Author: Rob Askew

Movie Maker updated

It was a pleasant but cool evening at the El Prez Gamerdome in Jannali for five of us playing the updated version of the old favourite Movie Maker – now titled Movie Maker: Bond & Beyond, followed by another new dice game called Slam. Everybody avoided the dreaded WHP, but we were missing Nicole due to her work commitments, and there has been no further contact from Jiordan – we are close to deleting her from the membership. Speaking of membership, El Prez has approached a colleague at his village, the in-house bus driver, who may be interested in joining.

Bond & Beyond has some simplifications from the original Movie Maker, and was basically successful, but with a modification needed as agreed by all. When landing on a square that lets you pick up a card, and that card has no stock left, we resolved to allow a swap to occur rather than move on without picking up. MMB&B was won by Louise with 53% more cash than Rob in 2nd place and with Genelle 3rd. Wayne had severe bad luck, producing a number of big flop movies – in one production his die roll was profitable, but invalid due to being touched by Tara, then on the replacement roll he achieved yet another flop!

Slam, the new El Prez game based loosely on cricket was fast-paced and simple. I thought the scoring could more closely resemble the actual game of Cricket as played by blokes in baggy green caps on a paddock with grass – for example it is far easier to score a six, or even a seven run hit than it is to score a single. In fact it is impossible to score a single run because two dice are thrown and the score for snake eyes is two runs. But the principle was good, and it will probably be picked again. It was won by Rob whose opening batsman was still hitting after a couple of others were all out. Tara and Wayne were in the minor placings.

Nicole‘s absence may have cost her the lead as it has been regained by Rob with Louise and Nicole tied for 2nd place only 25 points behind. Then there’s a 65 point gap to Genelle, but it’s still early days.

Bankrupts Rule! – (not)

It was the worst deluge Sydney had seen in 100 years, but there was a sufficient lull in the downpour to enjoy some games. Everyone turned up to Rob’s at Como except Jiordan who hasn’t replied to recent messages – a bit worrying, perhaps she’s still in Qld. We renewed our acquaintance with an old fave Brisk Bizz in which fortunes were won and lost and bankruptcies were rife. In fact, there was one that had a devastating result:- Genelle drew a Challenge card that allowed her to nominate anybody to attend the insolvency court. Her ultimately successful strategy was to pick the current competition leader (me) for the bankruptcy hearing, and he was found insolvent! He had to hand back an impressive array of properties and all his cash, a disaster from which he never fully recovered, and which possibly contributed to his WHP and loss of the lead. There were also other players who never quite recovered from being bankrupted, but Wayne managed to recover pretty well despite several visits to the court. The new competition leader is Nicole with her Bizz win giving her a 75 point lead.
Genelle won Greed and also came third in Bizz, this burst of points allowing her to overtake Louise and occupy third place on the ladder. Wayne‘s double placing – a 2nd and a 3rd – has pushed him right up with the middle bunch on the ladder, in with a chance of a placing. Tara‘s 2nd in Greed wasn’t enough to make her look good on the ladder, but at least she’s off the dreaded Zero and only a Movie Maker win away from mixing it with the middle bunch.

Two Tied Places, Prez Wins Pigs

It was a warm wet summer night at Illawong as we admired the early evening view over Georges River from Louise‘s balcony. Louise’s house is just 1.2km from Rob’s if you fly there in a straight line across the Woronora River, but it’s a 14.7km drive!
The program for this meet was to be 5 Crowns followed by Sumo, but it seems Sumo had gone missing, so we played Pass The Pigs instead, a game on very similar principles. There were six of us present – Jiordan was still with her mum in Queensland, but thinks she’ll be back in time for the March meet.
El Prez was struggling in 5 Crowns, remarking that the game seemed much more difficult than the previous time he’d played it. By the last round he was starting to come good. It was won convincingly by our host Louise, the second placed Rob being quadruple her score of 31, with Nicole 3rd only 11 points behind him (remember it’s lowest score wins).
Pigs was its usual entertaining self, but Louise’s little piggies seemed to be suffering from old age, or perhaps were sunbaking too long – they’d gone hard. It didn’t stop them from performing their usual piggie dances, and the winner was a surprised El Presidente himself with Nicole and Genelle in the minor placings.
The player most disappointed with her performance on the night was Tara with a WHP – in fact she may have set some kind of record in Pigs, she scored pigouts on 90% of her turns!
The competition ladder now shows Rob retaining his 25 point lead, but there are now two players tied for second place – Louise and Nicole, and 65 points back, Genelle and Wayne tied for third, but it is early days.

Two latecomers, and Hostess misses meet

It was a balmy summer night at the Presidential Games Room, but at meeting time there were only four members at the table. Firstly, the host for the evening, Jiordan, was still in Queensland with her mother who is ill – we elected to proceed with her games programme despite her absence. Then there were the latecomers Rob and Nicole who were both late due to unusual home situations. We still managed to get through the two games, although with a somewhat late finish.

Race To The Top has been played on only one previous occasion, but proved to be a good trivia game with some similarities to Trivial Pursuit, and it was easy to determine a winner by applying a time limit rather than playing to the conclusion. Popular with those who love trivia games, and not so popular with those who don’t, it was won by Rob with Genelle and Nicole in the minor placings. Nicole got a double helping of points by winning the backup game Yahtzee in fine style, scoring I believe two actual Yahtzees – this puts her in second place on the scoreboard. The minor backup placings went to Louise and Wayne, and Tara was the only WHP.

