Sunday 4th March 2007

Maisy's parents Sarah and Stuart and my god son Henry came over for Sunday dinner. After we had stuffed ourselves with a huge leg of lamb the grown ups and Maisy played 3 games of Diamant - again at Maisy's request.

The first game was low scoring as 2 mines collapsed early on. In the end Stuart won with 23 jewels. Sarah was next with 18. Paul had 16 to Lisa's 15 and Maisy, now a bit sulky, was last with 7.

Lisa then left to play with the littlies. I convincingly won the second game with 58 jewels; I had stayed in longer than others on 2 occasions and reaped the rewards! Stuart came second with 31, Sarah third with 28 and Maisy was again last with 20 (beware the sulky child!).

Sarah then headed off to help Lisa with the littlies who, by now, had placed every toy imaginable somewhere on the floor. I won the third game with 56 jewels, again due to staying in some mines a bit longer than the others. Stuart tried this tactic but left it a little late; he came second with 47 jewels. Maisy played sensibly and safely, although this netted her only 34 jewels. Her mind had been elsewhere throughout the three games as she was in charge of dividing the jewels - a job she did admirably.

In the evening, when our guests had departed and an exhausted Eleanor was sound asleep clutching a teddy in bed, Lisa and I sat down to a game of Carcassonne, again with the Traders & Builders expansion.

This was a really close game. I finally won with 188 points to Lisa's 183. Lisa had monopolies in all 2 of the resources and we drew for the third; netting Lisa 30 points and me 10! I managed to sneak my pig into a field with 8 cities, thu scoring 32 points. Again we really enjoyed the tactics of this expansion; Lisa managed to complete far more cities and thus managed to amass the resources. I focussed on controlling the largest field. Both tactics are valid and a 5 point lead is nothing! Again, though, neither of us felt we used the builder particularly effectively as Lisa's got stuck on a road for most of the game and mine was stuck in a city....