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Happy 2022!!!

If you missed it, please check out our Christmas 2021 game additions… the games just continue to get better and better… so many to play, so little time… 🙂

January 1st Update… Happy New Year everyone!! If you’ve been following along you already know that I was home last night for only the 3rd or 4th time in my musical career going back to 1975… Selena (our daughter) had to work but Julie (my wife) entertained me by playing some of our new board game additions and when she finds one she likes, she wants to keep playing it… 🙂 She was in a lot of back and chest pain and nauseous – which is all, sadly, normal – but insisted on playing which I very much appreciated… and I should mention up front that I can’t remember who won – we were just enjoying each other’s company and the games… 🙂

January 3rd Update… Today I got home from work and melted into my chair to relax before dinner… I was debating heading to bed early but Selena was wandering around so I asked if she wanted to play a quick game so I taught her Beez… she loved it too and I could tell that the game length caught her off guard too…

So after quite a lengthy game drought I finally got several new arrivals to the table over the course 4 days… it’s things like this that make me the happiest… I’m so glad I took a chance on those first games at Christmas 9 years ago (click here to visit this section’s introduction for that story and more)… I have to chuckle when I think back to the trouble I had learning (and teaching) Carcassonne and how it became (at the time and remains) my wife’s favorite game… now I feel like the whole family has reached a pretty high level of gamesmanship and understanding of the different styles and mechanics… I think we ARE ready to tackle Gloomhaven!! 🙂

A quick side note… last year you might recall that I purchased a large neoprene game mat and carry case from GameToppersLLC.com… it makes a huge difference to play on… apparently it’s also quite comfortable to LAY on… 🙂

I can’t leave anything setup because this knucklehead is in the middle of it!! And I’m afraid he might start ‘kneading’ it and I’d like to avoid a lot of tiny claw holes in it if possible… 🙂

Unfortunately, by the time I had everything together and ready to go, Julie was sound asleep… she’d been in a lot of pain and was battling some light-headedness the last couple days – a new wrinkle that we’ve yet to determine the cause… this caused her to lose her balance and fall yesterday… right into the dishwasher and kitchen counter which killed any chance at a game night… I considered setting up Paladins again but decided to go to bed and watch some TV and call it a day. That was all yesterday… now back to today…

I was hopeful that Selena would be up for a game since we were getting a small ice / sleet storm to be followed by rain or snow or both as the temps started to climb… Julie took another tumble this morning – falling into the parked car when she took the dogs out… she was still hurting but resting in bed… I showed Selena the box for Taverns and told her how cute I thought it was and we decided to play after breakfast…

I went through my teach (though I wasn’t as prepared as I like to be) and we started the game which we picked up fairly quickly… there are a lot of little moving parts in the base game (referred to as Module 1) but, at its heart, it’s a simple dice placement and deck builder game… there are 4 additional modules that can be added to give game slightly more complexity but the designer recommends playing just the base game for the first few games… about half way through our play I realized that we could have added ALL the modules and been fine… as I was reviewing the manual afterwards I discovered that it does say that experienced gamers could add the other modules…

The game itself felt easy and fairly intuitive… Selena beat me by 20+!! I did help her with something on her last turn otherwise she would have only won by 10+… 🙂 I thought it was very easy and a lot of fun… Selena smiled and said that she really liked it. Another winner for our collection.

January 12th… I got home from work to find a giant box on my table… I haven’t ordered anything so I couldn’t imagine what it could be… then my heart started pounding… could it be?? One of my Kickstarters has arrived?!? I carefully opened the box and was ever so pleased to find Merchants of the Dark Road in all its’ deluxified goodness!!! This was a Kickstarter I backed in July of 2020 and from the looks of everything, it was well worth the wait… 🙂

That looks amazing but (of course) I had to go with the All-In pledge which includes the PLATED metal coins and more…

I need to get busy… I have some unboxing and sleeving and packing (and drooling) and reading to do… 🙂 But before I could get started, in comes Julie – ready to play a game… her doctor figured out that her light-headedness was caused by one of her meds that ran out over a week ago that was the type that you couldn’t just stop – you had to wind down gradually… this explained a lot and her primary care person (a PA at our family doctor’s office who Julie loves) was able to see her as sort of an emergency and get the prescription called in since calls to the doctor who prescribed it (at another office) went unanswered so she ended up in worse shape than usual… but she was back to her normal pain-riddled self now and ready to play… she prefers to play things she already knows and was asking for something ‘easy’… I told her ‘they’re all easy once you know them’… after a little convincing I talked her into learning The Taverns of Tiefenthal…

It really is simple and I was the one slowing things down – so afraid of missing a phase or getting it out of order that I kept referring to the rulebook… eventually we both got comfortable with it (Julie even caught me trying to do things out of order) and the game flew by… in the end, we were only a few points apart… I didn’t get to ask how she liked it as she was already resetting everything for another game… then another… both were close… as we packed up for the night (‘Closing Time’ as the game says), I showed her some of the little modules we could add… next time… 🙂

Someone wants to know where the nice game mat is for this table…

We got one game in with Module #2 added but that was it for her and she headed back to bed… we liked the added options and minor changes to the gameplay and noticed that the final scores were lower even though it felt like we had done more in the game… they’re very simple modules so we’ll have to add another – or maybe a couple more – for the next game… now I think I’ll crack the Merchants rulebook… maybe even try a solo game… 🙂

January 16th… Today I broke Mom out of assisted living for a ride and a Reuben – one of her favorites… then we did a little shopping before dropping her back off…

When I got home, the girls already had Taverns setup and ready for the 3 of us which was a nice surprise… it was a close game but Julie won – for the first time according to her but I honestly couldn’t remember… I just enjoy our game time together… 🙂 She’s still in a lot of pain and more and Selena was pretty achy with the impending storm so we called it a night.

January 17th… Well the ‘big storm’ was thankfully pretty much a dud for us… about 4 inches of snow, a little occasional wind, and another inch by the end of a full day of off-and-on flurries… I waited for it to wind down for the most part, went out about 8:00am, cleared our vehicles, shoveled the back deck, snowblowed the driveway, a path around the house and a potty area for the dogs, raked the roof, shoveled the front deck and was back inside by 9:30… not bad for being 62… 🙂

On the game side I was hoping to get a play or two in with either or both of the girls but all my hard work must have worn them out because they were asleep most of the day… I was going back and forth between a solo attempt of Merchants of the Dark Road and repacking the game… and a nap as that snow wore me out… decisions, decisions… first a shower… then I nodded off and on through a few videos… then some lunch – after which I was charged up and started going through the box again…

The included storage solution was pretty slick but I wasn’t happy with the solo components being separated and buried under everything (I like to keep my solo pieces together for easy recognition)… and I had seen in a video where they weren’t happy with the second larger storage tray… I sort of agree… while it does hold everything nicely there is a ton of wasted space underneath and mine had a couple cracks in it… while I was repairing the cracks I realized that, if I bagged the solo components, they would lay UNDER the large tray… I got them all together, and in a small bag, laid them in the box and put the large tray on top… perfect!! I made a false bottom with some card stock in one spot where dice originally laid on top of some solo parts and added a 3/8 inch piece of foam in another to keep the remaining cards in place where I had removed the solo cards… I’m content with this solution – at least for the time being… now do I unpack it for a solo play or just read the rulebook?? Sorry – an old John Wayne movie and my office chair won out this day… but I really am excited to get this played… from what I’ve seen and read it will be incredible!!

I decided to reach out to the company with the intent of purchasing replacement parts… the link took me to North Star Games where their support page pointed me to CMYK Games so I shot them an email explaining what we’ve encountered – not really expecting a response… a couple days later I received an email from a Gmail address apologizing and asking where he should send the parts!! I replied and thanked him and asked him what I owed him and there was no charge… THANK YOU!! Support… who’d’ve thunk it?? 🙂

At the end of a round, you score points for each card that you’ve completely marked off, with the points diminishing each round from 15 in round one to 8 in round four. Then each player draws three new cards and keeps one of them.

After four rounds, you score 1 point for every two spaces X-ed on unfinished cards, then tally your points from completed cards, stars, and moons to see who has the highest score and wins.

Why (we wanted it / like it (or don’t): We’ve run across this multiple times in our bedtime video browsing and always thought it looked like fun… we love ‘roll / flip and writes’ and games with combos and that pretty much sums up this game. Julie has been feeling worse than usual but saw the box and had to play albeit from bed… of course we had to play it three times before calling it a night so, given her current condition, I’d say she really likes it… 🙂 I think you could give this game to almost anyone – regardless of how much or little they play games – and they will be able to learn it quickly and thoroughly enjoy it.

There is a lot going on in this game but, for my tastes, it all seems to make thematic sense – something I like to use when I teach a game whenever possible because it tends to make figuring out what actions to take and why you’re taking them easier to grasp… and it overflows my small card table I use for solo games to where I have to add a TV tray (below)… 🙂

There were some components I couldn’t figure out what they went with but with a little detective work I soon discovered they were variants to the solo mode or went with a particular building… I was also puzzled by a few of the nice resin pieces but eventually figured out that they replaced the 3 small cardboard tokens which I added to the baggie full of cardboard replaced in my deluxe version…

About the only thing I’m not a fan of at this point (which is totally opposite from any other game with this feature) is the dual layered board in the programming (dice selection) section of each player’s wagon… while I love a recessed board to keep pieces from sliding around, in this case it contradicts the instructions in a way…

January 26th Update… Well I’m still in the middle of that same first solo play – only because I’m stopping to verify rules and processes and also writing my notes for my ‘teach’ for when that time comes… I feel like I could get through an explanation and usually test it out on Julie or Selena first but it’s been an interesting few days…

First Selena’s been hanging out with a friend who’s fiancé tested positive last week… Selena tested Saturday and was negative but she’s been crashing in ‘the big bed’ and watching movies with Julie so, when Julie started feeling rotten, she tested and was also negative… she felt progressively worse through the weekend, tested again and it didn’t come up right either way so she just rested… she tested again Sunday and was negative but was feeling awful… she called our doctors office to try to get a ‘real’ test Monday then made the mistake of calling the Department of Health who told her she had to treat the (I think defective) odd test as a POSITIVE.. WTF?!? So now she’s in 5 days of isolation and can’t get out for a ‘real’ test…

When you put all her chronic ailments, medications and side effects together, it’s hard to tell what she actually might or might not have in terms of COVID… she’s always nauseous from meds… her temp is always around 99-100 because of her EDS… but the DoH doesn’t know any of this and. even though she told them it just feels like a head cold or allergies, they confined her so that’s what she’s done while keeping her distance from the rest of us… Oh – and Monday night Selena suddenly has a bad headache and is very nauseous but by the next morning we were sure that was self-inflicted from some Japanese salmon sushi she had Door Dashed that afternoon that ‘didn’t taste right’ as she was fine and went to class the next morning…

As for Merchants, I’m picking up on all the little things you need to remember while playing and working them into my ‘teach’ outline but most of them have reminders in the iconograpghy on the board… I’m getting the same feeling with this that I had when I prepped to teach Scythe… with that I was at a point where I didn’t need the manual at all and, after explaining the key workings in a thematic way, we were able to jump right into the game and everyone got it… I’m anxious to find out if I’m on that same track again… 🙂

January 27th Update… I just finished my first solo play… I love the game and can’t wait to have another go at it!! I learned a lot that will help me in future plays and when I eventually teach it… most of the game is spelled right out on the board and on various pieces but there are a few ‘little’ things that I just need to remember… or simply create my own player aides as I’ve done with other games…

At the very end I learned how important planning is with the night dice and thought I’d screwed myself out of a final excursion… then I remembered that everyone gets to visit a single outlying town one last time after everyone’s final turn… in the end it was close – the AI beating me by only 6 points…

I had everything setup, grabbed my notes and started the dark winter music I’d found on YouTube to set the mood… before I could read a word, Julie burst out laughing… I was crushed… I always like to try to immerse players in a game’s theme when possible and this game is dripping with theme… it took me a minute to recover, turn off the music and just proceed with my instructions…

When we started playing I could tell that my intro wasn’t in vein as Julie was moving around like she knew what she was doing… a couple times I tried to remind her of her options and she told me so… 🙂 By the end, as usual, I had been so busy watching her to make sure she understood how to do whatever she was trying to do that I had paid little attention to my own progress and she had soundly thumped me. She immediately wanted to pay again which is always a great sign that she really likes a game but I had to stop for supper and was still thinking of catching the band’s set later…

After supper she was still anxious to play so we reset the game and I threw in a couple of the Kickstarter promos I had received that don’t change the game much and we launched into game two…

That second play took us just over an hour!! The box says 2 hours and I’m sure with more players it probably would take a little more but it really is a great game. Lot’s of stuff going on but still not overly complex – a great combination. Game three played in about an hour, I won by 2 points and we called it a night. I didn’t mind missing the band because I’m always telling my girls I’d rather be doing something with them (especially a game night) whenever possible. I’ll catch the band next time.

