July Games

Another slow to start month. Despite a SUPER-LONG weekend to kick off the month we didn't get playing games until the 10th! This was partly because we all took turns being sick starting with Amanda and Keiran on the 4th, Finnegan was sick the next day, and, just after I thought I'd somehow dodged it, I got sick on the weekend!? Sunday I was feeling well enough to play a game, so we got back to playing some Warhammer Underworlds. 

Sunday, 10 July 2022

We played in Beastgrave, with Amanda fielding her Murder Grrrlz and I tried out Ironsoul's Condemnors. I thought maybe I hadn't tried them before, but when I went to log the play on BGG, I realized I had played them ONCE before. As with the previous time, I played with their standard deck, as-is... and... it wasn't awful. 

I have NOT had good luck with ANY of the Stormcast warbands... like... EVER. The DAughters of Khaine (that are my usual opponents) somehow just dance circles around them and cut them to ribbons!? I don't remember a single game where they weren't absolutely WIPED OUT!? 

The last time I played THIS particular warband, Amanda won 15-1... 

FIFTEEN to ONE!?

The first Round didn't go great... I was playing kind of "stow and steady" and letting them come to me... which COULD backfire as Amanda has all sorts of objective cards that can gain her points just... being in different places and surviving... I think I did take out Khamyss... who CAN be BRUTAL, but is a bit of a glass cannon...

The second round went better... I took out Kyrae in my first activation and then kind of surrounded Morgwaeth. By the end of Amanda's first activation on Round Three looked like... Amazingly, Morgwaeth survived TWO rounds standing there... the first Gwynne Ironsoul hammered on her - three dice - with two helpers and a smash attack, only one in six is a failure (the flury side), I rolled three regular hits and Amanda rolled a crit (which trumps everything!?) Ironsoul also had an upgrade which allowed her a reroll of one attack die on the first attack made each turn - and rolled another regular hit... 

For some reason, Morgwaeth stuck around!? She was not so lucky the next activation... 

Here's how things looked at the end of Round Three... Kyrssa, the last one standing, made a run for it, as there was NOTHING she could do and sticking around to get SMASHED by the Stormcast would just give me more points!? 

So... I FINALLY won a game with Stormcast Eternals! The final tally was 11-5!? Probably a combination of me being exceedingly lucky and Amanda being out of practice and/or just having an off day... I think with a bit of deck editing Ironsoul's Condemnors could be pretty brutal, though! 

Tuesday, 10 July 2022

It got brutally hot here as the week went on. So Tuesday evening we decided to hide in the cool basement Games Room and play Terraforming Mars. 

It was a LONG game - went for SIXTEEN turns (I feel like that's probably a record for us - NEITHER of us were producing heat. I'm sure by the end HALF of the raising of temperature was done by Standard Projects. We had all the oceans out before the mean temperature rose above -20°C!? (Not sure how THAT worked!?) 

Mars was definitely looking well and terraformed by the end of it, though!

Tim played Tharsis Republic with Business Empire and Donation (two prelude cards I've never used before) I took Builder milestone and the Landlord and Banker Awards

Amanda Played Eco line with Research Network and UNMI contractor - took Gardener and Planner milestones and Scientist awards.

She won. 

Monday, 24 July 2022

Our friend Kurtis came over and played a few games on this rainy Monday evening. We played Kingdom Builder (which I forgot to take a picture of) 

Then we played FIve Tribes (with the Whims of the Sultan expansion) 

In both games Kurtis and I were pretty close... and Amanda won by a BUNCH!? 

Wednesday, 27 July 2022

Didn't play a game this day, but I bought one. I kind of HOPED we'd try it out in the evening, but didn't end up getting to it... Kill Team boxes aside, I can't remember the last time I bought a game...? I have bought two expansions for Five Tribes in the last year...? Other than that, I think the last games bought were Century Golem and Wingspan for Amanda's birthday last year!? 

Amanda's played Stone Age a few times at ToonCon and I played it once. It's been a game that Amanda thought would be okay to get, but out FLGS hasn't had any in for YEARS!? Z-Man games just wasn't reprinting it or something!? A week or so ago, I saw on their Facebook page that they finally got in copies!

I was pretty excited to see it was only $66 - I kind of expected it to be $80+ as most other games seem to be these days!? 

