Andrew Dubber     

I’ve had a really busy few weeks since Christmas. A lot of it has been work-related – writing, mostly – and lining things up for the new year – and a lot of it has been festive and fun. A really good mix, actually.

One of the better days recently was spent at the home of Dr Nick, who I work with in the Treehouse (our nickname for the rather mundane bit of office block we have as our research base). He’s a board and card game enthusiast – far more so than I am – and he’d organised a full-day gamefest with six people around the table.

Prison Break for Pirates
We started with a game of Cartagena – in which you draw cards, move pieces, and bust your team of pirates out of a Spanish prison and onto your pirate ship. Really strategic, mostly because you have to move back in order to draw more cards so you can move forwards. It can look like you’re not doing well for quite a while – and then suddenly it’s all on.

That’s one game I’d like to own, because I think Jake and I would play it quite a bit.

Dispatching ninjas
We also played a game called Honor of the Samurai, which was one of the more complex card games I’ve encountered. It’s set in 16th century Japan, and the aim of the game is to become the most honourable – or, at least, collect 400 honour points before anyone else does.

In the quest for honour, you serve a Daimyo, get married, dispatch ninjas to kill or steal from enemies, build castles, and seek to become Shogun – which, while desirable for the amount of honour it bestows upon you, also has the unfortunate side effect of painting a giant target on your forehead, and everyone else in the game comes at you with ninjas and their armies.

A great game – but a long one. With six of us playing, we made it quite a few hours before I had to pack up and go home.

A spot of friendly global warfare
Jake was quite keen to have a bit of a games day too, and so we pulled out Risk a week or two back and invited Stef around for a game.

Despite controlling most of Europe and large sections of Asia, I was annihilated pretty promptly (two and a half hours is prompt for Risk) – and since Stef started the game controlling Australia, he went on to win the game (that seems to be the way in Risk – like Mayfair and Park Lane in Monopoly).

But it reminded me how much I just enjoy just sitting down, having a coffee, chatting with people I like and having a board or card game on the go. I’m going to try and do a bit more of that this year.

And if I can have more than 3 games of Go in 2009, that will be an improvement on 2008.

Tagged: Games