot Tara. Matt has risen out of the middle ranks to be just 50 points below the leaders.

Louise loses lead

Although there was dampness in the air, it was a pleasant night at Louise’s at which our host lost her leading ladder position on home turf. She is now trailing Rob by 10 points with the 2022 champ Tara a further 25 points below in 3rd place. Steve was once again absent due to family illness, and El Presidente was away in a rare absence, mainly due to not liking the game program!

We played Five Crowns as the main game, and look at the image below to see how it played out in the scores – Tara won from Rob by 25 points with Matt in 3rd place. Tara scored zero five times, Rob had four zeros, and Matt had none! Last placed Genelle scored six zeros. That shows it’s not scoring zeros that counts, it’s what’s left in your hand when you don’t score zero.

The backup was Hues & Cues which Louise led for most of the game, building up a lead that looked uncatchuppable (apologies to English teachers for that word, I just couldn’t resist). However, with Louise just 4 jumps from the finish line, Rob did in fact catch up, and overtook her to make the 50 points needed to get to the top of the ladder. Matt also scored a double helping of points with two 3rd placings. With only six players it’s possible for everyone to score points, but alas, with the two boys scoring double points, it left Nicole and Genelle to the ignominy of WHP.

After remarking that Hues & Cues is really a girl’s game with its fine gradings of colour, Rob, half-joking, suggested to Matt that he should name his colour after a drill, such as Makita, which Matt promptly did by giving the clue “Ryobi”. Rob immediately chose a colour that was some distance away from the correct Ryobi colour, even though he owns several Ryobi products, but some women won points in that turn! Excellent idea backfired!