February 9th Update… A day off from work for train drop offs, doctor appontments and testing, and breaking Mom out for a quick lunch in between… and in between all of that, Julie wants to play Merchants AGAIN!! I think it’s safe to say she likes it… I do too… 🙂

This time we brought in the AI player to simulate a third player thinking it would offer more travel opportunities… it didn’t add too much length to the game but also didn’t add travel ops like I’d read… all it really did was distract me from my game like it does when I play solo… 🙂

We played one more game before climbing into bed after a day of running around… with two players we can bang through it in about an hour and for everything that’s going on in the game that’s pretty good… 🙂

February 12th Update… I was trying to decide what to do with another Saturday night off… I hit the grocery store early this morning, dropped off some surprise treats for Mom and her Valentine card and gift, left the girls their Valentine presents this morning while they were sleeping, went back and broke Mom out for a day ride and some lunch so I was free for the afternoon and evening… a great band was playing at the local casino and I thought if Julie was up to it we would go (though she’d probably hit the slots rather than watch the band)… then there was a game night by the local group and I spent the quiet afternoon taking the dogs out occasionally and writing the 5th revision of my Merchants teach (I’m getting closer) while Selena was working and Julie was still sleeping…

I was getting excited about trying to teach the game and decided to catch the band another time, pack up Merchants and join the game night… as I was packing it up I heard Julie stirring… she was grabbing a bite and wanted to play… the packing hadn’t gone too far and I immediately setup the game for us… 🙂 We made it through just one game and I could tell she was hurting so I ushered her back to bed then proceeded to pack the myriad of pieces as I needed the table the next day to sort out and prep for my taxes… close game and we were chasing some of the same things which hasn’t happened previously… my getting to them first let me edge out the victory. 🙂

We launched into our first game and I did find myself double-checking some of the icons only to discover that I had interpreted them correctly… it was a little longer than usual because we were checking each other and corrected a couple of small scoring things we had forgotten but by the end we were flying and pulling off the possible huge combos is always fun… 🙂 It was a close game and before I could ask if she liked it, she was setting it up again… I guess that’s a ‘yes’… 🙂

It was starting to clear again late afternoon so I broke Mom out for a quick bite… on the way home I hit another squall and the winds were gusting and the temps dropping and the more I thought about trekking across the huge casino parking lot in those conditions, the less it appealed to me… fortunately Julie was still up for another game when I returned (maybe she was just waiting for her supper that I had picked up for her)…

I looked up a few rules clarifications in the BGG online forums for the game while playing Farkle with Mom… I shared my findings with Julie prior to our second play and it was a quicker and much different game… some things made more sense to us now and I’ll just need to remember them all should I teach it again… I think I may have missed marking off my 50 point turn but left it as-is and in the end Julie beat me by just about 50… I thought we both played a great game but either she played a lot better than I thought or my 50 point scoring blunder cost me the game… it matters not – it was still fun to play!! 🙂

February 20th… During the game I realized that we were still visiting the manual frequently because there are so many buildings and upgrades and, while the iconography makes more sense the more we play, we still found ourselves looking things up just to be sure… I remembered seeing a player aid in one of the BGG forums but it was 4 full pages long!! I wondered if I could get just the parts we needed condensed down to two pages so I could put the back-to-back and laminate them to make my own single page double-sided player aid… project time!!

While converting and scanning and Photoshopping I discovered the small buildings weren’t included in the one I was modeling mine after (OK – stealing parts)… this isn’t a big deal since the small buildings are pretty self-explanatory but I wanted them included with the medium and large buildings… and the upgrades… and the cards… I started laying everything out and it was going well but I took a break… Julie was in a lot of pain – some of it self-induced as she’s started working on new greenhouses for spring and summer and she always over does it… Selena worked a 12+ hour shift the day / night before so I knew she would be no fun even if she was awake so I broke Mom out of assisted living for a road trip and lunch…

When I returned I picked up on my player aid project and, with a little editing and lots of copying, pasting and cropping, I was able to get everything to fit on two pages, printed on card stock and laminated!! I couldn’t wait to use it!! Julie was up and wanted to play but it was reasonably nice out (for February in Upstate New York) and I knew she wanted to get more accomplished on the greenhouses so I encouraged her do that rather than entertain me and my game addiction…

We DID get a game in after supper and the player aid proved to be very handy!! Uh-oh… Julie was looking up an Upgrade and couldn’t find it… what do you mean ‘it’s not there’?!?.HEY – IT ISN’T ON HERE!! WTF?!?

February 21st… I’m off from school for President’s Day, was out of bed early and found the missing entry while waiting to go to my doctor and checkup (I’m very healthy AND don’t need the statin he’s been leaning towards… as long as I behave at least a little)… the player aid took some more creative copying, pasting, cropping, recoloring and actual data entry since the source file had alternating colors in each row and inserting a row would throw that pattern off but I got worked through it and when it was all over I had added the missing description and managed to make it look like it belonged – at least as close as I could come (and would accept)… now I just need to reprint it all and laminate it again… can you spot the added entry??

Here are some more shots from Whistle Mountain…

We did get one more play in before I packed it up and turned to something that has become a running joke in the family…

Will you construct the next famous landmark?

Why (we wanted it / like it (or don’t): I stumbled on this while browsing YouTube videos before falling asleep… Julie spotted it and thought it looked like fun as well… the production looks great… the idea of ‘rolling’ (throwing) your meeples (workers) into a small box and having their landing position (feet, back, side or head) determine whether they’re working or exhausted sounds like fun… throw in some push-your-luck… enough said – where’s my wallet?? 🙂

February 28th… I’ve been going over our game collection, contemplating some rearranging and considering where in the world I might put some much needed additional shelving… in doing so I’m coming across lots of great, older titles that haven’t hit the table in a while and came up with a new plan… even though some of my Kickstarter games from 1 and even 2 years ago are starting to ship, I’ll brush up on one of the old titles every so often so that when Julie feels like playing, I’ll surprise her with something different on the table… 🙂

But tonight…FINALLY… after a full day at work and some supper with Mom (and our almost nightly Farkle battle), the girls are awake and want to play so we managed to get Scooby-Doo Betrayal at Mystery Mansion to the table!! It plays a lot like the more adult original but noticeably quicker and streamlined for younger players… Julie and I already knew that when the time came and the ‘haunt’ was triggered, Selena would of course become the monster / villain… when the time came, sure enough – she took her monster instructions to the bedroom and Julie and I read the hero’s book and tried to figure out what needed to be done…

We started play – the heroes even get to go first… within a few turns I was stunned (nobody dies in this kid-friendly version) and Julie was taking hits until she made a beeline out the door and back to the Mystery Machine – leaving me stunned on the floor with no hope of recovery!! Selena and her mechanical shark henchmen took us down in short order…

It was quick and fun but obviously geared more towards a family with younger kids… there are several stories and about 25 haunts to experience and I’m anxious to see if we have another go at it so I left it setup…

March 1st… Selena crashed after class… Julie’s up and battling what the doctor is sure are allergies because apparently everyone’s allergies are going nuts with the schizophrenic weather changes but she still wants to play something… we need at least 3 to play Scooby Doo again so I packed that up… I’ve been eyeballing an expansion that I got for Julie to one of our favorite games over a year ago – the Oceania Expansion for Wingspan – and realizing that I got her new playmats for it this past Christmas and we still hadn’t got it to the table… IT WAS TIME!! Time to bring the base game and BOTH expansions all together for a play!! 🙂

I had already been reading the latest expansions rule and watching some videos to get a better feel for it so I was ready for Julie… As soon as she saw it on the table I could hear the excitement in her voice!! Oh yeah – this new plan is going to be fun!! 🙂

I had forgotten that I had also ordered upgraded wooden food tokens to replace the original cardboard discs – including the new Nectar from the new expansion… they looked great on the table and I had already removed all the old pieces and mats from the original AND the expansion in order to get everything (but the mats) to fit in the base box… a quick refresher of the original rules and the new rules and we jumped in!!

By the end of the second round it was obvious that we both remembered the game and were both quiet and plotting moves…

As we were tallying scores, Julie kept saying how I’d kicked her butt but in the end, I only won by 3 points… if I didn’t have to get up for work so early we would have played again right then but I left it setup – just in case…

March 1st… Julie was anxious to play again after supper and I’m almost always game for a game so we shuffled the now hundreds of bird card, swapped out new goals and objectives and jumped right in again!!

Towards the end of the game I remembered one of the frustrating (in a good way) things about the game… if you don’t plan far enough ahead (which is nearly impossible with all those cards) the game quite often ends with at least one player (usually more) wishing there was just one more round… We love it!! Great game!! Highly recommended!!!

March 5th… Julie was bugging me to play most of the morning and I was trying to get her to rest so I could get my banking checked and finished… she did nod off briefly but was up again after lunch and by then I was ready too…

We already had Space Base ready to go so we took turns winning at that… OK, she kicked my butt so bad – almost doubling my pathetic score – that I HAD to play again… In the second game I managed to get my own sort of engine built narrowly come away with a victory… 🙂

Julie still doesn’t remember ever playing this but I had already decided, after our play the previous night, to give her a little game history lesson about these types of games where someone rolls dice on their turn but EVERYONE potentially gets stuff based on that roll… Settlers of Catan (now called simply ‘Catan’) was the first that I remember playing that did this but I could think of two more in our collection besides Space Base – Machi Koro and, the most recent, last year’s My Farm Shop…

Here are the key similarities…

• in Catan, the player whose turn it is rolls two dice… the TOTAL of the numbers rolled indicate which areas produce resources and all player who’ve built in those regions gain those resources
• in Machi Koro players can only roll a single die until they’ve constructed their Train Station (one of the 4 ‘landmarks’ need to win the game) after which they have the OPTION of rolling one or both die but if they roll both, they MUST use the total
• in Space Base, on the player’s turn they roll two dice BUT here ALL PLAYERS can CHOOSE to use them individually (activating two sectors) or together (to active a single sector)… when Space Base was released, some in the hobby called it a ‘Machi Koro killer’ meaning they wouldn’t play Machi Koro again because Space Base had a better dice mechanic (in their opinion)
• and finally, My Farm Shop with maybe the most unique twist on this premise yet… here, on a player’s turn, they roll THREE dice, remove one to pick a card from the market to upgrade their farm then EVERYONE adds the remaining dice together and activates that location on their farms… when this was released many crowned it the ‘Machi Koro AND Space Base killer’ because it took it further that either of its’ predecessors

My goal for today was to get a game or two of each in to demonstrate the similarities – the ‘pedigree’ if you will – so next up was Machi Koro…

She had set herself up with a few cards early where anytime I rolled a 3 I had to give her money!! It’s a 6 sided die but do you think I could roll anything besides 3’s?? Not bloody often… 🙂 It made it impossible for me to have any cash on hand to build out my own city and she won easily…

In this game, players only roll a single die until they build their Train Station (one of the 4 landmarks needed to win) – then you have the option of rolling 1 or both die on your turn…

I attempted to counter Julie’s persistent ‘robbery’ by getting some of the higher numbered buildings in play thinking that rolling 2 die would keep me from having to pay her almost every turn… I need to do some research on the odds of rolling a 1 and a 2 because I rolled it more than I care to think about… I think I had just constructed my 2nd landmark when Julie finished her 4th with a big grin and a not-so-sincere ‘sorry’… 🙂

Again, I wanted one more play to prove my gaming domination… OK, I know Julie likes to keep playing once she learns a game so we played once more before shifting to My Farm Shop… it didn’t take long as I shifted to higher numbered buildings early – banking on a couple big paydays from combos I had setup… they were a little slow to come (at least I wasn’t rolling 3’s again) but they hit back-to-back a couple times and I was able to knock out my most expensive landmarks in consecutive turns – ending the game… 🙂

We left it setup because she really wants to play again tomorrow and I want to throw in the last of the modules we haven’t tried… we’ll see… we’re taking a day trip so she can visit her Mom who suffers from Dementia and last fall was placed in a facility a little over an hour away… and it’s going to be over 50 for the first time in months so she’ll probably want to work on her greenhouses when we get home… 🙂

March 6th… today Julie got to see her Mom for the first time in several months since she was placed in a facility due to extreme bouts of Dementia… I’m happy to report that her Mom is doing well!! She’s looking better than she has in a long time and is getting around surprisingly well after dropping a lot of weight… the best part was she was having a good day and recognized everyone… 🙂

As I predicted, it was blue skies and mid-50’s so Julie let the dogs play outside while she worked on her greenhouses… she no sooner cam through the door and was asking if I was ready to play… I finished up what I was working on and we got in two games before supper – both of which I lost… 🙂 And that concludes this weekend’s lesson on dice placement with simultaneous action triggers or whatever the people in the know call it… all we know is that, while they share some similarities in gameplay, they are very different and we really like all three of them.

Julie was happy though because the white cubes fit in great with her crafting area that’s taken over the living room… when I ventured out to Lowe’s after the snow storm Saturday night to pick this unit up I also got her three of the canvas drawers for her new cubes which she loved… took her mind off her coughing, throat, and drippy nose…

Now BRING ON THOSE KICKSTARTERS!!! 🙂

March 15th… OK – this was a little creepy after my last statement… today UPS pulls up as Selena and I are about to go shopping for corn beef and cabbage and all that goes with it… I thank the driver, take the box and check the label as I head back towards the house… it’s for ME!! I haven’t ordered anything… I had to tear into the box before we left (or I could have just read ‘Dead Reckoning‘ on the box as Selena pointed out)… It’s a Kickstarter from back in July of 2020 that I didn’t even know this was shipping!! I can’t wait to dig through it but we have shopping to do first…

March 22nd… I’m just getting some time to get back to this game… it took me a couple days to sort and pack… I must say that the production is a mix of extremes – mostly having to do with the cardboard…

Some pieces punch out better than any I’ve ever seen while others are reminiscent of the cheapest game imaginable… very odd… the cardboard layers on a couple of the player board were separating just from being punched out… a little Elmer’s glue and a flat weight got them back in shape… and at first I couldn’t figure out why I had TWO battle boards and ships (pictured above) – one shrink wrapped loose in the shipping box and another in the game box… then I remembered that the second was part of the Kickstarter – a green painted ‘Ghost’ ship… the problem is only one fits in the box…

Speaking of the box, some of the storage solutions are amazing – thematically useful within the game but equally as useful when it’s time to pack up… pretty impressive!! Then there are others of course that feel like they dropped the ball completely… the battle tray (above with the ship) needs to be assembled and taken apart each play in order to fit in the box… meanwhile almost a quarter of the box is dedicated to a flimsy box that holds one of the ships… this box does have a thin piece of cardboard inside reinforcing three sides so other pieces placed on top won’t crush the box but that is meant to be removed which defeats the purpose… I cut a notch in mine to accommodate the bow of the ship so it now fits with the reinforcement still inside…

Speaking of the ship… I was happy I had two ships as I almost destroyed the first one trying to get it together with only the pictograms on the back of its storage box to go by… this prompted me to visit the BGG forums where I discovered that a lot of people were struggling with this (some never found the instructions) and others mentioned some of the same quality issues I had encountered and various MISSING PIECES… this made me slow down and count every piece… thankfully my box was complete…

So it’s been several days of counting, checking, Elmer’s glue, exacta knife trimming, more glue and waiting for it all to dry and find an alternative packing before I could even crack the rule book open… though I did watch a number of videos before going to bed some nights… 🙂 I still can’t wait to play it!!