Thursday, 28 July

Thursday Other Tim and Treena came over to play games! I can't remember the last time we saw each other...!? I feel like the last time we played games was the ToonCon just before the pandemic shut everything down!? 

We did get to try out Stone Age! Treena and Other Tim have played it a bit, so Other Tim just crushed it. 

Afterwards we tried out a game they brought called Space Base which was interesting enough. I kind of won... largely because I was lucky early in the game and got a few really good ships... also I had a total brain fart and for a turn or two was taking more for rewards when others rolled dice than maybe I should have... which might have changed things a little bit... I always ended up with waaaaaaay more credits than I needed to purchase any of the ships I did before I realized I ha made some mistakes, so it might not have affected things...? 

Sunday, 31 July 2022

This past Sunday, Brent, Kurtis and John came over to play Angola! 

We haven't played this in about four years... but for a while it seemed like we played it every six months - in July or December - and it seemed to coincide with Kurtis changing jobs!? Kurtis sort of changed jobs again this summer (sort of... he was just made the permanent University Veterinarian - a position he'd been holding as "ACTING University Veterinarian for a few years now) - but it WAS an official change of position, so I suggested we should probably play Angola. 

The game is played with four and those are divided into two teams of two. One team play the MPLA/FAPLA, the soviet-backed communist forces controlling Angola at the outset of the war, and the other team plays UNITA/FNLA, the western backed opponents. 

The previous four times we've played, Brent and I have played the MPLA/FAPLA with me playing the FAPLA three of those times all but one of those times we had randomly determined  who would play which faction. We joked a lot before that it would probalby be the same teams and when Brent rolled MPLA for his faction, it looked like it might happen again. 

It didn't, though. I ended up playing UNITA, John played the FAPLA, 

...and Kurtis was my partner this time with the FNLA

Now, I've never read the rules, I just bumble along as best I can.. I just move stuff around and when battles happen, they tell me what to roll and when. It has a fairly simple and abstract combat system and the activation system is fascinating leaving you always wondering what your opponents might do next... and sometimes wondering what YOU might be doing next, if you forget what you put in your activation deck and in what order!? 

Each turn you build a deck of a set number of cards (4-7 depending on what turn it is - starts at 4 cards, goes up to 7 by the end of the game) each represents one of the columns you have or "fifth column" which allows you to move a group of units not in a column and there are command cards which can allow you to swap column markers of two columns that have not yet moved (I've never used those) and one or two pass cards that MUST go into a deck (UNITA has two pass cards, everyone else has one). Once the deck has been made and the turn started you are not allowed to look at what's in your deck. A start player is determined somewhat randomly (d6, 1-4 corresponds to a player, 5-6 is the player to the left of the previous turn's start player) that player starts by revealing a card from their activation deck and activating that column or passing as indicated on card and then play continues clockwise with each other player revealing one card at a time... 

It's pretty intense. You can't move ALL of your forces. Your opponent can't move ALL of their forces. There is a lot of guessing and gambling based on what MIGHT be remaining in your opponents decks (and what's in YOURS, if you've forgotten!) 

Every faction gets one home base at one side of the board. UNITA starts in Southwest Africa, MPLA starts in Luanda, FNLA starts in Zaire, and the FAPLA starts in a town in Eastern Angloa... then three others are drawn at random... 

So the intital set up was CrAzY - UNITA and FNLA had control of four towns surrounding Luanda! One of the game-ending-goals is for UNITA or FNLA to capture Luanda. I don't think it's happened in any game so far but it looked pretty perilous!

Nothing really happened there because there was a LOT of troops and equipment in Luanda and making a move on Luanda would mean giving up your position in whatever town (which one of the columns of FAPLA troops that were also in teh area could swoop in and seize. 

Looking back, maybe we SHOULD have put more pressure on Luanda with direct attacks

As it was, for most of the game these just stayed as heavily armed enclaves that grew to massive sizes, just staring each other down. One of the UNITA columns made it's way up the coast clearing communist forces out of ports along the way... only to be pushed back a bit in later turns... 

In the end UNITA and FNLA won, AGAIN! I think it was turn nine after six hours of play. 

That's it for July. Didn't get in as much gaming as I'd hoped... Or painting as that last burst of painting energy ended up being very short-lived. Very little has been finished since then. WEll, very little MINIATURE painting has been happening... I HAVE been VERY BUSY with other sorts of painting in July!!

