Nicole returns & Matt hits the ground running
In a very pleasant evening at the Jannali gamerdome, there were once again all eight of us in attendance – welcome back Nicole! One task left over from last year that we did tonight was to present the new perpetual trophy to the 2024 Champ – congrats Matt.
It was Wayne‘s turn to host and he chose a bit controversially. The backup was Sea Spray – a simple toss-die-and-move-piece game built by Wayne with a Sydney-Hobart yacht race theme. It was harder than it looked to get ahead and fortunes changed rapidly. Matt shot to the lead early, but then kept hitting “reverse” squares and got stuck in the middle of the pack for most of the game – a direct quote from him: “This is the worst game I’ve ever played!”. Pete also fared very badly, but it was the sisters Tara and Nicole who crossed the finish line first in quick succession followed by Rob a few moves later.
The controversy was Wayne’s selection of Monopoly: Rugby World Cup as the main game. The standard version of Monopoly has long been unlisted in our games repertoire due to reasons that you all know – i.e; it takes too long, and players must sit out the later stages of the game as they become bankrupt. Indeed, the object of thegame is to be the last one to NOT be bankrupt. The Rugby version is no different, but fortunately there are options for shortening the game that we employed – a time limit and a simple assets total to determine the winner. We also adopted another external house rule which was new to me – penalties that would normally go to the bank are kept aside in a jackpot to be grabbed by anyone who lands on Free Parking. The game was starting to develop, with some wheeling and dealing and properties changing hands and grandstands on the way to being built, then time ran out.
So it turned out to be more successful than we thought, and maybe even the long-dismissed standard Monopoly might get a turn if we can play the shortened version. What do you think?
So Matt is still on top of the ladder, and trailing by 40 and 50 points are Rob and Tara who won Monopoly. Louise and Nicole are tied on 25, and it was Genelle, Peter and Wayne who WHP.
Further to our discussion about (other) fatalities in the Sydney – Hobart race, I found this:
“They (Trimarans) have never been allowed in the race (but) in about 1966, four started in a parallel race. Two finished. The winner was later lost, with multiple deaths.
(It feels good when an old memory can successfully be recovered!) MTGG
Old memories aren’t too bad – it’s the middle aged and recent ones that are sometimes elusive!
( To quote somebody: “Have you got all that info stored in your phone? – it must be even better than Rob’s”)