March 29… Julie had an oncology appointment at St. Peters in Albany and I usually drive her down for these… depending on how she was feeling after I thought we’d grab something to eat and maybe hit Flipside Gaming since we were so close… I didn’t know that that was HER plan as well… 🙂 We left St. Peters about 3:45pm and before I finished asking she blurted out ‘GAME STORE’… fine by me… I had a couple extra bucks and thought I might find something for my birthday…

I had a couple games in mind going in and spotted one of them as soon as I got through the door… then, as usual, a friendly voice from behind the counter asked if he could help us find anything to which I smiled and replied, “No, thank you – I can get in plenty of trouble on my own.” 🙂

Julie and Selena had surprised me (I mean REALLY surprised me) with the 2017’s Gloomhaven this past Christmas… it’s a real beast that I haven’t attempted yet as I’m still reading and watching videos on how best to store it best for packing and unpacking for subsequent plays, etc… and there’s a huge time commitment as well as a gigantic rules overhead that’s a little intimidating… One of the things I keep seeing repeatedly is that 2021’s Gloomhaven: Jaws of the Lion is an incredible game on it’s own that thematically takes place BEFORE the original Gloomhaven AND is an excellent way to learn BOTH games!! They say that, when you’ve finished this one, you’re fully ready to play the big one.

Julie walked right into Gloomhaven: Jaws of the Lion when we came in, pointed it out and I told her the story and what I’d been hearing and we went on to check the big shelves… I was making my second trip through – spotting more and more games every minute when I noticed Julie had disappeared… then I spotted her at the counter and knew she was up to something…

.AWARDS & HONORS

• 2021 Kennerspiel des Jahres Recommended
• 2021 International Gamers Award Two-player Nominee
• 2021 Goblin Magnifico Winner
• 2021 Goblin Magnifico Nominee
• 2020 Guldbrikken Best Expert Game Winner
• 2020 Golden Geek Heavy Game of the Year Winner
• 2020 Golden Geek Heavy Game of the Year Nominee
• 2020 Golden Geek Best Thematic Board Game Winner
• 2020 Golden Geek Best Thematic Board Game Nominee
• 2020 Golden Geek Best Solo Board Game Nominee
• 2020 Golden Geek Best Cooperative Game Winner
• 2020 Golden Geek Best Cooperative Game Nominee
• 2020 Dragon Awards Best Science Fiction or Fantasy Board Game Nominee

Why (we wanted it / like it (or don’t): Well this one is just for me – at least for the most part… As much as we’ve all learned about games and mechanisms since discovering the hobby years ago (games we struggled to wrap our heads around back then feel like child’s play now), I really feel like I’m going to need help before entering this universe and hopefully bringing one or both of the girls with me… this game will serve as the tutorial for the big one!!

March 29 Update… by the time we’d eaten and got home we were both pretty tired but of course I had to crack the plastic on my birthday presents and convinced Julie to give The Game: Face To Face a try since she could do it from bed… three game later I was ready for bed. It was easy to learn and fun to play so I’m guessing that, anytime we’re in the mood for a quick game, this will be it.

March 31… where does the time go?? Today I turned 62!!

Despite the off-and-on rain showers, girls wanted to treat me by lighting our grill… I picked Mom up on the way home, stopped off at my brother’s so he and his wife could get a piece of JoJo’s amazing cake and to pick up my birthday presents from them and the ones Mom had him order for me, then it was home for the grill!!

The food was great, the presents were wonderful and it even started to clear by the time we finished eating… and we were stuffed!!

I ran Mom back to assisted living and when I returned home Selena and a couple friends were still there (they had said they were leaving)… I walked inside to find a table setup and they were all waiting for me to play Wingspan!! I was shocked!! It was a great surprise but I wasn’t prepared to teach it to her friends who were beginners and I was ready for bed having been up since 4:30am… my head was spinning… how should I approach it?? Should I suggest a different game?? What game would I pick?? I ended up fumbling my way through a very bad teach of Wingspan…

It was slow going but still fun… at the end of the 2nd round one of Selena’s friends had to leave which was a great time to stop the game… I hope they had fun despite my poor instructions… Julie and I talked after and she explained that she and Selena were scrambling to find games that would work with 5 players… I told her they needed to pick an easier game but I couldn’t think of one… then it came to me, the original Ticket To Ride would have been perfect… oh well… 🙂

April 1 Update… Mom had a couple doctor appointments today so I’m off from work again… cardiologist today and no one can believe she’s about to turn 90… she is in excellent health, thankfully!! She’s had COVID TWICE and never knew it… she behaved at the doctors and wanted to shop after so we hit the smaller of the local Walmart where she picked up groceries and her outfit for her 90th birthday party in June… then we grabbed some lunch before dropping her back off at assisted living…

When I got home, Julie was working on her greenhouses and gardening and had the dogs outside, Selena was visiting a chocolatier in North Creek so I took advantage of the quiet and grabbed a short nap. I got up about the same time Julie finished then after supper she was ready for another go at The Game: Face To Face… after a couple games I convinced (OK – I BEGGED) her to try Dead Reckoning…

I didn’t have any notes for a teach but thought I could get through it… I thought I was doing OK but Julie obviously wasn’t impressed so we jumped into the game… I took my first turn and could see some things starting to make sense to her… she started her turn and the phone rang… Selena was just finishing serving late at her culinary class but was upset about something… then we learned that her new boyfriend had dumper her… via text… while she was working… with that we stopped the game and waited for her to come home for some much needed hugs… 🙁

April 2… a quiet afternoon and Julie’s asking if I have ‘pirates’ or ‘cubes’ setup… I didn’t though I had just gone through and repacked Cubitos (I may switch to a plastic case like I did with Hallertau) so I unpacked and set it up and we played while Selena was off to a job interview… we stopped while I took Mom out for supper, finished when I returned, then played two more full games… it’s every bit as cute as it looked and sounded and now I can’t wait to try some of the other dice powers (each of the 8 colored dice has 8 different special power cards that can be changed each game)… it really was fun and quick!!

April 3… Selena keeps asking to play ‘Pirates’ (I know she means ‘Dead Reckoning‘ too) and I think I have it just about figured out after a very abbreviated play with Julie… I start to set it up only to find that everyone is napping again… I eat and play Farkle online with Mom and am thinking I’ll just head for bed when Selena emerges from her slumber and asks if we’re going to play… knowing I can sleep in a little in the morning because I’m taking her to a Rheumatologist appointment in Albany, I break it out and we start putting everything together…

When Julie and I tried it, it wouldn’t fit on the square card table and we had to add a TV tray for the overflow but it sort of worked… tonight Selena and I tried a longer table… I threw down my neoprene game mat over it and it still was a tough fit but we made it work and managed to get through about half a game – maybe more – before I ran out of gas… there was a lot of checking the rule book to make sure we were doing things right which we were for the most part… the goal became to reset and get a full play in the next day but it was obvious that she was really into it… 🙂

April 4… I was up early as usual – planning to be on the road by 8:00am for Selena’s appointment… the more I thought about the timing of the day – by the time we eat and get home and she falls asleep, then I eat and head for bed to be up early for work tomorrow – there was no way we’d be playing tonight so I reset all the cards and packed everything back on the shelf.

The day went pretty much as I had anticipated other than an abbreviated Farkle match with Mom so she could unpack a giant box of yarn someone had sent her… it was about 6:20pm and Selena was up and still wanted to play… I can’t deny my ‘Peanut’ (and I wanted to play too of course)… I told her we’d see how far we’d get by 8:30pm… at 8:27 she plopped down her 2nd and 3rd achievements – the latter being the Capitalist achievement for amassing 30+ coins in her secret chest!! I need to get in gear!! At 8:28 she dropped her 4th – ending the game!! I already knew she was so far ahead in coins that I couldn’t rebound… so I attacked her ship on my final turn… WHILE IT WAS IN PORT!! This gave her all kinds of extra cubes for the battle board (because the harbor master doesn’t stand for this attacking stuff) but it was still a fun way to end the game… I’m guessing she’ll want to play again tonight but at some point this week I need to get at least one play of Merchants of the Dark Road in to make sure I’m ready to teach it at Adirondicon this weekend!! 🙂

April 5… I came home after a long day of work only to be greeted by heavy box… could it be another one of my long overdue Kickstarters??

Planet Unknown innovates on the popular polyomino trend by allowing simultaneous yet strategic turn-based play via the Lazy S.U.S.A.N. space station in the center of the table. The game also condenses a 3-hour medium weight game into about 70 minutes for 1-6 players no matter the player count. Curious how we do it, follow along until launch!

Why (we wanted it / like it (or don’t): I’ve watched the playthrough and review a couple times now and it looks very interesting… and Julie and I like the Tetris-y style games like Cottage Garden, BarenPark, etc… after my last viewing (and a check of my bank account) I decided it was doable and worth it. Can’t wait to actually play it!!  🙂

April 7th Update… I’m growing increasingly nervous about running Merchants of the Dark Road this weekend at Adirondicon… I’ve been reviewing my notes and really want to set it up once more before the convention but (surprise… NOT) Selena wants to play Dead Reckoning again and Julie is saying that she wants to play if we play (despite her not liking to learn games – especially longer or more complicated games)… we definitely needed our big folding table for 3 of us to get around it and Selena set that up while I finished eating and my nightly online Farkle thrashing from Mom… 🙂

I tried to walk Julie through it once more but it was just overwhelming her so I laid out the basics and started the game… Selena was on her side of the table and would help her through her first turn or two until she was comfortable… a few turns later Selena was trying to show her something and Julie told her, “No – I got it”… I warned Selena to lookout… when Julie gets quiet in a game it means she knows what she’s doing and the rest of us are usually screwed… 🙂 For the rest of the game she pieced things together and I could tell she had plans in place – only stopping to verify that what she thought the cards would do was correct and for the most part she was spot on…

That freed Selena up to focus on her own evil plans and it wasn’t long before the Achievement markers started coming out AGAIN!! I need to keep a closer eye on her… either she’s misusing some of the cards (OK – cheating) or I need to learn her approach because she seems to accomplish more than anyone else each game… maybe she’s just that much smarter than us at this point… 🙂

She dropped her 4th Achievement marker triggering the end of the game then moved to my location to attack ne as part of her last turn… I started begging her, “C’mon – DO IT!! Attack me!! It’s the last turn… it will be fun… ATTACK ME!!” At this point she backed off and was going to attack a Merchant ship or Julie but I think me calling her ‘Chicken of the Sea’ (after an old brand of tuna fish) and my relentless CLUCKING goaded her into attacking me!!

She proudly went through her cards for the turn and her ship, counted and proudly produced 8 cannons which equates to 8 cubes for battle… after a moment I smiled and started pulling cubes from my supply for each cannon I had… 2 from my ship… 3 from this card… 1 for each wheel on this card is another 3… 4 from this card… wait – she’s attacking me on my island where I have a fort so that’s another 5 for me… a couple more cards and I was over 20 cannons!! AND a Battle Ability let me add 2 more when we hit that phase… she filled her hand with all the cubes and dropped them into the ship and when they settled on the Battle Board I had a couple exploding cubes which gets me those back, adds a cube for each and I drop them again… I won the battle as you might expect but in the process she sank my ship and I limped back to port before my final turn…

Julie had a much less exciting final turn and we went through the game scoring but already knew who had won… Julie ended the game with 41 coins to my 45… Selena had 71 coins and is not allowed to play with us anymore… 🙂

I think Julie enjoyed it once she finally wrapped her head around it… I’ll know for sure if she asks to play again in the next few days…

April 9 – Adirondack Tabletop Day 2022… After several days and (as many revisions to my teaching notes) today was the day I would teach Merchants of the Dark Road to strangers!!

I had checked the signups in the days leading up to today and was a little disappointed that no one had signed up… I checked in, got my badge and went to find the sign up sheets and my assigned table… one person had signed up… then crossed their name off… 🙁

I found my table but there was a sizable game just getting ready to start… I knew they wouldn’t be done in time for me to setup… at the next table was Wendy – one of the organizers… she had no one sign up for her scheduled game and offered up her table to me and would just switch the signs on the tables… this worked out perfectly as I was just finishing setting up when a gentleman named Patrick came back and was looking over the board, asked a couple questions then went to sign up!! At least I’ll have one person but I hadn’t intended to play… luckily Selena had come along to get some pictures of everything for the group and eagerly jumped in so I could run a 2 player game… sidenote… as it turned out my original table was still PLAYING when I kicked off my game… thank you, Wendy!!

Patrick was obviously a ‘gamer’ and thankfully patient with my teach as I was once again shaking to the point where I couldn’t hold my notes… not as bad as the last time I did this (a few years ago) though I did calm down a little quicker this year…

As the game went on I could tell he was getting it and became less and less necessary for me to spell out options each turn for him as well as Selena… I reminded both of them of the unique scoring to the game and a few other things to make sure there were no surprises at the end and we finished ahead of schedule (though it might have been different with more players) with Patrick winning fairly easily… very nice guy… he said he enjoyed the game very much which was a relief… I packed up the game and Selena her camera and we headed for home.