Might have to rethink those 5x/10x Challenges, too... 

July Games (Part Two)

(You can find Part One HERE)

This past week I've has this weird feeling like it's August already for some reason...? I've been looking at expiry dates on food items in the fridge and wondering why we have stuff that expired last month!? It's not August (at least not while I'm writing this, it more than likely WILL be when you actually READ this). It's the end of July and here are the games we played in the second half of the month.

Monday, 16 July 2018

Monday after work Amanda we all played a quick game of Century: Golem Edition. I think after finally winning on Friday she wanted to see if she could still beat me…

 

She totally didn’t… I scored 78… more than 20 points ahead of everyone else…



Saturday, 21 July 2018

We didn’t play any more games all week. I’m not sure why. I guess the kids spent a couple days hanging out with my folks. Other days we went on bike rides. Amanda was running her Kids Yoga Dance camp for kids. Everyone we pretty tired in the evenings and probably just wanted to hide in the basement and watch TV or movies…

Saturday evening I finallygot everyone to play a game of Warhammer 40000 (8thEdition). This was Amanda first game with her Sisters of Battle!



Sunday, 22 July 2018

On Sunday, I headed over to Brent’s for our semi-annual game of Angola with John and Kurtis. We’ve played in July and December for the last two years. Despite randomly determining who plays which faction Every Single Time Brent and I have ended up with the FAPLA and the MPLA (though we’ve each played both factions twice. John and Kurtis. This time I was MPLA. I’m not sure the government forces have EVER won…

The end of things… Government forces losing again with the FNLA controlling Luanda (for the second time this game!)


Monday, 23 July 2018

Monday evening we finally got in a game with Leanne and her son Taotao – who I’ve been trying to get together with for some time! We settled on playing Lords of Waterdeep

Amanda played The Knights of the Sheild secretly controlled by Larisa Neathal, I played the Grey Hands controlled by Mirt the Moneylender, Finnegan played the Res Sashes secretly controlled by Simnerza Sulphontis, The Girl played the City Guard who were controlled by Caladorn Cassalanter, Leanne played the silver Stars controlled by Rianne Byndraeth, and Taotao played the Harpers controlled by Halaster Blackstar III. It was Leanne and Taotao’s first time playing the game. Considering that Taotao did AMAZINGLY well scoring 111points, he was only beaten by Amanda who managed to score 112! We actually only got to play 7 or the 8 rounds and, given one more round, I probably would have finished upa few more adventure/goals I’d been working on and given them a run for their money… I probably won’t have won, but it would have been a bit closer…

Tomorrow they’re supposed to be coming back to play again…


Wednesday, 25 July 2018

Wednesday after work Amanda suggested we play a game and we eventualy decided on Marvel Legendary. We played with Daredevil, Punisher, Black Car, Moon Knight, and Spiderman. We battled against the King Pin this time and his scheme was an Organized Crime Wave, which kind of makes sense. Helping him out were Magia Goons, The Hand Ninjas, Streets of New York, Emissaries of Evil, Sinister Six and Spider Foes. IN the end We won... I punched the King Pin twice. His master strikes weren't too bad, but the cards revealed when you punched him were all bad...


Friday, 27 July 2018

Friday evening my friend Bruce came over to play a game and we settled on Agricola.

It was his first time playing. Amanda totally cleaned up, as usual, building a massive sprawling stone mansion and a huge family to take care of it all while doing just about every occupation she could… other than… y’know… FARMING!?

I didn’t do TOO bad. I came in second and was relatively please to have finally gotten a farm with some serious… y’know… FARMING going on! My biggest complaint about this game is that it’s too easy to have animals and too hard to actually plough fields and get stuff sown in them!


Saturday, 28 July 2018

We didn’t play games on Saturday…

 

But I did go and buy a BUNCH of stuff for Kill Team!! Expaect game reports in the not-too-distant future!


Sunday 29 July 2018

Sunday Kurtis and Shannon came over for an afternoon and evening of gaming. We told the kids they were welcome to join us... but they were busy doing other stuff.

We started off with Fresco. I won the game in the raffle at ToonCon last year and hadn’t had an opportunity to play it yet. There are bunch of games I’ve picked up over the last year that I haven’t had an opportunity to play yet and I’ve tried to stack them in a PILE OF SHAME in the living room and was hoping to work through them this month… or maybe in August… Anyway, they spotted it there and said they’ve played it before so we had a go at it.

