We then decided to have a go at this old Sid Sackson game, which was originally released as Bazaar. Players are trying to accumulate victory points by winning beer mats. The currency of the game is bottle tops of five different types. Certain combinations of bottle tops can be exchanged for a different combination and, through these exchanges, players are trying to accumulate the right mix of bottle tops as displayed on the beer mats. By paying the required bottle tops, the player wins the beer mat and a number of VPs determined by how many bottle tops the player has left after the payment is made - the fewer the remainder, the more VPs are awarded. Once one person exceeds a given total of VPs, the game ends with that player being declared the winner.

When I've played this before, I've always had difficulty trying to plan morethan one exchange ahead. This time was no exception, so I just went with the flow. Nige picked up a couple of high scoring beer mats but that only really brought him back into contention as he had up to then been lagging behind. Mark K's strategy and mine was to score small and often and seemed to work pretty well. Mark G struggled with some of the exchanges but still managed to score ok. However, Mark K seemed to be one step ahead all the way and it came as no surprise when he surged ahead past the target total to seal the win.