I should mention that the con was pretty well attended and the Charles W. Wood theater lobby and Cabaret room made for a nice location though the game tables might have been a little close together which made it hard to hear at times… otherwise we had a great time.

In the picture above I had it setup for a 3 player game but Julie wasn’t feeling great so Selena and I gave it a try… about the only difference between the 2 player version and higher players counts is that, with more players, each round one player is the Commander (gold wings above) and can rotate the Space Station – a lazy Susan type device holding all the tiles and dividing them into zones – to the zone with the particular tile desired and all other players have to choose from whatever is in the zone in front of them and everyone places a tile somewhere on their planet… then the Commander token moves to the next player who then controls the Space Station and so on and so on… in the 2 player game the Space Station is randomly set in a starting position… then turns one zone each round… this is the sort of beginner level but we found it to be a lot of fun and also challenging… HOWEVER…

The Deluxe Edition comes with 8 planet boards and 8 corporation trackers… one side is the same for everyone BUT the flip sides have dramatically different planets and corporations and get randomly paired up so you never know what the plant or corporation might do to the base rules… We had no sooner finished our first game and Selena asked to try with the different planets…I told her I didn’t know if I was ready for that but why not?

We flipped the boards we had and started reading the asymmetrical (each player is different) powers, goals and restrictions that these plant and corporation boards threw at us… maybe I was just tired but I thought my brain was melting at first glance – Selena too!! Then we read everything again and it started making sense… it was great fun and tossed a few curve balls at us that we really enjoyed…

I was surprised to see this game already appearing in several content creator’s top games lists but after playing it, I totally get it. This game has jumped towards the front of my list of games I’d teach someone new to the hobby!!

April 11… Julie was up to playing tonight so I taught her Planet Unknown and, as I suspected, she loved it!! I think she might have gotten a little too caught up in driving the rover around because she didn’t complete a lot of rows but we had a great time playing… and it’s still setup… maybe the three of us will try it tonight and really put the Commander benefits to the test… 🙂

April 12… I’m shutting down and getting ready to head for bed when Selena comes in and wants to play Planet Unknown again… CERTAINLY!! 🙂

This time I unpacked all the player planets and corporations, mixed them up and we each chose a random combination and each had game conditions we’d never seen before… after some reading and interpreting we were able to help each other figure out our new rule changes and start the game… we also added a 2 player variation that I had read online which sounded interesting…

In games with more than 2 players, whoever is the Commander each turn gets to turn the Space Station containing all the tiles to a depot with the exact tile they want while other players have to choose from whatever is in front of them (in a regular 2 player game it just turns 1 space from where it starts for the whole game)… the variation I found gives each player the Commander’s selection ability on their turn then rolls a die in between each player to randomly turn it – simulating another player… we tried it and it worked really well!!

As for the game and our asymmetrical planets and corporations, it really makes for a more challenging game… in the base game where everyone plays the same boards it seems like we’re able to focus on laying tiles and moving rovers to clean the planet… in the advanced game it seems like the focus shifts (which may be just how we are playing it) and more time is spent taking advantage of the new powers than covering the planet’s surface… I know the points from the planet have been significantly lower as was the case in our game tonight… we both only managed 5 or 6 points from the planet and got the rest from CIV cards and end game bonuses and in the end – with two very different approaches – we tied!!

This really is a great design… quick and easy, fun yet brain-burning… this will come with me to my next game night… 🙂

April 13… the girls are up from their afternoon naps and BOTH want to play!! We haven’t tried Planet Unknown with 3 players yet and Julie hasn’t tackled the asymmetric boards but we started with a standard game…

I had everyone blind draw a planet with the generic side up… same with the corporation board and I wouldn’t let anyone look at the backs – my plan being to flip them after the first game when everyone would learn their combination for the second game… it was fun for Selena and I but more so for Julie who hadn’t seen the flip sides and had no idea what to expect… once we all sorted out our planet and corporation’s specific rules and benefits we launched into the game… and Selena cleaned our clock… what else is new?? 🙂

At first we thought we were doing well then we hit something we didn’t understand… when we finally found it, it all made sense and we reset everything and started over… and… GO!!

This time we had patients outpatients coming in and being treated and it was going so smoothly that we admitted a patient… who was in critical condition… and needed TWO MRI’s!! We had less than a minute left in the round when we started the first one and realized that we wouldn’t be able to get the second one in… the time went off and we started going through our patients…

We had 20 Medical Points to use for the whole game (that’s on EASY level)… we missed a treatment on this patient… one too many pills on that one… this one needed 2 IV’s and we only did 1… we were already under 10 Medical points when we checked our patient in the OR and realized we had killed him which cost us 8 points and the game… our hospital got shutdown in the FIRST ROUND!!! Selena immediately started resetting everything… she was hooked… 🙂

Our third game went much better… we were more calculated and focused… we got our surgical patient admitted early and were able to successfully treat everyone who came through our door – winning the game by reaching the necessary number of Achievement Points in only 3 rounds!! With that we called it a night… shift work is tough… 🙂

April 19… The area got hit with a freak mid-April snow storm!! We had 4-5 inches of the wettest, heaviest snow imaginable but I was up and headed for work after clearing the van…

The roads were mostly wet when I got on the Interstate but just one exit south I hit roads that didn’t appear to have been touched!! The slushy ruts were deep and tossing the van around as I attempted to slow down… As I approached my exit (the next one south) the slush was getting deeper and I could see the tell-tale lights of the back of a state trooper’s car… when I rounded the bend I could see and ambulance, a fire truck and another trooper… I was creeping along at this point – trying to see if the exit was open… then I saw a car a little ahead creep down the ramp and followed suit… it appeared that a tree had fallen across the road and some poor driver (probably going too fast as most do) ran right into it, lost control and went off the road just past the exit…

I made my way to the end of the ramp and waited for the temporary (construction) traffic light to change but struggled to get any traction in that deep, wet crap… I eventually made it on to the main road only to find my next turn blocked because of another tree down… I proceeded to my alternate route (after 16 years I can find my way to work several different ways) but that was blocked off too… with that I made the decision to just burn a vacation day (I always give back a week or two every year) and headed home…

The lights flickered a couple times and I received alerts from National Grid that there were power outages near me but ours thankfully stayed on… It was after 10:00am before the first plow ever went past our house… by the time I finished lunch our driveway was already bare and the lawn had started peeking through… by supper it was all gone though I read reports of other areas that were pounded… over 15 inches of this slop that took down trees and wires and closed roads all over the north country!!

Selena had no problems getting to class later in the morning and when she returned in the afternoon was ready for another shift of Rush M.D. – this time with Julie too!! I ran through it all with her and she was fine though I saved the best for last – that we only had 4 minutes for each round… after she recovered from that bit of news we launched into the game and it was chaos personified… 🙂 Of course we killed a patient in the first round but quickly learned from our mistakes and the subsequent rounds went very smooth and we even won the game pretty easily (on easy level). I thought they’d want to play again but Julie headed for bed and Selena asked to play ‘pirates’ (Dead Reckoning) again but, by the time I had this one packed, everyone was asleep… EDS and their other ailments tend to make them tire quicker so I put it back on the shelf and went in a different direction…

I told her I didn’t know if we’d finish before I headed for bed but I’d forgotten how quick the game plays… the box says 30 minutes / player but even that seemed long as it felt like we were in the final round in no time… she crushed me of course but I left it setup in case she wants to play again… Julie was up to grab a bite to eat and had the same expression as Selena (she doesn’t remember playing it)… so, with any luck, I might get a game in with both my girls in the next day or two… 🙂

May 6… Mild rant before I return to the game log…

The price of literally EVERYTHING is through the roof!! The highest inflation ever seen!! EVER!! Gas is currently around $4.70 / gallon while diesel is at $6.69!! I fully expect to be paying $5 / gallon or more by Memorial Day in just a few weeks… One report I read showed Exxon and Chevron recording records profits in the BILLIONS over the past year!!

But it’s not just fuel… my regular trips to the grocery store now cost DOUBLE what they used to… my zero sugar Pepsi (one of the few indulgences my doctor approves of) that used to cost under $4 for a small case now costs $7… everything is out of control and it seems like anytime some politician says they’re doing ‘x, y and z’ to ‘help’ the American consumer, the prices go up even more…

Then there’s the recent(?) uptick in COVID cases… I question my use of the term ‘recent’ to describe it because I’m sure it’s been getting worse for about a year – IF it ever got better… NY state stopped all tracking… they just gave up because their poorly thought out, executed and implemented plan was a complete failure… now the only numbers they have to base their guidance (or utter lack thereof) come from overflowing hospitals… yet everything remains open without restrictions… well, the Governor DID ‘recommend’ that people ‘should’ wear a mask at any indoor events… thanks for that groundbreaking piece of advice and for taking a hard stand to help stop the spread… a week later she tested positive… sometimes you just have to let karma kick in…

OK – rant over… and with all this going on I did one of the more irresponsible things I’ve done since I was a kid… I backed one more Kickstarter… Wayfarers of the South Tigris!! 🙂

Why (we wanted it / like it (or don’t): Back in 2018 I would visit my friendly local game store and kept getting drawn to a Viking game I knew nothing about… I passed on it a few times but had gone back and watched a number of videos on it before ultimately snagging it… the game was part of a trilogy of games from (at the time) an unknown publisher and designers… that game was Raiders of the North Sea… Raiders set the worker placement mechanic on its ear by not only granting an action when you placed a worker but also giving players a second action when, as part of the same turn, they REMOVED a different worker!! You could almost see reviewer’s heads exploding as they pondered why no one had thought of this sooner… While the other two games in this particular trilogy were quickly forgotten (and rightfully so), this one made a huge splash!! And with the addition of 2 expansions that would follow, the game became a ‘must-have’ for many gamers including myself.

The following year (2019) the same designers and publisher (Shem Phillips and S.J. McDonald and Garphil Games – all from New Zealand) released Architects of the West Kingdom… after Raiders of the North Sea this was very high on my radar and I ordered it for the girls to give me for Christmas… 🙂 And once again our minds were blown by the design!! This time, unlike other games where you might gradually gain an additional worker or two as the game progresses, you START the game with ALL 20 of your workers!! You place them out to various spots to gain resources and benefits and on subsequent turns you can place additional workers on the same spots to increase the gains… to further twist the mechanism, you can’t take your workers back… HOWEVER other workers can stop you from piling up benefits by arresting groups of your workers and put them in prison for money!! THEN you can release them to get them back and use again… brilliant!!

We loved it!! So much so that a few months later I backed my first Kickstarter – the second game in this West Kingdom trilogy Paladins of the West Kingdom… another amazing and totally different game!! Then in 2020 I had to back the final installment in the trilogy Viscounts of the West Kingdom!! We love all three of these games and would be a difficult decision to pick a favorite of the group which brings me to my latest dilemma… with the economic climate being what it is, could I afford to back the first game in their new South Tigris trilogy… to Garphil’s credit, they don’t load up a deluxe version with all sorts of fancy bits… the game is the game and about the only upgrade is metal coins… that approach keeps the game – even with the metal coins – at a price point we could afford so yesterday I backed Wayfarers of the South Tigris!! After I backed Viscounts I wrote a comment on their Kickstarter page – letting them know how much of a fan I had become and telling them that if they announced that their next game was ‘Whack A Worm With A Wet Noodle’ I would still back it. 🙂

Paris is a typical medium-weight Kramer and Kiesling Eurostyle-game with straightforward gameplay, short player turns, and an ingenious point salad mechanism. You mainly score points by obtaining the right buildings and collecting the right bonus cards.

In Paris, you take on the role of wealthy real estate investors in the Paris of the 1900s. Paris is at the height of its transformation into one of the most beautiful cities in the world. After having successfully organized the World Fair in 1889, topped by the construction of the Eiffel Tower and celebrating the centennial of the Storming of the Bastille, Paris goes through a period known as “la Belle Époque”. The architecture of Paris created during this period ranged from the Beaux-Arts, neo-Byzantine, and neo-Gothic to Art Nouveau and Art Deco. It is your task to purchase some of these magnificent Parisian buildings in order to make a profit and invest in the development and upkeep of some of Paris’ most iconic buildings and landmarks.

Why (we wanted it / like it (or don’t): From the first time I laid eyes on this game I thought of our daughter Selena who grew up loving all things Paris and I’m sure, given the chance, she’d visit there like a shot… the game itself looks fantastic and everything I’ve seen makes me think it plays equally as well… I have no idea why I never added this to our collection but I was watching a recent Crowdsurfing video from the Dice Tower that weekly explores projects ending in the next week or two and they talked about the expansion for Paris and the campaign was almost over… the timing was right since I had some extra cash so… The delivery date was supposed to be December of last year so it was intended to be a nice Christmas gift for my little ‘Peanut’ who turns 22 in a few weeks… wow!! She’ll be happy it’s arrived but I’m still trying to decide if I should wrap it… of course I did… 🙂

As for the expansion… that’s Paris l’Étoile…

(from the campaign): A few years have passed since the events of Paris. You have invested in many of Paris’ most prestigious building and landmarks, and have made quite the name for yourself. But that does not mean you can rest on your laurels: shrewd foreign investors have set their eye on the French capital, eager to become important players as well in the Parisian real estate market. The most coveted properties are all centred around the most famous roundabout in the world: La Place de l’Étoile, which features the iconic Arc de Triomphe, which looks down on the Champs-Élysées. They are up for quite the challenge since your experience will give you unique advantages over your opponents.