It was fun enough. It’s a keeper – I’d play it again.

I just realized there are, like, 9 expansions for this!? At least one was included in the box I have. Not sure if I'll ever play this enough to justify running out and getting any of the others...

Next we played Century: Eastern Wonders. The second in the Century series that Plan B games is to release over three years (the first being Century: Spice Road that came out last year). I find it's much like Spice Road or Golem. You're still trying to collect cubes of spices, convert them to other sets of cubes to eventually trade in for victory tiles which give you points. Instead of drafting cards from a market, you are setting up trading posts on islands that your little boat sails to. Unlike Spice Road and Golem where there is only one of each card and only one person can get it, anyone can build a trading post on each island and then use it to convert their sets of cubes. It just costs more to build a trading post if there are already posts on the island. Also by building posts on a diverse set of islands (each has a different symbol on them) you can gain the bonuses - either straight points or in-game bonuses like faster ships or bigger holds, etc.

Eastern Wonders is okay I guess. I really like Century: Spice Road and Century: Golem Edition. Eastern Wonders felt, to me, like an attempt to add a layer of complexity to a game that is beautiful in its simplicity…? I’d play it again, but I won’t be rushing out to by this one…

My final score: 58 – dead last. I thought I’d been doing pretty good off the start I was the first to pick up a victory tile (the 20!?) and I was the first to empty a vertical row on my card and gain a bonus for my ship (the extra move). I don’t know where it all came apart…? One more turn and I’ve have picked up a fifth victory tile – for another 13 points, but that still wouldn’t have put me in the lead…? Ah well…

I took a break to make supper and the rest played a quick game of Century: Golem Edition.

I think Kurtis won this one as well…?

After supper, The Girl joined us and got us to play a game of Just Desserts (it’s her game and she loves it and just can’t get people to play it with her enough). I don’t mind it, it’s usually quick and it’s simple enough… We completely exhausted the Guest Deck, which I don’t think I’ve ever seen happen before. Amanda won.

After Just Desserts Shannon had to leave because she had to get up waaaaaaaay too early…

So, the four of us played Splendor – with Cities of Splendor! The Girl FINALLY won a game of this! (She’s been lamenting for some time that she NEVER wins this game…)

I wasn’t even close. I was all set up so that in the next two turns I would have picked up two cards worth another 7 points. (one requiring the 7 black and another requiring the six red…). But I still would have needed one more green card or two more points… Ah well… it was fun.


Tuesday, 31 July 2018

the kids snuck in two more games this afternoon...

First, at The Girl's suggestion, we played a game of Hanging Gardens - one of our older games that I still like playing. Simple pattern making/set collection. I never don't enjoy playing this game.

thought I was doing pretty good for myself - got a few complete sets - scored FIFTY-THREE POINTS! Not bad at all...

Until this monkey went and counted up his points and got FIFTY FOUR!!! It was all those walls and the Guard that really added up. (He said he was building it to keep the Egyptians out!)

Afterwards Finnegan put together a thematic set of Dominion cards for us to play with. He called it "Market Day". I feel like we've played a different thematic set that he also called "market day" , but no matter. This set included Village, Market, and Workshop from the base game, Trader, Spice Merchant, and Haggler from Hinterlands, Horse Traders and Harvest - Cornucopia and Plaza and Herald from Guilds. Not a bad little set. Trader got me scores of silvers. I tried to trash coppers with Spice Merchants, but always ended up with silvers in my hands... haggler is awesome - should have picked one up earlier. Horse Traders was pretty weak considering the others in this set - I didn't pick up any. I don't think anyone picked up a Harvest...


I though I was doing pretty good, in the end, with all those Provinces... Then Finnegan counted up his stuff. He had less provinces, but a PILE of Duchies and ended up with 38, I had 34, The Girl had 32

Super close game in the end - unlike the last time we played where The Girl utterly thrashed us! (I think she had 39 and I had, like, 18...!?)


I guess the month isn't entirely over as I post this, but Finnegan has D&D tonight and Amanda, The Girl and I are watching a movie (or two) while I get some painting done... so I think that's it for our gaming...


The Challenge Board

We only ticked a few more games off the challenge board this month... Dominion, Legendary and Lords of Waterdeep, I think... 

