by Denise Patterson-Monroe
I'm behind - two game nights and one game days worth, and some miscellaneous gaming with my son. So this is gonna mebbe be a LONG post :) I've got some games I liked, some games I want to rant about, and some other news, too! But let's start with the highlight!
I'm
:nostar::nostar::nostar::nostar:
PRINCESS DENISE :nostar::nostar::nostar::nostar:
again!!
Yes, that's right, I have been restored to my rightful place on my throne in our
SeaFall campaign. I am grateful for the difficulty of the current goals, because while everyone else was chasing those, I concentrated on exploring and buying treasure and that worked out just peachy. (Princess Peachy :) )
I do not know how much longer it will last. Dave is again plotting open rebellion against the throne. Christy and Ben actually cancelled our last game this weekend, ostensibly because they were 'sick', but I'm pretty sure in my current state of Royal Paranoia that they just needed a little more time to bring some evil scheme to fruition. Perhaps they should've sprung for Priority Mail shipping on those rare poisons from the Madagascar coast...
So our next game of Seafall should be great fun :) I am pretty much just trying to figure out how to dig my feet in and refuse to be budged at this point. I have some ideas that should help :)
In other news - I'm going to go on the BGG@Sea 2018 trip to Alaska! I've loved the cruises I've been on before, and they weren't even gaming cruises, so the idea of a board game cruise sounded great from the start! And, I'm trying to find the bright side of divorce - I couldn't have done this when I was married unless I gave up one or more of my other gaming cons that year. Now all I have to do is come up with the money, as my time is now my own :) If I decide to get a roommate then it will be very affordable, and if I don't, I can still swing it as long as I don't have TOO many financial disasters in the next year :) And if I take my son as a roommate, it will be the trip of a lifetime for him! :)
But enough chat - what games have been on the table? Journey with me back in time, all the way back to January 13th, a Friday, when Dave had fittingly chosen spooky games for the Friday the 13th theme. We played a wonderful game of
Mansions of Madness: Second Edition.
image by
deniseibase, on Flickr
You see that old lady figure with the raised arms there? That was our Martial Arts Granny, played by Mike, who went through the house busting up furniture and doing flying drop kicks whenever monsters showed up. She was awesome, and way more badass than she had any right to be!
I really enjoyed the game, too. It's a lot like Betrayal in that it's really an experience rather than a serious game, but it's oh so fun when you are in the right mood. I wish it wasn't so expensive or I'd get it for my son, as he'd love it.
But MAN does that app drain the battery!
After Mansions, Mike said he had only played
Ra on the app. So we quickly corrected him - that meant he had never ACTUALLY played Ra.
image by
deniseibase, on Flickr
Because really, Ra is not about collecting monuments or gods or floods for your rivers or any of that. Ra is about those moments when that jerk with the 1 tile sitting to your right calls Ra AGAIN, for the SIXTH ROUND IN A ROW, and you realize what butts your friends really are. THAT'S what Ra is about. And so we showed Mike the error of his ways and he quickly agreed that he had never played Ra before, no, not really.
Or maybe he was playing us, now that I think about it, since HE WON. Hmmm... A revenge killing may be in order. (Now that I'm Princess again, I can just order these kinds of things, right?)
A cold & rainy afternoon at The Game Preserve led to getting to play
13 Days: The Cuban Missile Crisis with Dan, another of the store employees.
image by
deniseibase, on Flickr
He lost SO bad, SO fast - went to the highest Defcon level in the first round. Ooops. He admitted he had played way too aggressively - I guess there's a REASON why we don't let people under 35 become president... We're planning a rematch soon, let's see if he's learned anything from blowing up the world :)
Also played the first game of
Aeon's End with my son.
image by
deniseibase, on Flickr
We did the standard opening scenario, since he had not played before. He's played a lot of deckbuilders though, and caught on fast. This is gonna get a lot of play at my house, and my son is really impressed with me now for having gotten to work on such a cool game!! :) Ah, kids :)
Now we're on to the best game I've played in awhile -
Crisis.
image by
deniseibase, on Flickr
Loved it. Loved the Death of a Salesman meeples. Loved the 'like Caylus but much harsher' vibe. And I came in a DISTANT second - our game actually ended early because SOMEONE and by 'someone' I mean STEVE thought he'd just let the economy tank for a little while and he'd actually jump in and be helpful LATER. Well LATER NEVER COMES BUB!
Actually, I think he got a rule wrong, and if that hadn't happened, it would have gone better for him. As it was, I really enjoyed the struggle and am looking forward to trying this again.
After that, though, was The Time I Stayed One Game Too Long on a Game Night and got into what ended up being a five hour game (with teaching) of
Solarius Mission.
image by
deniseibase, on Flickr
Now some of this was because we were all new, the game 'splainer hadn't really KNOWN she was going to be explaining it and wasn't really prepped for it, and we had a full table. But honestly I think the biggest problem here is that this game needs to be about 2/3 of what it actually is. It was like a point salad game where you don't get points - you can do tons of stuff, you have tons of choices, they all give you SOMETHING - but mostly it was so tiny and incremental that it hardly felt worth the trouble.
That said, I enjoyed the main mechanic of the dice, and how you could either upgrade them or move them along the track. When the dice game version of this comes out, I'm in, and I bet it will be the better game for losing some of the messiness.
And finally, finally, FINALLY - I got back to the Saturday Indy Boardgamers meetup! And we finished our game of Pandemic Legacy! In the second play of December, because we literally had TWO more actions we needed to take to win before we ran out in the FIRST game in December!!! :) And then we played Russian Railroads, which I enjoy but suck at. Like so many other games :)
That's all for now. It's my son's birthday week, and we are celebrating with a small present every day. I've got everything from chess puzzles to Mickey Mouse comic collections to the latest Beast Academy books lined up. Today's gift was Kobold's Guide to Board Game Design and
Hero Realms. So I know I'll be gaming again soon :)