My gut feeling is that this expansion makes a great game (that really didn’t need more) even better and I can’t wait to share it with my girls – especially Selena who still has a giant Eifel Tower on her wall… 🙂

STOP RIGHT THERE!! Before you scroll down to see the pictures and our first play experience, I have to point out the the production on the Deluxe Edition that I ordered is absolutely incredible!! Of course I ordered the metal coins for it (Selena and I love our metal coins) and the cutout wooden keys are very nice but EVERY card, building tile and resource – EVERYTHING except the player screens and the game board itself, are 1/8th inch+ thick, glossy-finished tiles that actually ‘clack’ together like poker chips during play!! When I was unpacking I showed them to the girls we all thought these were very cool!! Turns out they’re easier to pickup and move during the game too… WOW!! What a production!!! Just wanted you to keep that in mind as you look at the flat carboard pieces below… 🙂

May 15… Selena worked a 13 hour wedding yesterday so I figured she’d be sleeping all day but she was up around 11:30 and made bacon and grilled cheese sandwiches for lunch which I loved… after a short nap and taking the dogs out (she claims to give me time to read the rules), she was up again and wanted to play… and I was ready for her… 🙂

The rules and the game are pretty easy – you only have a couple options on your turn but they make you think… you’re pretty much buying buildings and landmarks to establish control of a district by owning the most buildings and the player wit the most keys gets the most points at the end of the game

• you MUST blind draw and place a building in the district and location in which it belongs… there’s an ‘advanced’ variant where you can place the building in ANY district as long as it doesn’t already have a building of that type which could lead to situations where a drawn building can’t be placed and is discarded
• you CAN place a key on the bank in one of the 6 districts and collect the associated amount of Francs (sort of like applying for a loan to buy a building) OR
• you move a key – either from the bank to a building and buy it for the indicated cost or from a lower cost building in the district to a higher cost one and pay only the difference in their costs (essentially selling a building and putting the money towards a better one)… you can also move to an available landmark, again pay the difference then add that landmark to that district

Lower cost building let you move along a Bonus track… you can go forward as many spaces as you like if you have your eye on a specific bonus BUT you can never go backward and once you reach the end of the track you can’t collect further bonuses…

The expansion added more Bonus cards and the option to shuffle them in with the ones from the base game and randomly place them out which we thought worked well (also the bonuses are never in the same place each game and some bonues end up back in the box before the game starts)… ALSO there are now some special power cards!! Everyone gets one to start BUT if you place a key on the Arch in the center, you can swap it with one of the other available powers… this is cool on a couple levels… first, you’re not stuck with a power you have no interest in using or becomes less useful as the game progresses and second (and more important), it makes a previously little used option more attractive!! You see, in the base game, placing a key on the Arch gains you no money but lets you move the key to a building in any of the 6 districts on a subsequent turn… this could be helpful but money makes the world go around and getting 0 Francs for going there makes me wonder if it would ever be used… NOW however, with the added ability to swap special powers, this becomes something to keep in mind!!

When it was all over Selena beat me as usual but we both really liked the game!! So much so it’s still setup for when our work schedules allow a rematch or Julie is feeling up to learning it… Excellent game!!

May 20… Julie felt like a game and Selena was home after getting some extra hours at her new gig as a baker at the Lake George Club… I still had Paris and the expansion setup so I reset for 3 players, ran through the rules with Julie and she seemed to enjoy it… that was backed up by her asking to play again a couple days later but, after my first gig in 6 months, I had a full day of drum corps camp in 90+ heat to get through… yeah – I ended up showering and going to bed… 🙂

May 27… Well it was over 3 months in the making but I was finally able to teach and play Merchants of the Dark Road with my sister-in-law… and she trounced me… 🙂 In the end of the game you compare your prestige score with your money that had been secret up until that point and the LOWER of the two is your base score used to calculate your final score… she was dead even and well ahead of me… pretty good for a first play!!

Ideally you can place habitat tiles to create matching terrain that reduces fragmentation and creates wildlife corridors, mostly because you score for the largest area of each type of habitat at game’s end, with a bonus if your group is larger than each other player’s. At the same time, you want to place wildlife tokens so that you can maximize the number of points scored by them, with the wildlife goals being determined at random by one of the three scoring cards for each type of wildlife. Maybe hawks want to be separate from other hawks, while foxes want lots of different animals surrounding them and bears want to be in pairs. Can you make it happen?

Why (we wanted it / like it (or don’t): I’m pretty sure Julie fell in love with the artwork at first site… beautiful images of animals from the Pacific Northwest… I love the Beth Sobel artwork as well… she has quite a history having done the art for several great games including Wingspan, Viticulture Essential Edition and Viticulture, Arboretum and Calico – the first in the trilogy that Cascadia is part of. We love Calico and Cascadia has some similar mechanics so I knew it would be a hit.

Now, this timeless game is coming back with an extremely polished, high-end special edition resulting from a collaboration between Ravensburger and Awaken Realms.

In this special edition, you can expect a complete re-design of art and layout to ensure that every piece will have great art and enhance in-game usability. Only the best materials (cardboard, cart paper, box, insert, etc.) will be used to provide endurance, and a premium feel. Many extra components will bring the gaming experience to the next level, such as double-layered player boards, special bags for hexes, 30% bigger tiles, or metal coins.

The Castles of Burgundy is set in the Burgundy region of High Medieval France. Each player takes on the role of an aristocrat, originally controlling a small princedom. While playing, they aim to build settlements and powerful castles, practice trade along the river, exploit silver mines, and use the knowledge of travelers.

The game is about players taking settlement tiles from the game board and placing them into their princedom, which is represented by a Duchy board that is placed in the Player board.

Why (we wanted it / like it (or don’t): As I mentioned earlier, this has been on my radar for several years… it’s one that I think I will really like but more importantly, I think Julie will really like it too… which is important… because I need someone to play with (though there is a solo mode)… 🙂

Here are some more images (ignore my drool spots)…

The game is going from this…

To this…

From this…

To this…

Here are some more images from the Crowdfunding campaign that raised over 1.5 MILLION dollars!! That’s over 3000% of their original funding goal!!

October 30 Update… I’ve been running across more and more videos from content creators who got their hands on a prototype and even that looks freakin’ amazing!! Most already loved the game but are now being blown away by this super deluxified version!! Here’s a clip from Rahdo Runs Through… I have a sneaky suspicion that this will become Julie’s new go to whenever she feels up to a game!! 🙂

June 9… my last night home for several days between work, drum corps rehearsals, drum corps performances and another Body & Soul wedding (on the same day as the performance I might add) and Sis pokes her head in the office and asks if we’re gaming tonight… of course I said ‘yes’ even though I was getting ready to head for bed… I’ll take every opportunity I can to squeeze a game or two in… and Selena is going to join us tonight… YAAAAAY!! 🙂 I already had a few games picked out after our last session that I thought Sis would enjoy…

Labyrinth is simple at first glance and an excellent puzzle-solving game for children; it can also be played by adults (the box says ages 7-99) using more strategy and more of a cutthroat approach.

Why (we wanted it / like it (or don’t): I was afraid this might be more for little kids from the artwork but the description said otherwise and I decided to give it a shot and am glad I did. We love this game… easy to learn yet very challenging and even a little cutthroat in spots!!

I had to include a picture of the board to explain…

16 of the tile are a permanent part of the board… the rest are shuffled and placed randomly – including which direction they face – and there is one tile left over. This is where it gets more interesting…

On each turn the active player uses that extra tile, facing any direction they choose, to push in at one of the areas along the edges of the board marked with a gold arrow and push that entire row!! Their tile is now part of the maze and the tile they pushed out at the other end of the row is now the extra that the next player will use to do the same somewhere else. Bottom line is you’re trying to get your pawn from your home tile, collect the required treasures to win then get back to your home tile while the path keeps changing the whole time!! Such a great game!!

Selena and I were pretty close (OK – I won this time) while Sis struggled to get to any treasures beyond her first,,, yet she loved the game and wants to play again before she heads south… I’m always game… 🙂

Then I turned to another of my go-to games for people just discovering the hobby…

AND the colored, well-made, wooden, poker-style chips are a welcome upgrade from the usual cardboard components in most games. This is a frequent play and a tribute to my developing instincts… AS I said, I bought this while being totally unfamiliar with it and later learned it was a 2014 Spiel des Jahres Nominee!!

I gave a copy of this to Justin and his wife from the old band and they love it… 🙂

Sis really liked this one and thinks she’d be able to get her kids to play when she gets back near them… perfect!! 🙂

As I packed it up the three of us (Sis, Selena and I) stood there talking games she might like and pulling things off the shelves… Selena had her own ideas while Sis, being unfamiliar with most of the titles, had to rely on their appearance… she started describing a couple that we had played over a year ago… at first neither Selena or I couldn’t figure out what games she might be referring to… animals… and you use them to get from point to point… eagles and ‘line of sight’… nope – it wasn’t Cascadia that we played a few nights ago… then it clicked… she was talking about Fast Sloths!!

Fast Sloths is a game of free from randomness that evolves only through the interaction between the players, doing so without any “take that” mechanisms — except for you snatching an animal from under the other players’ noses because you need to use it yourself.

Each race offers new challenges for you to get to the different trees faster than the other sloths. Enjoy all 256 different combinations, each with countless starting positions of the animals on the game board…and we are already working on new game boards and more animals for even more fun combinations!

Why (we wanted it / like it (or don’t): This game was a no-brainer given Julie’s love of sloths and the reviews, but after playing through it, I must say it’s a very clever design with a ton of variability which equates to lots of replayability as well… even though the board is reminiscent and about as unexciting as say Kingdom Builder (Selena was the first to spot the resemblance – what a memory)… 🙂

Below is Kingdom Builder on the left and Fast Sloths on the right…

We played the recommended setup for beginning players and early on it looked like I was going to get my ass handed to me yet again as Julie and her sister scampered around the board adding leaves to their player boards… I made a late game surge but it wasn’t enough and I came up a few short… Julie pulled out the victory with her sister one turn short of tying her… I think she may have won but she forgot the part of my teach about only needing 8 leaves so there would be one extra left on the board and her planned route to get all 9 took her just enough extra moves as to allow Julie to win…

Then she started talking about a game where you were stacking dice… I immediately thought Fuse where you’re diffusing bombs while the clock is ticking… I know she liked that one… no – she says you’re making buildings in this one…

Then I remembered Tumble Town – a game I had backed on Kickstarter a couple years ago but I didn’t think anyone liked it besides me when we played it… guess I was wrong… 🙂

Why (we wanted it / like it (or don’t): I saw a Kickstarter preview of this and fell in love… so much so that I backed it to the hilt (a reasonably inexpensive Kickstarter) to where my copy included a very nice neoprene playmat… I’d heard the solo mode was excellent too…

There will never be enough time to play them before she leaves but it will be fun to try… 🙂

June 14… Sis asks if we’re gaming tonight… what a question… unless I’m really late getting home or totally wiped out I’m always up for teaching and playing something… 🙂

I already had a few pulled out but after one of our game conversations I wanted to make sure she played Ticket to Ride because I was sure she’d like it and pretty sure the kids (ages 14 and 18 I think) would too…

Sis loved this game!! Despite having one of those ‘ah-ha’ moments near the end that cost her the game… she had gambled and took a 20 point Destination card – the cards that show routes that you need to complete to gain their points… she already had most of the route covered and only needed to fill a couple spots to claim the 20 point reward which is why she took it late in the game… then she realized that she wouldn’t have enough trains to carry out her plan… we still laugh about that… 🙂

Then I took her in an entirely different direction… something similar to Splendor (that we played last week) where you’re collecting resources to purchase cards that give you bonus actions as you build up your ‘engine’… this time the engine building would be the highlight…

This game was a definite hit!! I knew because Sis wanted to play again… and after that play she asked if I’d leave it setup for the next night… 🙂

June 15… I had taken Mom shopping after work and grabbed a bite to eat… after I settled in I found Sis and asked if we were still gaming and within minutes we were back at the table for another round of Gizmos… I think we actually played 3 times!! She thoroughly kicked my ass in the second game… yeah – she gets it and she likes it… 🙂

I left it setup for another play or two before introducing her to something else in the collection… 🙂

June 18… after several trips to the store for things the girls forgot to put on my list or text me the first, second or third time, and a quick lunch, Sis was ready for some gaming and Selena wanted to join in!! Gizmos was still out so that was the logical choice… a quick refresh for her gave me a chance to test out my new ‘teach’ I had prepared and then we were off…

The game went fairly quick with Selena showing us why the Research action is useful (Sis and I had been ignoring up until that point)…

We each had about the same number of Gizmos out before I built my 16th triggering the end of the game… we tallied the scores and I had bested Sis by 1 point but Selena had me by 5… 🙂 Close game and it’s on Sis’s list for when she and the kids reunite…

Then we switched games to the last one I had brought out and prepped for… Karuba…

June 19… Happy Father’s Day!! As I said earlier, in addition to that cool baseball pinball game, I was given a game day – we’re going to play games today!! And I love firing up the grill of course… Mom loves anything off the grill so I’ll have to get her too… sounds like a wonderful day doesn’t it?? Well ‘the best laid plans’ as they say…

As lunch time approached I was getting ready to get Mom, run in the store for a few more cookout items and return home to eat but life has a way… Julie was in a lot of pain, medicated and finally asleep… Selena’s severely sprained ankle (X-rays showed no fracture though) doesn’t seem to be improving so she too was medicated and sleeping… no sign of Sis yet either… everyone must have found their comfortable spots and crashed so I picked Mom up and let her pick where we’d go for lunch… with zero hesitation she picked Scarlotta’s in Granville which has quickly become one of our new favorites… we had a wonderful ride, chat constantly and the food was great!! 🙂

My game day was a wash though I did get to Farkle remotely with Mom after supper… Selena came in my office about 7:30 to see if we were going to play a game by which time I was starting to fade out and headed to bed shortly there after… 🙂

We had a great time and I really enjoyed playing this again!!