In addition to working on the Pile of Shame (see below) I'm planning to knock a few more of these off through August - go for some of the "low-hanging fruit" - games that we (mostly) know the rules for and can play in less than two hours. Surely we can do a few of those each week...?

If we do a September Game-A-Day Challenge again, that will hopefully get us caught up as well.


Plans for August

The Pile of Shame

As I mentioned earlier, I've been piling up a few of the games I've acquired over the last year or so and still haven't played in the living room. My plan it to leave them there until I actually get around to playing them.

Okay, Space Hulk isn't on the pile, because that's actually Finnegan's game... and Kill Team, while technically a game I've bought in the last year and haven't played yet, I JUST bought and I KNOW I'm going to play a lot of it... soon...


Coming Soon to Tim's Miniature Wargaming Blog:

I am STILL working on the Terminators for Space Hulk. There's so much detail on them. There have been a few evenings I sat down to paint and just felt like I didn't have enough focus or patience or something to paint that kind of detail, so I ended up assembling and priming other things - a few minis, some of the terrain from Kill Team... I DO still hope to finish off those Terminators sometime this week BEFORE I get painting anything else!!!

Hopefully in the next week or so you'll start seeing Kill Team and Space Hulk miniatures and game reports.

Oh and Finnegan finally finished off the Gorkanaut he started in December... perhaps I'll post a picture of that. Or Maybe I'll wait until we get it on the table for a game and post a picture of THAT! Not sure what I'm going to throw up against it. Power-Level-wise it's more than a Leman Russ tank, but less than two... and less than a Shadowsword or Knight - not even CLOSE to the Warhound.... He should have got a STOMPA! Maybe Gorkanaut plus Meganobs versus a Leman Russ platoon...?

July 2017 Boardgames Round-up

This past month started out really good – we played games almost every day for the first week of the month… then things… well... tapered off a bit.

It’s summer, we’ve been getting out for a lot of bike rides!

1 July 2017 - Kingdomino/Race for the Galaxy

Over the long weekend in July my folks moved into a new condo. It was just down the hallway from the one they’ve been renting for the last year, so it wasn’t very far to move… but moving is moving.

We took a bit of a break on the afternoon of the first to play a quick game of Kingdomino. I thought I had it in the bag – because I ended up completely filling up my 5x5 grid – but The Girl beat both me and Finnegan – largely due to a vast region of grassland with 3 crowns in it! Each of those squares were worth 3 points each – that adds up quick!!

After getting home from my folks, in the evening, we played a game of Racefor the Galaxy.

I had a bit of an Imperium theme going on and had a BUNCH of military – which I pretty much NEVER do. It never seems as good as going for genes or alien stuff or setting up a little production/consumption engine and raking in the VPs through commerce. But it somehow worked for me – I got a 6-point development (I forget what it was called – that gave me a bunch of points and two high point rebel worlds and the Not-Death-Star.

2 July 2017 – Dominion: Intrigue

The kids and I played Dominion: Intrigue. We have lots of other Dominion sets, but I just wanted a quick game and so I just grabbed Intrigue and used one of the suggested sets (Victory Dance?). It was a bit longer that I’d hoped – I’d wanted a quick 30-40 minute game so we’d have time to watch a movie and get to bed at a reasonable hour, but I think the game was over an hour. Not sure if it was the mix of cards or because we haven’t played in a while…?

Counting up the points. I think I won…? The Girl was a close second and Finnegan wasn’t far behind.

3 July 2017 – Angola

John, Kurtis and Brent came over for the afternoon to play Angola. It was almost a year to the day (well, a year and one day) since we first played (we also played it 6 months ago over the xmas holidaze). Though we’ve always determined the sides randomly. Brent and I have always ended up with MPLA/FAPLA and Kurtis and John have always played together with UNITA and FNLA. This was the first time I’ve played the MPLA – the two previous games I’ve played the FAPLA.

One of my starting towns was Sa Da Bandeira, which was kind of cut off from the rest of my forces but directly blocked the road from South Africa (or Namibia?) – the UNITA staging area so I put as many troops as I could in there at the beginning and tried to hold on as long as I could. Eventually it fell and pretty much all the other towns I held… but I held onto Luanda and built a pretty MASSIVE column of troops there and in the last few turns broke out of there and, with the aid of Brent’s FAPLA, pretty much wiped out the FNLA forces in Angola. John held on in the centre and south of Angola and after 10 turns and SIX HOURS of playing… it was a draw. Some might find this outcome disappointing – but I just had a great time playing an interesting game with a great bunch of guys. There is a lot of back-and-forth in the game – just enough chaos and friction to keep you guessing as to how it’d going to turn out.

