Paul's Games Night

Last night was Paul's second games night of 2007, but I missed the last one due to coming back from Bristol, so this was my first.

It was Paul, Andy, Greg and I with Lisa joining in for the first game of Diamant. Diamant was fun as usual, I tried my tried, tested and rarely successful technique of running away as soon as there were a decent number of gems left on cards, and this time it worked! I won the game of Diamant, while poor Greg and Paul didn't get any gems at all. I only had 19 though, so it was fairly low scoring.

During Diamant Spence arrived, and after Diamant Lisa left, so there were five of us again. I offered the boys the chance to play the Monster prototype which I was keen to test with more players (the original submission only supported 2-4 players - I've tweaked it to hopefully support up to 6, but I've not tested it with more than 4 yet though) the boys agreed so I set it up and explained the game to them.

I was surprised by how keen they were to pay over the odds for cards, while I played a more restrained game. It was fun, and despite me winning, the boys were up for a second game. I won that one too, but I got a good vibe from the boys, and some good advice about the design too, so it was definitely worth taking round.

I was three for three, and Paul suggested breaking out Falling, a card game he'd got from a friend over Christmas. Spence had heard of it before, so he was appointed Rules Monkey and he duly explained the game. There wasn't an awful lot to it, but the reading of the rules failed to communicate just how chaotic the game was. One player sat out each round, dealing the cards (a fairly complicated role in itself), while the others frantically played cards on themselves and others, or moved cards around in an attempt to be the last player to hit the ground. It was mad, with arms and cards flying all over the place, and after six games (of which I only won one), we couldn't decide whether we liked the game, though most of us agreed that it was fun. Which I suppose means we liked it in one way.

Another great games night. I'm going to miss next week's as I'm in San Francisco, but I'm already looking forward to the one after than.

In other news, I'm now meeting the potential Monster artist on Saturday, rather than tomorrow evening - so I guess I'm going to have to cut my visit to Beyond Monopoly short :-(