Then. to complete their plan. I headed out to pickup Mom and hit Hannaford for all the grill fixins… though we didn’t play any more games it was still a fun day… thank you, ladies!! 🙂

Betrayal at House on the Hill is a tile game that allows players to build their own haunted house room by room, tile by tile, creating a new thrilling game board every time. The game is designed for three to six people, each of whom plays one of six possible characters.

Secretly, one of the characters betrays the rest of the party, and the innocent members of the party must defeat the traitor in their midst before it’s too late! Betrayal at House on the Hill will appeal to any game player who enjoys a fun, suspenseful, and strategic game.

Betrayal at House on the Hill includes detailed game pieces, including character cards, pre-painted plastic figures, and special tokens, all of which help create a spooky atmosphere and streamline game play.

Why (we wanted it / like it (or don’t): Selena started watching Tabletop with me and this was something that really caught her eye… a coop game in a haunted house that’s different each time you play – that’s pretty cool… BUT… at some point in the game the ‘haunt’ gets triggered and one player may become a traitor!! What makes this game more interesting is when the haunt starts and the traitor is revealed, the traitor gets a book, references the haunt number and goes off alone to read about what he / she has to do to win while the ‘heroes’ get their own book and do the same!! Sometimes there is no traitor and the group continues to play against the game under new, more difficult conditions. Just a stellar game that our daughter would pick every time given a choice…

In the years since we first played this game, I’ve started to recognize that many aspects of this game are broken – beginning with the rule book… too many things just aren’t sufficiently explained and flat out confusing… nevertheless, we gave it a shot…

The haunt was triggered fairly early and we all struggled to figure out what the traitor book wanted the player to do… after much discussion we bailed on the game and packed it up… a third version was recently released but I haven’t seen anything to make me believe that they’ve done much beyond a new cover and a higher price tag… Sis kept saying that the game has a lot of potential… that it does… a better rulebook might help a lot… 🙁

At the end of a round, you score points for each card that you’ve completely marked off, with the points diminishing each round from 15 in round one to 8 in round four. Each player then draws three new cards and keeps one of them.

After four rounds, you score 1 point for each two spaces Xed on unfinished cards, then tally your points from completed cards, stars, and moons to see who has the highest score and wins.

Why (we wanted it / like it (or don’t): Julie and I had run across this multiple times in our bedtime video browsing and always thought it looked like fun… we love ‘roll / flip and writes’ and games with combos and that pretty much sums up this game. Tonight, Sis didn’t think she had a chance and ended up winning the game… She kept saying that this was ‘much better than the last one’… 🙂

In the family game My Farm Shop, players can live through that experience without leaving the house. Three dice are thrown on each turn. With one die, the active player selects a new expansion for their farm, and the combination of the other two dice dictates which field will be activated on the farm — not only for the active player, but for all others as well. The expansions enhance the actions that players use to milk cows, shear sheep, harvest honey, or collect eggs, and these raw materials can then be sold. In the end, whoever makes the most money wins.

Why (we wanted it / like it (or don’t): One night we were watching a Rhado Roundup of games he played the previous month and he was kicking himself for not playing it sooner… it’s bright and colorful and looks cute but will give your brain a serious workout… cool!! Julie and I were both sold!!  I ordered it on Amazon while I was stocking up on drum sticks and cymbal cleaner and later learned that I had apparently ordered it from Germany!! Now I just have to wait for the German postal service to get it to my door… thankfully when it arrived it had English rules… 🙂

Julie wanted to play yesterday but was not feeling good at all and was sleeping by the time we setup a larger table and got everything in place so I asked her today knowing Selena would be content with her Xbox and the puppy for a little while and she jumped at the chance…

Julie and I have played this game a lot but it didn’t take Sis long to catch on and she was pulling away… then from out of nowhere comes Julie with a couple big moves – even getting ahead of her sister… I was so far behind and none of the numbers that could have helped me were coming up so I resigned myself to making sure Sis was still aware of her options… in the end the girls tied and I was happy just to break 50 coins… Julie’s sister won on the tie breaker by having a single burlap bag more than Julie… she immediately responded with, “Yeah – we can play this again tomorrow.” Once again that’s how I knew she liked it… 🙂

Why (we wanted it / like it (or don’t): This is another game where the mechanisms and story emersion make the game… trying to find parts… in the sand… in a desert… with windstorms… it was only the second cooperative game we had purchased though not as deep and dark as Pandemic… Sis liked it but thought it was a little long… I still enjoy the game and the win-or-lose-as-a-team aspect… I have another group in mind to try this with… 🙂

If you’re looking for any parallels look no further than home runs… like Willie Stargell 50 years ago, today it was Aaron Judge (admittedly about the only Yankee player I could name since cutting the cable cord several years ago)… Aaron put TWO over the wall and Dave called both of them!! There was no pool for them to land in but it was no less impressive… 🙂

Our seats were incredible – right behind first base… I was a little excited as you can tell from all the pictures that follow – especially from Monument Park where I found all the names I recognized from back when I was watching sports constantly… you’ll see one picture – a selfie for my late Grandmother in front of the ‘Scooter’s’ plaque… 🙂

July 8… No one has felt up to playing for a couple weeks… Julie continues to battle her issues, Sis is fighting tension headaches, migraines and even ended up in the ER with heart palpitations – all no doubt brought on from anxiety as she prepares to return to Georgia… and Selena’s ankle is still bothering her… she got the results of her MRI yesterday and the Urgent Care diagnosis of a severely sprained ankle was correct and X-rays showed no sign of a fracture however, the MRI doctors are pretty sure that, while she didn’t totally tear a ligament, there was a partial tear that may have healed incorrectly… she’s on medication and off her ankle as much as possible but she hates to miss work and we’re all thankful that it doesn’t require surgery which would have wiped out her entire summer…

Game wise, I’m at work… I have a couple new interns working for me (Nick and Paxton) and one returning (Matt) and one who’s been with since graduating college and we were recently able to hire full time (congratulations, Andrew!!)… everyone’s been busting their butts – to the point where we are in great shape for this time of year… yesterday the Elementary Assistant Principal bought pizza for everyone and I told them that, if they were able to knock out the things on our list in the morning, I would have a team building exercise for them in the afternoon… they knocked them out in no time and unloaded our truck load of Chromebooks – all before lunch so while everyone was eating I ran to the Greenwich Cafe for a dozen and a half of their amazing chocolate chip cookies to share with them and the building staff and prepped for team building… I’ve been planning this for a couple weeks and decided the best choice was Forbidden Desert!!

I started with Wil Wheaton’s 2 minute game description from one of his TableTop episodes (which was the reason we added it to our collection), ran through the rules and reviewed their chosen character’s special powers (with a couple hints as to why each was important to the team) then sat back for a minute while I watched them all come to terms with the idea that they’re working together and everybody wins or everybody loses… apparently this was their first encounter with a fully cooperative game… 🙂

There is only one way to win – find the 4 buried pieces of a Steampunk flying machine, find the launchpad and get all the pieces and all the explorers there…

BUT… there are a number of ways to lose the game… if one person runs out of water and dies… if there are no more sand tiles then the storm has overtaken the explorers and buried them in the desert… if the storm level ever goes above 6…

I didn’t play – I simply moderated and answered questions and what happened over the next 90 minutes or so was a pleasure to watch!! Almost immediately they were tossing strategies back and forth and executing their plans of action…

They were doing pretty well when they almost ran out of sand tiles about 2 thirds of the way through but they recovered – working together moving and sharing tools to clear enough sand to keep them alive…

They found the launchpad and had just found the 4th part… everyone had water but the storm had picked up and they had placed the last sand tile on the board which meant if they didn’t recover enough sand they would all die in the next couple of turns… everyone in turn removed sand from the tiles around them… the Meteorologist used his power once more to look into the storm deck and remove the worst threat… but alas, the storm was just too intense and the next turn buried them in the desert.

They did an amazing job and worked together remarkably well which I hope carries over into our day-to-day activities which was the whole point though this hasn’t been a problem… they’re a good crew… 🙂

Then I took her in an entirely different direction… something similar to Splendor (that we played last week) where you’re collecting resources to purchase cards that give you bonus actions as you build up your ‘engine’… this time the engine building would be the highlight…

Gameplay:

• Players draft 3 missions at the start of the game. Missions provide VP at the end of the game. Each mission has unique requirements to complete, and missions can be completed anytime on your turn.
• Players use actions to move across tiles to dig up truffles. Players may upgrade actions throughout the game, and they must avoid wolves (which move at the end of each round).
• Truffles come in 3 types (different difficulty and available points). Some Truffles are SUPER TRUFFLES which provide use of Super Pig Powers! Truffles are also used to fulfill missions.
• Actions can also be used to activate Super Pig Powers. These powers provide powerful one-time abilities.
• Players play a number of direction cards at the end of their turn in order to program the movement of the wolves.
• At the end of a round (once all players have taken actions), all direction cards are turned face up and the wolves are moved. If a wolf lands on or moves through a tile with a pig, the pig is removed from the forest.

Game End:
There are two end game triggers:

• Only one player’s pig(s) are left in the forest
• When there are 3 or less truffles left in the forest.

The player with the most points wins.

Why (we wanted it / like it (or don’t): The game looks fantastic – a clever combination of cute and strategic… and the gameplay seems very interesting though not overly complex…

I’ve been in a funk the past couple of weeks that I can’t really explain (though I have some ideas) and haven’t felt like playing anything but have run a couple ‘team building’ games for our interns at work… and I developed a modified version of Wits & Wagers 2nd Edition (for two teams and with the additional betting element) to run at the annual administration team building competition that culminates with a number of events on an afternoon in August… I’ve read the rules and am thinking I want to give Super Truffle Pigs a try!!

Here are some pictures…

August 11… I think my game funk is starting to go away… it took a while but tonight Selena and I sat down to give Super Truffle Pigs a try…

As I said earlier I thought it was cute but not complex though strategic… it’s all of those things with a good amount of replayability… there are two sets of tiles that randomly create the game board each time… both sets are double sided and the 4 sets represent all 4 seasons and each season has it’s own minor variation… there are also a good number of Secret Mission cards as well as Super Pig Powers… all of this combines to ensure that each play is a little different…

Selena and I had a ‘care bear’ kind of game where we both seemed more interested in keeping the wolves at a distance rather than targeting each other… you see, in the game each player plays cards to control wolf movement… each player has 2 pigs and if a wolf crosses a tile with a pig on it, that pig is scared out of the forest… players can pay 2 truffles to bring a pig back into the forest but can only do that ONCE… they may choose not to bring a pig back in and continue with wolf movement only but they won’t get any more points from truffles or Secret Missions (objectives)… I could envision games where the wolf movement is an inverted tug-of-war of sorts where I’m pushing wolves towards Selena and she’s pushing them back towards me, etc.

Bottom line is Super Truffle Pigs was fun and quick and not terribly complicated… we both liked it and I think Julie will as well.

Why (we wanted it / like it (or don’t): There were a number of things I liked about the preview videos I’ve watched and I was feeling a little FOMO (fear of missing out) if it should end up being hard to find so I jumped in at the last minute with a late pledge…

It arrived beautifully boxed but as I was unpacking it I discovered a couple of production issues – not the least of which is a missing Bidding Tray for one player… there was no sign of damage – just a good sized piece of cardboard nowhere to be found… there were some other minor printing things but the piece is important for higher player counts… I’ve emailed the company and am awaiting a response.

I decided to stop by the school to grab a cold drink and hit the bathroom before continuing home… I made it into the building but could not walk straight and was struggling to keep my balance… I fell into the wall a couple times… WTF?!? Sugar?? Blood pressure?? I finished what I came to do and got back on the road – determined to get home…

My vision was still messed up – everything spinning… I had the AC blasting but was still sweating a lot… about half way home I started freezing and feeling tired and debated trying to find a parking lot to hang in for a while but made it home…

I head straight for the bathroom, stripped out of everything and into my light shorts and climbed into my bed with it elevated to a comfortable position… and fell asleep within minutes… after maybe less than an hour I woke up, opened my eyes and things looked pretty normal… and I felt hungry so I got up… I was able to walk straight and, while things weren’t totally back to normal, I felt a thousand times better than when I arrived… Selena made me a light supper and I just relaxed at my computer for a while (though Selena was ready for another round of Cubitos)… 🙂

It wasn’t long before I felt like myself again… I did a COVID test just in case and that was negative then grabbed a shower before heading back to bed for real this time – anxious to see what the morning would bring…

August 17… I woke up today like every other day, ate my normal breakfast and headed to work…

It was a typical day with me bouncing all over campus for various tech issues and no signs of any of the symptoms of the previous day… my first guess is some sort of heat exhaustion combined with the added stress of teaching a group of administrators a game… they teachers make the worst students… I think administrators are even worse… 🙂

So I’m back to normal for the time being… I see my doctor next week anyway so unless there’s another occurrence, I’ll wait and share the details with him then…

Tonight Selena and I had another game of Cubitos where I won by so much she wanted an immediate rematch as she was sputtering about how much she loved / hated the game… 🙂

August 20… a quick update on The Transcontinental… I’ve barely cracked the 20 page mostly-text rulebook but have watched a few videos and have a feeling the rules are more complicated than the game… time will tell on that one… 🙂

However, I’m finding more and more production issues with my copy… I emailed the publisher 5 days ago and have received no response… here are some examples…

As I continued sorting, I found myself struggling to distinguish colors between the game’s regions… the water-color artwork is beautiful but while I’m managing to figure it out, this production will be a nightmare for anyone with any colorblindness…

I was anxious to thrown down the neoprene playmat and go through the setup thinking it would help me better sort out those region tiles and increase my understanding of everything which it did… then I discovered even more printing issues… the neoprene mat doesn’t have the Train Board places printed on it – just a long gray box to place the board over… OK – I did that but the roughly 24 x 21/2 inch Train Board has a twisting warp running the length of the board!! I’ve got it under pressure now in hopes of getting it to lay flat…

Going through the setup DID help me figure out the region tiles that were so close in color… but when lined up to the playmat, they don’t line up with the Train Board at all!! I’ve done enough graphic work to recognize that the thickness of the boarders was the cause… they lined the area for the Train Board up to these tile placeholders but the board lacks about 3/4 of an inch of filling the space… had they printed the Train Board on the mat I’ll bet everything would have lined up… as much as I love neoprene mats, this one is sadly on the verge of being useless…

I was hoping to get as far as attempting some solo play but frustration got the better of me… I went back on Kickstarter and am seeing other similar comments but for some reason, even though I’m a backer, I can’t leave any comments or replies… after several attempts I eventually discovered a link to reach out to the designer himself… nothing yet… 🙁

August 22… well it took a couple days because we got a late start Saturday night but tonight Selena and I finished our first play of The Transcontinental…

As we played I was remembering the things I’d seen in the Kickstarter preview that made me want to back the game and, despite some production issues (that I beat to death above), we really liked the way it plays!! I feel like it could definitely have benefited from proof readers and play testers and more eyes on the production end but, for something from a one-man show (Glen Dresser is the designer and artist) and Wheel House Games which I imagine is a fairly small production company, this is a very solid, fun and educational game!! I’m excited to share this with other players once I finished my revised rulebook..