Amanda got home from a week in the U.S.A. and I’d hoped we’d get in a game as a family, but instead we watched Yoga Hosers…

4 July 2017 – Monarch

Had I been thinking a little further ahead I might have dug out 1775: Rebellion in honour of our neighbors Independence Day, alas…

Instead we played a quick game of Monarch. I started off with a couple of critters and got the Beastmaster. Finnegan looked like he was going for Wisdom and The Girl was going for Culture. I thought I might be able to pick up the dragon and the asp to add to my menagerie, but Finnegan swept the board (not just to deny them to me, he isn’t that much of a dick, there just wasn’t anything for him there…). but that brought out a trio of fantastic bounty cards – the one that allows you to buy them for less (cornucopia?), the one that gives you 2 points per bounty card (it’s a dress… the Harvest Dress? I can’t remember and I’m too lazy to look it up) and the one that gives you one point per bounty card (Ermine – also another animal) – all these bounty cards allowed me to claim the bounty banner – which gave another point per bounty card, so I was now getting FOUR points per bounty card in my court AND per bounty improvement – of which there were three or four!



Picking up those three cards ended the game and I scored 42 points.



Of course when Finnegan counted up HIS points he ALSO had 42!? The Girl had a very disappointing 16 points (she’s clobbered us at this before, so I don’t feel TOO bad about that…).

5 July 2017 – Pax Renaissance

I had hoped to play this with the kids in the afternoon – for some practice explaining the game to people that had never played, but we went for a bike ride

instead.

We actually had TWO four-player games of Pax Renaissance on at John’s. I was super excited about this as, so far, I’d only played three-player games – and they often seemed to turn out the same. Two players end up battling over one half of the map and the other wins in the other with an Imperial Victory.

I played with John, Kurtis, and Darrin. Kurtis had played before. John has played Pax Porfiriana and other Phil Eklund games. Darrin had no idea what he’d got himself into. Despite that, John nearly had an early Renaissance Victory – with England turned into a republic. Darrin then turned Aragon into a republic and stole England from John and nearly took the win, but never had quite enough Law Prestige. Four player games seem MUCH harder to win – as there are three other players messing with your stuff before you get another action. Anytime someone’s close – everybody dogpiles on. Darrin also came close to an Imperial Victory – he had FIVE kingdoms at one point (and at the time Kurtis and I two or three each – stealing stuff back and forth from each other) – though that ended up being the only victory card was never revealed by a comet.  Kurtis also came very close to a Religious Victory with Islam! So exciting seeing these other possibilities open up.

In the end it was me that won – on my turn ran Eastern Ops and campaigned from Hungary taking over Mamluk – giving me a second Patron Prestige point and then bought a card from the Eastern Market place – which revealed the last card in the market decks ending the game. It was a win for me, but if felt like a cheap one.

After six games I still feel like I’m just figuring stuff out. With this longer four-player games I actually got to try out a lot of new different things I’d never really tried before thus I feel like I learned a lot. Not that I think I’m some sort of Master of the Game – or necessarily all that good at it – but I had a lot of fun and I started to feel like maybe I’m starting to figure things out.

6 July 2017 – Retro Loonacy

Played a couple quick rounds of Retro Loonacy after supper before watching a few more episodes of The 100.

8 July 2017 – Die Macher

Saturday I made my way over to Brent’s to hide in his nice cool basement and play DieMacher

with Kurtis and Jason.

Die Macher a totally fascinating game of German electoral politics. Each player is a German political party trying to get their representatives elected in different regions of Germany. I know… it sounds like a yawner, but the play is really interesting and I’d love to play it more. Unfortunately as it takes about four hours to play, I doubt I’ll get to play it often enough to remember how to play, let alone ever figure out the strategy behind it…

16July 2017 – Compounded, Coup, Incan Gold

The following week our friends Kurtis and Shannon found themselves kidless and decided to have a game day. Amanda and I headed over there for the afternoon while out own kids were out at friends or my folks. Joel and Brent also joined us. 

