A friend/coworker of mine and his wife hosted a weekly boardgame night that I attended. Most of the other guests were kinda flaky, and this one particular day, I was the only one who showed up. So it was just me, my friend, and his wife.
Someone suggested Dixit, which I had never played before, but it sounded fun and I was down to play. So we broke it out, shuffled, and started the game.
Now, if you don’t know how Dixit works, it’s basically a deck of cards with pictures on them. One of a toy abacus. Another of a child pointing a toy sword at a dragon. Another of a winding staircase with a snail at the bottom. Etc.
In one version of the game similar to Apples to Apples or Scategories, everyone gets a hand of cards which they keep hidden. The dealer announces a clue and everyone (including the dealer) contributes a card from their hands face-down to the center of the table and the dealer shuffles them together and reveals them all at once without revealing whose card is whose. Then players vote which one they think matches the clue. You get points as a player if others vote for your card or if you vote for the one the dealer picked. As a dealer, you get points if close to 50% of the players vote for yours.
I was the dealer this round. One of the cards in my hand was of a ship’s anchor. That’s when it came to me.
See, the friend/coworker and I both worked in web software development. His wife didn’t. And I came up with the perfect play. I gave the clue “hyperlink.” Hyperlinks on web pages are created using the HTML <a> tag. The “a” stands for “anchor.” And any web developer would know that.
When the vote came in, I got one vote for my card from my friend and his wife failed to select the correct card and so didn’t get any points. It was a slam dunk move. But I felt a little bad for excluding my friend’s wife from an inside-knowledge thing.
The next round, my friend was the dealer and he picked a rule/card that was an inside-knowledge thing between the two of them. (A line from a poem they both knew well, the next line of which related to the picture of the card.) So I was glad of that.
I was playing civ 5 with a few IRL friends over internet multiplayer. Victory types : religion scientific or political I had the largest economy by far but I was behind in tech. My military was decent. My religion was the third or fourth largest.
I had made a personal agreement through DM with one of the other human players and asked them if I could put a spy in their Capital and steal the techs they had acquired if I research agreed them. ( I was paying both halfs of the research agreement). By the time I had conquered my entire continent and extinguished the two annoying sivs that kept attacking me and neutered the other two into vassals (if you bring back an AI that another AI killed, they are very grateful to you). So as the year 1900 rolls around, I control 1/3 of the map landmass as territory under the work of my cities I cover the entirety of a large dorito shaped continent All of my cities are fully producing, have all buildings and are outputting massive amounts of GDP. However, one of the other human players has just researched nuclear theory and I’ve just figured out Great war infantry. I still have not caught up but I have made massive gains. I know I can’t close the distance at this rate though. I am in an open alliance with this player as I am buying the tech off them still. I’m probably sitting on $50,000 with a thousand s coming in every turn. I pay off every single NPC to attack them
This immediately puts me at war with every single non city state NPC. However, I am an Island fortress and 2/3 of my GDP is generated from intercity trade among my own cities and the tree between my civilization and the city states that dotted in my territory. (Did you know you can upgrade their tiles for them). The last third of my income comes from direct trade with two other human players. I immediately deployed my Navy to secure safe travel for my cargos between those ports. Due to the fact that the other human that’s winning is an Atlantic Ocean away from me and that I am on paper still their Ally. However, I’m also the one that just initiated the surprise ai attack of most of the remaining ai against them. ( We were playing with 12 civs 24 city-states huge map and I’m pretty sure nine civs declared war at once). By the time my first naval ships made it to his shore escorting my trade shifts. He had already lost five cities and his civilization was in revolt due to unhappiness. By the time I landed my first troops, 10 turns later to start pushing back the attack and unconquering his land. I had also attained nuclear theory while he had been stalled the entire time due to unhappiness and revolts and The invasion. By the time I had reconquered his land, I was sending up the final pieces of the space station.