Why (we wanted it / like it (or don’t): Well the dragons are adorable to start with – especially the deluxe version with the unique minis… besides that, the gameplay looks interesting so as much as Julie and I will probably like it, the dragons will bring Selena to the table and I can’t wait to learn it and play it!! The only problem I discovered – at least here at home – was finding a table it would fit on… the neoprene town mat that serves as the game board overruns my card table by about a foot… I wish I had room for a real game table that I could leave up… 🙂

September 4… Selena and I found a table that would accommodate Flamecraft and set out on a two player game… it’s cute and a little puzzly but not punishing at all… we could always find something to do if a shop we’d been eyeballing became occupied… Julie will like this too!! Hopefully she recovers from COVID soon…

By the time we finished there were enough people to split into a couple groups… I had packed Flamecraft to give my teaching notes a test run before the convention and there were a few people anxious to play and I was more than willing… 🙂

We ended up maxing the player count at 5 as without thinking I dealt myself in… this would be a good test of my teach with all new players and the 2 hour time frame I have at the convention…

In the end it was a close game (I was somewhere near the middle / rear of the pack)… everyone loved the art and production and really liked the game… it’s very ‘friendly’ where so many games like this (medium weight) can get pretty cutthroat… I didn’t check the time when we started but if I had to guess, it had to be close to 7:15 when we finished Downforce… then it probably took me another 15-20 minutes to get Flamecraft unpacked and setup (something that I will have already done at the convention) so let’s figure with my teach we might have started by 7:45… at 9:30 I was packed and on the road after a lot of game talk so I think the 2 hour window should be just fine.

September 25… The more I thought about last night’s teach and play of Flamecraft the more I considered signing up to teach Planet Unknown… I had run it with the interns at school over the summer and they loved it and I think it’s a pretty easy teach for the amount of game involved… yep – I’m doing it!! I just signed up for a Sunday afternoon slot to run Planet Unknown at Adirondacon 5 and posted it on the game group’s website!!

Yes – I know I get all nervous and jerky and shake so bad I can’t hold my notes and teach the game but I’m growing more confident each time so I think I’m ready to own this now… then I found out there are already people signed up for Flamecraft and it’s a hot ticket… uh-oh… then, just before I went to bed, I jumped on the game group’s site to make sure the organizers had seen my post in case they missed my online application… HOLY CRAP – there are people commenting that they’re signing up for Planet Unknown already!! Time to start shaking again… 🙂

I packed that game up and began setting up Planet Unknown for the afternoon slot… early signups failed to show but the GM who ran another game while I had Flamecraft going decided to jump in… Another fellow arrived and was looking it over… both went to the lobby and signed up!! They came back with another guy who was looking for a game and turned out to be the guy that played Merchants of the Dark Road – the game I taught at ADK 4 back in April…

I had just started my teach when and one of the guys from last week’s game night at Dominos asked if there was an opening… I was glad to see him as he seemed really excited when we talked about it that night…

During the entire play, everyone kept smiling and remarking how much they liked the game… 🙂

I would say that both groups had a blast and many left the table saying they had to go find the games for themselves (though I don’t believe either game has gone to retail yet) so I know they had a good time… 🙂 I was relieved… on my way out the organizers said that both groups had commented to them about how much they enjoyed themselves. Mission accomplished!! I can almost read what I’m holding in my hand… and I’ve been home for an hour… 🙂

October 3… They say no good deed ever goes unpunished…

Today, while reflecting on my double game teach and the great people who enjoyed their plays with me, I get a text from one of the ADK 5 organizers that one of the people in my early game just tested positive… I was masked whenever anyone was around me and throughout the games… for myself – coming off COVID only a few weeks ago – I’m not sure if I have any type of immunity since you can’t find the same answer twice online… my bigger concern is for everyone else at the table and the entire convention for that matter… one of the players in that early game was also masked but, other than he and myself, I can only recall seeing 1 other person with a mask the entire day… I hope everyone comes out of this OK… 🙁

October 10… It’s been a week and I’ve had no symptoms thankfully… I hope everyone else from the con faired as well…

I’ve actually started my Christmas shopping but, without the extra play money from 80-90 gigs this year, it’ll probably be pretty game light… One of my last Kickstarters is due to arrive from New Zealand in late November which would be perfect for my gift for the girls to give me… and I ordered one that Julie will really like that wasn’t available last year… 🙂

October 22… I was headed for game night with the local but thankfully hadn’t let anyone know because, as sometimes happens, Julie was up and alert and wanted to play so I stayed home and taught her Flamecraft which, at the time of this writing, is now #1 on the Board Game Geek Hotness!! Very cool!! 🙂

I went through my convention teach which had worked really well and we jumped into the game… about a third of the way through the game I noticed that she had a boatload of resources so I pointed out that she hadn’t done any Enchantments which are a big part of scoring Reputation points… she said she didn’t know how so I went over that process again with her… big mistake because the next thing I know she’s unloading resources, enchanting anything that doesn’t move and leaving me in the dust on the Reputation track!!

In the end she almost lapped me but, even with my late game push, I couldn’t break 50 and she was only a few points shy of 100… and she LOVED it!! She wanted to play again but I had hoped to teach her something else as we hadn’t played together in months… she took the dogs out while I hit the bathroom then ran out of gas and we ended up just going to sleep… but she was anxious to play again the next day when Selena was home… unfortunately her pain got the better of her and she spent the next day in bed so there was no rematch… soon… 🙂

One of the things I’m struggling with when teaching games is becoming less ‘wordy’ – trying to find some middle ground between providing necessary but not too much information and just jumping into play… I’d started thinking that I had to approach it differently when I’m teaching at a convention and not playing as opposed to being one of the competitors in that, when I’m essentially ‘observing’ a game, I’m free to guide players and answer their questions without any thinking I might be giving an answer to better my own position in the game… tonight I realized that it doesn’t matter who’s around the table… if I’m playing in the game, just like at home with my girls, I’m not playing to win – my focus is on making sure the other players have the information needed to make good in-game decisions at that particular moment… I was so proud that I’d been condensing my teaches to only 2 pages of notes but it turns out I’m still using too small of a font if you know what I mean… 🙂 Now I have to go through all the games I regularly teach and rewrite my notes…

I hope everyone enjoyed the evening as much as I did!! By the 2nd round, I think everyone had a handle on the game and I could see their wheels turning… Justin bid high in the first round to place an airport and at the end of the game was sure that early move cost him the game though I’m not so sure… It was a very close game that found the 4 of us within 1 point of each other and any one of us could have won in that last round were it not for a couple rules that hadn’t come up much during the game but prevented Christina from a big final turn. I’m changing the focus of the player aids for the next version to include these rules and making sure there’s one for each player (I had my new one in front of me but now realize that everyone would have benefited).

I’ve been playing with the alternate betting rules which is supposed to prevent the ‘runaway leader’ issue some say the original game suffers from… tonight it didn’t help as Christina raced and bet her way to a small fortune in the first game and Justin got his revenge by a huge margin in the second game.

It was a terrific night!! These are some of my favorite and nicest people I know… I love them and that they’re enjoying gaming – especially after having to listen to me ramble on and on about games during our downtime at the gigs when we all played together. Hope we can do it again very soon!! 🙂

November 24 – Thanksgiving… We’ve been invited to join Selena’s boyfriend’s family for Thanksgiving dinner but I’m not a turkey or big eater in general… with Julie in her condition, I’ll just stay home with her and the dogs… I did pickup all the ‘fixins’ to make her turkey and gravy, potatoes, stuffing, cranberry sauce, biscuits, pumpkin pie and chocolate cream pie in case she felt better but she didn’t even wake up the entire day or night…

So if you send a worker to the forest to collect wood and berries, they might end up in the mountains collecting herbs, on the plains hunting for fur, or in the “Love Tent” making…your population larger. They might also bring some predators out of The Passage with them — or not come back at all.

Players use the resources their workers end up with to arm their workers with spears and drums, to build a larger cave, or to create an invention, which earns victory points for their tribe. The first player to have 10 victory points wins!

The game is cute and dumb and I was right – she loved it!! We played a couple games back to back (apparently cave man thinking is more in line with our brains than crime solving) before calling it a night (and picking up the search for her fairly new glasses that were lost when they fell off her loft bed not to be seen for days… we found them)… 🙂

We both grew up playing the original Monopoly ‘wrong’ with various people’s house rules… and we each have very different approaches to the game… this is where the term ‘spirit of the game’ enters my thinking… while I grew up playing where we’d make deals and upgrade properties, Julie plays in such a way that no one can get a monopoly so no one upgrades or collects higher and higher rent costs so that, once all the properties are sold, the game just goes on ad nauseam until someone dies of exhaustion, starvation or natural causes or, after several days, when someone flips the table and beats Julie with the chair they were sitting in… in any case, it’s not an enjoyable experience and I’d rather dive naked into a swimming pool full of double-edged razor blades or rip out my own intestines with a shrimp fork than play Monopoly – but especially with her… this version of the game might change that…

Monopoly: Tropical Tycoon is pretty much regular Monopoly but it adds some neat twists and artwork by world-famous board game artist Rob Daviau!! In this version you’re playing for the most FORTUNE (tracked in tokens)… each player has a special power… there’s a DVD that interacts with the game… there are news broadcasts that can affect certain players and there are choices to make for some of the Chance and Community Chest cards…

Houses and hotels are replaced with beach houses and resorts… OR you can build developments (piers, casinos, restaurants and parks) where you don’t know how much you’ll make each time someone lands there – you need to click on the development on the DVD menu to find out… in some cases (like the casino) the person that landed there might MAKE money instead of paying the owner!! There are weather updates that affect people who’ve built piers, etc…

We’ve tried to play this before but struggled to get the DVD to play back correctly and had to give up early in the game… earlier today though, I created an image of the DVD on my computer and found a DVD play back app and everything tested great so I was eager to try it again and tonight we actually finished the game!!

Julie was employing her usual tactics but I made Selena an offer she couldn’t refuse in order to gain a monopoly in yellow (my deal was, regardless of what I might do to those properties, I would only charge her HALF of whatever was due to me)… 🙂 As the game went on, Selena had a monopoly in red and Julie was able to deal with Selena to get both of the two high-priced properties right before go (Park Place and Boardwalk in the original)… of course I hit one full of houses and almost bankrupted but I survived long enough to get Selena (for half so $600,000) and she got Julie just as time ran out – marking the first time the three of us have FINISHED a game of Monopoly!! This version let’s you stop whenever you like then talks everyone through converting their money and property to fortune to see who wins…

Yes – I won… but I only beat Selena by 1 point… and we played by the rules – no house rules… and I put a 90 minute timer on a second screen for all to see… Now we’re all curious about how targeting Developments instead of beach houses and resorts (houses and hotels) might change the way we play… now that the DVD issue is sorted out we’ll have to play again… 🙂

December 8… Julie’s health went into a nasty spiral shortly after our play… it got bad enough that she finally called her doctor, they did a ‘telehealth’ visit then agreed that she should be tested given her lingering symptoms… I’d been pushing for this for days after what Selena went through but thankfully both of Julie’s tests (flu and COVID) came back negative… they think it’s just a bad cold but Julie’s convinced she must have had some sort of flu to feel as rotten as she has for so long… she’s just starting to feel a little better… now to some game talk…

Between getting Selena in a vehicle after totaling the paid-off Accord and the lack of band work, we all agreed that it would be a light Christmas… I had ordered one game for Julie that I knew she’d enjoy and one of my kickstarters from a couple years ago arrived for them to give to me and I was set to let that be it for games this year… but as Julie would rest and watch some of the YouTube videos I browse before I go to bed she kept commenting how ‘that looks like fun’ or ‘yes, please’… As luck would have it I came into a little extra cash AND stumbled on a few titles at bargain prices so I was able to add a couple more presents under the tree… 🙂

The front page is due in just a few hours and you have no time for perfection. Grab the big stories before the other papers get a chance, and make sure you get the right photos too. A newspaper is a business, so the money has to come from somewhere — don’t forget the ads! After you’ve picked out a combination of stories, photos, and ads, it’s time to lay out the front page. Did you take enough tiles to fill the paper, but not so many that things have to be cut? Over the course of three hectic days, your skills will be tested as you compete to be the most newsworthy editor!

