Second Wednesday of the month? Must mean it was that time of month for the regular Fenland Gamer meet up.

The five amigos of Jonathan, Debbie, Jo, Kate and myself met up once more to play games, share banter, and generally have an enjoyable evening with like minded people. Which is pretty worrying really because if the rests minds are like mine this world is in serious trouble.

Our evening of gaming kicked off with Formula D or as it correctly should have been called

Driving Ms Daisy the Sequel

We rolled the black dice for our starting grid positioning. Jonathan and Katie drew for pole position, which meant a face off for the coveted spot, while Debbie and I also were in a face off for the third spot, leaving Jo unchallenged for the back of the grid.

Katie took pole position in the end, while Jonathan was in second, Debbie was in third place, I took the fourth starting position, with Jo bringing up the rear.

After doing all the hard work to win pole position, Katie stalled her engine and was left stranded on the track. Jonathan was able to straight away press forward with this advantage to try and snag the lead, and rolled a one to draw level on the track.

Debbie and I moved closer to the front two, while Jo edged a space nearer, but still at the back.

Katie was stuck in first for her second roll of the dice, while Jonathan took an early lead switching to second. Debbie and I over took Katie.

After the first corner I took the lead away from Jonathan. Which I quickly squandered allowing Katie, Jonathan and Debbie to catch me up and over take me while negotiating the second and third corner. Jo was still, pottering behind in last place, looking good to claim the title of “Driving Ms Daisy” away from Debbie.

Katie started to pull away from everyone, while I managed to over take Jonathan and Debbie. The corners in this game are such a great leveller. Careful management of the damage to your car, can allow you to catch up and steal the lead if the others are being much more careful. It was this carefree cavalier attitude to damage as a resource that saw me coming out of the three stop corner hot on Katie's wheels.

Down the long straight Katie and I shifted through the gears opening up the gap between us and Jonathan. It looked like Jo and Debbie would be fighting it out for the Ms Daisy crown.

As Katie and I started to work our way around the final set of corners before the home straight, Jonathan caught up to us. Katie edged a space lead over me as we game out of the final corner. But I was in a higher gear than Katie. Katie rolled her dice, she was one space short of the finish line. If I rolled a sixteen I had won. I rolled a fifteen. But my inside line put me one space away from the finish line too, but ahead of Katie on the board. I'd won, I'd be rolling first.

I took first place, Katie nabbed an easy second, while Jonathan crossed the line for third.

But there was still a battle going on through the final corners between Debbie and Jo. Neither wanting to claim the “Driving Ms Daisy” title. Last corner Jo was set up nicely to make a dash for the finish. Debbie needed to push her luck to catch up. She over shot the first of the final two corners by thirteen spaces!!! Her engine blew up, she was out of the race. Jo finished fourth, leaving the burning wreck of Debbie's car on the track.

Debbie had successfully defended her “Driving Ms Daisy” title!!! Well I suppose it would be more accurate to describe it as begrudgingly accepted the title again.

My win meant that out of the two plays of the game, I had continued the record that the owner of the game wins the race!

Raw fish!

Our second game of the evening was the drafting, set collecting game Sushi Go! Which had the soy sauce promo shuffled into the deck.

I'm not going to go into much detail of this game, except to say that I proved to be the most greedy on the night, managing to scoff my way to a victory.

Oh wow, I'd won the second game of the evening too! I was on a winning streak. How'd that happen? Mind you it made a pleasant change to my loosing streak Tuesday night with Netrunner.

Our third and final game of the evening was

Alhambra

You could tell I hadn't played my copy before because the cards were still in the cellophane. Something that winds Jonathan up a little. Mind games people, mind games. I had thought of totally throwing him off his game and taking yellow also. But I just couldn't be that cruel.

We were playing with the Castles promo (which can be picked up from the bgg store).

After our first round scoring, I noticed that once more Jonathan was employing his hog the cards tactic, and then make a mad purchasing rush towards the end to snatch the win. Jo decided to employ the same tactic, which you can see in the photo above they have half the deck of cards between them. Ok I maybe exaggerating that a little, but they had a lot of cards in their hands. It was interesting because it seemed Jonathan was advertising the fact having the cards fanned out in his hand. I know that was for him to see easily what he had. But I suspect there was a bit of the magician in him that likes holding them that way too. Jo on the other hand almost seemed that she was trying to disguise the fact she had a lot of cards.

But you know what? Despite having a load of cards in her hand, Jo would say there was nothing she could do or buy!!!! Which we did call her on.

During the game there were a couple of times because Debbie went before me, that she blocked me by either buying a tile I needed/wanted or took a card I wanted.

Second round scoring, Jonathan still hadn't kicked his tactic in to top gear, and was still lagging at the back on the scoring. But I knew any minute he would start building a scoring monster for the final scoring at the end. The rest of us were all within easy striking distance of each other. But Debbie was just in the lead.

Something went wrong for Jonathan, the tiles weren't falling for him, others were getting ones he needed. Final scoring hit, Jonathan managed to over take Katie on the scoreboard, but he was unable to catch Jo up, and ended twenty nine points short of the joint winners for the game Debbie and myself on ninety points.

The evening ended with some talk about Kickstarter and policing the streets of Commonville before we parted our separate ways.

What a great evening, I had a winning streak, played some great games with great people.

Tomorrow another Streets of Commonville play through. ^__^