Grand Final – the winner is Louise!

Congrats to Louise – the 2020 competition winner, and as a bonus, she took delivery of our very first green Board Queen shirt. In other fashion news, Jiordan also received her official blue SBGA shirt at the meet.

The programme was a bit unusual – Wayne’s Heroes & Villains has not been played often, possibly only once previously, but it went over quite well with the players, and came to an end relatively quickly when the inventor of the game lost his last Hero/Villain card. Nicole, our host, won on home turf with the minor placings Louise and Tara. The backup Sumo Slam was new to us – introduced by Nicole, it’s quite similar to Pass The Pigs, but with rubber Sumo wrestlers about 3 times the size of passed pigs. Jiordan scored her first game win in the Sumo ring with runners up Nicole and Louise.

So, Nicole and Louise both scored a double helping of points. This meant that Nicole was the biggest improver, overtaking Genelle to finish 4th for the season. Louise’s 60 points cemented her championship trophy, the only other contender Rob scoring a pathetic WHP to cement his 2nd place trophy. The other WHP scorers were El Prez and Genelle.

After the games ended we did a trial run of another new game introduced by Genelle – Rat-a-tat Cat. It went down pretty well with everyone except El Prez who said he didn’t like the look of it – this drew a well deserved accusation of Trump-like behaviour from Mother Theresa who was having trouble leaving behind her schoolmarm persona after a hard day’s teach.

Rookie scores first points then retires hurt

It was a dark and stormy night… well almost – it was bloody cold for late October, and it was windy and raining. Our host Tara even had a fresh log burning in the fireplace at Yowie Bay.
The ever popular Sherlock Holmes was our main game, and it was won by none other than El Presidente, Wayne. Tara came second and Jiordan broke her personal drought by coming third. Rule 7.5, the “Rookie Protection” rule prevents Jiordie from the ignominy of taking home the Wooden Spoon, 2021 will be her year to shine.
The also ever popular Ride ’em Cowboy was our backup, and it was the usual thrills and spills, so much so that Jiordan left early while coming third in the game due to a flare up of her netball injury – she recently had surgery on her right pinkie finger and it started to throb. The placings were Tara, Louise, Nicole in that order. Genelle and El Trez both WHP.
Look at the graph – Tara with 100 points tonight has broken away from the pack and it looks like the trophy winners are already decided unless something spectacularly unusual happens in November. Rob‘s close pursuit of the lead held by Louise has slackened off from a 10 point gap back to 35 points, but it’s still a close race. November’s program hosted by Nicole is unusual and the results unpredictable.

The annual Dinner and Presentation night is coming up, possibly December 16, stay tuned for further information. Please consider catching up your dues at the November meet, there are three members in the red.

Louise & Rob neck & neck for Trophy

It was a very pleasant evening at the Presidential Gaming Palace – now with integrated loo facility! The main event was Gallop, one of El Prez‘s more popular creations. The Tote Clerk hat went to El Trez who discovered no betting irregularities during proceedings, and topped it off with a Personal Best for this game – he owned the winning horse in the final race and also bet heavily on himself, so cleaned up with a staggering $8000+. This meant he made the 100 points he needed to catch Louise the ladder leader, plus a 2nd place in Pass The Bomb to cement the new lead, however, Louise had other ideas and by scoring a double third place she maintained her lead, but by the narrowest of margins – only 10 points. Tara , despite getting 2nd in Gallop, is 275 points away in 3rd place, so with only two meetings left it looks like Louise & Rob might be battling it out for the championship trophy. Our rookie recruit Jiordan was exposed to two new games and picked them up pretty quickly – but was blasted severely in Pass The Bomb in which there was a 3-way bomb-off for the placings between Genelle, Louise & Rob. Nicole, Wayne and Jiordan all WHP.

Stapleton’s, our usual restaurant for year-end festivities, has closed, so we are on the lookout for suggestions for an alternative venue. Let’s have your ideas.

Welcome Jiordan – our new rookie

It was another cold, wet and windy evening, and we were at Como. At last it seems one of our vacancies has been filled – Jiordan Hollingsworth turned up early (just in case of getting lost). She is our youngest member, is married and has two young children, is studying Social Work at Bond University, and is keen to play board games with us. Welcome Jiordy! (When it’s her turn to host, I predict Scattergories will be on the program)

Our games were Trivial Pursuit and Pass the Pigs. We played the quick version of TP which means a “cheese” is collected for every correct answer. Rob went to the lead early on, but was soon caught by Louise, and then they were sitting at the centre of the board, both with a full cheese collection. El Trez won with a lucky guess at his final question, then there was a quiz-off for third place between Genelle and Nicole. That quiz-off was also tied, so there followed a sudden death tie breaker quiz won by GG.
Tara showed her expertise at the passing of the Pigs – she won by more than 100 points from El Prez closely followed by GG in third place. In 10 turns, Tara only had one single pigout while the rest of us averaged 4 or 5.

See you in September at the Jannali Gamerdome.