The first game we played was Compounded. I’ve been wanting to try this game for some time. I actually own the game myself – I picked it up thinking it would be fun to play with them when we get to learning more about chemistry. As it turns out absolutely zero knowledge of chemistry is needed to actually PLAY the game… you can play it by just matching the colours of the necessary elements needed to form the various compounds… but some learning could be worked into it – even if it’s just recognizing the elements being used and the compounds they form.

The second game we played – that went so fast I didn’t even take a picture of it – was Coup. I don’t love Coup. It involves bluffing which I am terrible at. Playing with a larger number (6 – we have played it before with 3 or 4) and adults (only played it with the family before) was a bit better. I think it helped that I went last and could see what everyone else was trying to do. Still not a game I’m going to suggest to play… but I’ll probably play it from time to time.

The third game we played was Incan Gold. I can’t remember who won, but I did pretty good – mostly because I bailed before everyone else and actually GOT treasure while so many of the others pushed their luck and ended up losing out.

26 July 2017 – Nuclear War, Nuclear Escalation, Nuclear Proliferation, Weapons of Mass Destruction, etc.

I have not played Nuclear War in… I don’t know how many years. Could be 20…? And I have never played with any of the expansions (Nuclear Escalation, Nuclear Proliferation, Weapons of MassDestruction, or any of the promo cards or bonus packs or whatever…). John has them all and decided it was time to dig them all out and have a go.

I started the game with NO Propaganda cards at all – so things escalated to war pretty quickly – there were an awful lot of secrets though, I’m guessing a lot of them came in the expansions. There were also a lot of new delivery systems and warheads I hadn’t seen before. Despite the quick entry to war, it was one of the longer games of Nuke War I’ve ever played! People just could not get the combinations of delivery systems and warheads they needed! I think I was the third to get blown up… John actually made it past the propaganda round – which is unusual for him – and almost made it to the very end.

I’ll have to dig my copy out and play it with the kids sometime…

27 July 2017 Shadowrun: Crossfire

The girl bought Shadowrun: Crossfire early in the year with money she’d received from relatives for Xmas. She’s been wanting to play it since. Finnegan was in Drama “camp” all week, so this week became “Do Stuff With The Girl” week and I promised I’d sit down and help her figure it out. I know we’d watched a how to video some months ago, and I wasn’t really paying attention to it so I had no idea what was really going on and she’s not quite at the stage where she can read rules entirely on her own and explain them to others… So we watched a different how to video and it mostly made sense – sense enough that we dug out it out and popped out all the counters and… buy that time Finnegan was home from camp so we recruited him to play.

GAME ONE

I played an elf. I think I was the “Faceman”. We lost. We played the basic starter scenario (I think it was just called “Crossfire”?) and I think we got to the second scene, but it very quickly went sideways. By the end of the first scene we were all down to one health and had no way to get it back (other than the one recovered at the end of the scene). At the beginning of Scene Two we suddenly had MORE and MEANER opponents and it was all over very quickly… Still, it seemed straightforward enough and with a little more familiarity with the cards and a bit more experience playing we might (and maybe a bit of LUCK) be able to beat it.

GAME TWO

When Amanda got home in the evening we recruited her to try and play a game. We told her it would take less than an hour. The first game went fairly quickly and it seemed like once we knew what we were doing it could go faster. But now that we knew we needed to be a bit more coordinated, we spent more time contemplating how to go about overcoming each obstacle… and it ended up taking a lot more than one hour. And we still lost. The kids found that a bit discouraging. I think we made it to the Third Scene, though, so… better than we’d done the first time.

I think I played the female troll in the second game - again, the "Face" Role... 

I’ll definitely play it again and would like to try out the campaign! In the campaign you gain “karma” with successful missions and can improve your character with some sort of bonuses (haven’t really looked into it that much). Of course… it would require WINNING some games…

28 July 2017 – D&D 5E

Only game of D&D we got in all month…

I accidentally shot Amanda’s barbarian in the back with an arrow. I rolled a one for damage and she had to go and make a comment about it at least being a "wimpy" shot... I wasn't going to remind anyone that I to +7 DAMAGE with my bow... but she HAD to go and open her big mouth... (We all survived). 

That’s about it… Hopefully our game playing will pick up a bit in the fall… We’ll have to do the 30 Games in 30 Days Challenge again in September.