Fit To Print is a tile-laying game for the whole family. Players simultaneously collect newspaper tiles, stacking them on their desks until they think they have what they need to make the perfect front page. Then, they will yell “Layout!” and begin to lay out the page by carefully considering the placement of centerpieces, articles, photographs, and advertisements. When everything is just right, they yell “Print” to be the first off the press and gain their choice of centerpiece for the next round! This hectic spatial puzzle features over 100 unique newspaper tiles, 6 characters with their own special abilities, as well as 3 decks of Breaking News cards — so that each and every time you play you will be solving a new puzzle!

If real-time games aren’t your style, Fit to Print has a number of alternative modes to satisfy every type of puzzle gamer. In Slo-Mode players take turns drafting tiles from a shared market and arranging them on their front pages. In Puzzle Mode, take a specific set of tiles and piece together the highest-scoring arrangements. Whether you enjoy relaxing solo puzzles on your own, or frenetic action for up to 6 players, you will have a blast helping the critters of Thistleville tell their stories!

Why (we wanted it / like it (or don’t): We all love tile laying (if you’ve been following along you already know that Carcassonne is still one of Julie’s favorites) and this turns a bunch of things on their ear… it’s fairly easy but pretty thinky at the same time but the real time element (playing with timers) will keep it short so we can’t wait to try it!!

• Roads wants to connect to an edge of the board.
• Factories wants to be next to other factories and roads.
• Homes want to be placed in clusters that are as small as possible — the smallest being a single tile — so long as they’re not next to a factory.
• Parks wants to be next to homes and factories.
• Shops score increasingly more the closer they are placed to the city center, but if they’re not placed on an edge, they need to be adjacent to a road connected to the board’s edge in order to score. Without road access, you’ll have no products to sell!

At game’s end, players earn points for tile-placement combinations and for the completed bonus point tiles around the edge of their board.

Why (we wanted it / like it (or don’t): More tile placement with a little city building… it has other similar qualities to Fit to Print mentioned above so BOTH of these look like they’ll move towards the top of the list of games to play whenever Julie is feeling up to it!!

I don’t know what there is about this game but I really like it despite its fiddliness and horrible rule book… and Julie hates having to listen me teach the game but I was ready for her and had my teach down to a single page and a player aid I had developed to get her familiar with the iconography… she was still impatient and frustrated but once we started playing – even while continually insisting that she didn’t know what she was doing – I had to pause multiple times to explain why some play she’d made was a ‘DICK MOVE’… I think she knew what she was doing… 🙂

I had been out in front for much of the game, then she passed me but I made some smart plays in the last couple rounds to pull away… or so I thought… When we reached final scoring I was up by 12 but when it was all done she TIED ME!! A few rounds earlier she had played an Ally card that also made her first player… she saw no reason that she needed to take first player away from me during regular play… of course it’s the first tie breaker… nice work, Julie!! 🙂

She thought the game wasn’t as bad as she had anticipated given all the pieces and the box – for whatever reason – indicating that the game took between 15-150 minutes to play… both seem a little extreme to me but I’ve only played with 2 players and usually finish in about 90 minutes… I’m curious to see if she asks to play it again… a few days later I passed it while browsing for videos before going to sleep and she said she really liked it… 🙂

December 23… interesting day – and that’s putting it mildly…

The girls spent yesterday making cookies… that and the severe weather changes have put Julie out – she’s been in much more pain than usual but must have been exhausted because she’s been asleep ever since…

We’ve been getting alerts for a couple days that a ‘bomb cyclone’ weather system would be hitting us and we would have heavy rain and high wind gusts and, in the middle of all that, temperatures that had gone from 30’s to 50’s overnight would be plummeting during the afternoon into the 20’s and teens causing a ‘flash freeze’ and treacherous driving conditions during the afternoon and evening!! This should make for a fun day since, even though my school had the day off for the holidays, I still had to drive 45 minutes south to pickup our Heat ‘n Serve Christmas dinner from Cracker Barrel… this will be the second Christmas where we’ve done a ‘drive-thru’ Christmas dinner for Mom who can’t negotiate the stairs into our house so we both eat in the van and she loves it… Here’s how the day progressed…

It started out as a typical day off… breakfast at my computer with some videos and such while the girls and dogs all slept… then on to my banking and bill paying…

Then I made a grocery run to our local Hannaford around 7:15… it was like a monsoon was hitting the area with wind and heavy unrelenting rain… I was pretty soaked by the time I entered the store to find it was quiet as usual at that hour… about 45 minutes and $300 later I was headed back to the van… I get to the exit and the sun is out!! I can see areas of blue sky… and behind me was a full rainbow – BOTH ends!! It was beautiful and peaceful as I and other shoppers stopped to marvel at it – fooling ourselves into thinking that maybe we had weathered the storm…

I stopped at our local Stewart’s shop near home for gas, milk (best milk in NY state) and bread… as I checked out I heard one of the delivery guys commenting that he was about to shed his coat in favor of only his vest when I looked out and it was blowing and raining so hard I couldn’t see the van!!

I made my way home and was totally soaked to the skin by the time I got everything into the house… it would let up for a minute then pour again… CRAZY!! Selena was up and I asked her to put everything away rather than get soaked like me…

Great… we sat there in silence for a few seconds then debated if there was enough natural light to keep playing but the storm seemed to come and go in waves and it would get light then very dark so we left it setup – hoping for power to return soon.

I used my phone to submit a power outage report and it turned out that we were part of a large area of over 1300 customers (including my brother 5 minutes down the road) that had all lost power at the same time and a crew was already assigned to it which was reassuring… fortunately temps were still hovering around 50 so thankfully the house remained very comfortable…

I was scheduled to pickup our Christmas dinner at 3:30 and was going to call to make sure they still had power and were open when I received two text alerts saying they were preparing my orders with instructions of what to do when I arrived… good enough. I hit the road about 2:30 not knowing what to expect of the roads and such but had no trouble – rolling in well ahead of schedule of course…

I had two orders because when I placed the order online there were two desserts we wanted… I added one then the other then checked out… when I went back to verify, the first dessert didn’t appear anywhere and I was afraid their system had REPLACED it rather than add it so I ordered the one that didn’t appear separately to make sure we had it…

I waited until about 3:30 before following the directions they had given me… it said to click the link in the text… I did and a web page started to open but never did… tried the other link… same thing… close everything and try again… nothing… OK – I’ll call the number on the sign that says ‘ Let us know you’re here’… menu system… press ‘1’ for pickup… ringing… ringing… ringing… back to the menu options… OK – let me try the links again… this time everything went right through!! They know I’m in spot #4 in a blue Honda Odyssey… 10 minutes go by… a girl comes to the wind with a bag and asks if I’m ‘Jensen’… 20 minutes… 30 minutes… still nothing but I’m seeing several people pull in, go inside and come out with meals so at the 40 minute mark in I go!! The girl at the counter in the store asks if I’m picking up a meal and I told her I was and had messaged 40 minutes ago to which she calmly replied (wait for it), “Oh – I don’t think the message system is working or she isn’t reading them.” I told her ‘she’ apparently isn’t answering the phone either… and with that I brought my own meal out to my curbside pickup where it had started to snow a little while ago… oh – and the dessert I was afraid I was missing?? I have TWO of them… my brother and his wife will have one all to themselves…

While I was waiting, I got a text from my brother saying that their power was back on and he had lost a power strip from the surge but it did what it was supposed to and saved the TV and various other things connected to it… Selena called a short time later to say we had power but only about half the house… I had her check the breakers and she spotted two that weren’t off but weren’t on either and she couldn’t turn them on… I told her to turn them the rest of the way off first… the next thing I hear is her screaming, “I FIXED IT!! I FIXED IT!!” Now she thinks she’s an electrician… 🙂

When I got everything home and put away I found a survey on my computer and regaled Cracker Barrel with my experiences… wonder if I’ll win the $100 gift card they entered me for?? 🙂

I made a quick check of all things electric in each room and everything seems to have survived!! Apparently our breakers did what they were supposed to do as well… WHEW!!

Then it was finally game time!! Selena and I set out to conquer the beginner table out of the 4 and she proceeded to trounce me… as usual… it’s a fun simulation and moves along fairly quick… maybe if Julie is awake Christmas Eve I can show her… if I do, you can bet that is what we’ll be doing until we got to sleep… 🙂

December 28… I have to start by saying that the Cracker Barrel Heat ‘N Serve meals are AMAZING!! Some of this was included in the ‘base’ meal and some we added but in total we had a good-sized spiral-cut ham, mashed potatoes, roasted gravy, mac and cheese, green beans, cornbread stuffing, cranberry relish, 2 dozen small yeasty rolls, a cinnamon roll pie and two (remember I added one) apple pies – all for around $189!!! And it was all excellent!! It comes with pretty good instructions on when to put what in and how to prepare it all… I could probably do it but I leave it to Chef Selena…

I think this is the 3rd time we’ve done this and each one has been incredible!! Julie’s still in extreme pain and can’t get comfortable laying or sitting but will hobble to the kitchen to warm up some ham… 3 days later and the girls (and dogs and cat) and Mom are still eating and loving the ham!! And that’s after we packed about half of it for my brother and sister-in-law!! We would HIGHLY recommend this product!! Just go inside when it’s time to pick it up… 🙂

On the game side, there’s not much to report… Selena’s been spending a lot of time with the boyfriend and his family since I was off and home to handle dog duty so Julie could rest… and I didn’t go game crazy this year though, in the end, we ended up with a couple more than I had planned on because a company (whose game I backed on Kickstarter) sent me a pre-Christmas sales email with a couple deals I couldn’t pass up… 🙂

First there was my gift to myself that I gave the girls to wrap for me (and they forgot and put it in a gift bag Christmas morning wrapped in tissue paper) and that’s Wayfarers of the South Tigris!!

If you read my earlier section (see above) about when I jumped in late to back it, you’ll know that I have loved everything these designers have put out and can’t wait to play this one!! One of the guys in a local game group that I join when I can, got his copy about the same time and has been teaching and playing it for a couple months… I haven’t gone to a game night because I didn’t want to see or play it until I opened my copy Christmas morning (just like being a kid again)… 🙂

Why (we wanted it / like it (or don’t): Julie (and I) have loved the previous 3 games in the series… I’ve held off on this because it’s a little thinkier and, as of late, Julie’s been looking for faster lighter games… but she was very excited when she opened this Christmas morning… 🙂

Next up was the first of two games from Elf Creek Games who made me a couple offers I couldn’t refuse… this is the company that created Merchants of the Dark Road that I backed in 2020 (it arrived in January of this year) and like so much… this game is Honey Buzz!!

As you continually expand your hive, you’ll forage for nectar and pollen, make honey, sell different varieties at the bear market, host honey tastings, and attend to the queen and her court. There’s only so much nectar to go around, and finding it won’t be easy. Players will have to scout out the nectar field and pay attention to other players searches to try to deduce the location of the nectar they need for themselves.

AWARDS & HONORS

• 2022 Nederlandse Spellenprijs Best Advanced Game Nominee
• 2020 Golden Geek Best Board Game Artwork & Presentation Nominee
• 2020 Board Game Quest Awards Best Game from a Small Publisher Nominee

Why (we wanted it / like it (or don’t): Julie remembered this from last year (or longer ago) when it came up in a recent video we were watching so when Elf Creek emailed me notice of a special sale, I couldn’t resist it at a bargain basement price… 🙂

The other game that Elf Creek tantalized me with was Atlantis Rising!!

This edition contains all new art and graphic design, created to bring even more attention to the thematic setting of the game. The Athenians Attack phase has been replaced with the Wrath of the Gods phase, requiring more strategic planning and adding to the sense of urgency. Now, instead of placing workers in an Atlantean Navy, players must cooperatively decide to flood a set number of tiles at the end of each round. To further aid them in their task, Councilor player powers have been expanded and made more impactful, and the knowledge deck has similarly been revised and expanded. The variable gate components, once built, no longer offer one-time bonuses, but create new worker placement spots where players can send Atlantean workers to unleash actions to help save their island.

AWARDS & HONORS

• 2019 Golden Geek Best Cooperative Game Nominee
• 2019 Golden Geek Best Board Game Artwork & Presentation Nominee

Why (we wanted it / like it (or don’t): Bright colors, amazing artwork and very interesting gameplay – that’s what hooked me… then to watch Zee Garcia try to contain his excitement (which is a rarity) during his review (click the title or graphic to view) made me want to check this out all the more!! 🙂

Mom is not too savvy when it comes to online ordering, so she has me place orders for her for friends out of the area and have them delivered directly… during one such mission I happened upon another smaller game I had been eye-balling for Julie and that was Three Sisters!!

Once the dice have been placed, each player drafts one die and uses it as described below. Once everyone has drafted a die, all players get to use the lowest-valued die remaining on the action wheel. A die lets you do two things, which you can do in either order:

• Plant or water the numbered zone matching the value of the die.
• Take the action of the space from which you removed the die.

To plant, you mark the bottom space of two empty crop tracks. (Note that you can’t plant beans until the corn adjacent to the beans is tall enough to support them.) To water, you mark one space in all the crop tracks that already have at least one mark in them. As for the actions on the action wheel, you can:

• Plant or water again in the same numbered zone.
• Gain one compost (which lets you adjust die values) and four goods (which will get you bonuses at the farmer’s market).
• Mark off the hive track, which can bring you points, goods, or bonus actions.
• Mark one of the four fruit tracks. Each fruit is worth different points and different amounts of goods and has different track lengths and circle positions.
• Visit the farmer’s market, which gives you points and bonuses based on the number of goods you’ve collected.
• Mark one of the fifteen tool tracks in your shed. As soon as you complete a track, you gain that power or end-game scoring opportunity.

Perennials don’t have a direct action associated with them and are marked off only through actions in other areas, with the various perennials giving different bonuses as you mark them.

At the end of the round, all players receive a bonus action, either rain that waters all numbered zones in your garden, a trip to the shed, or a visit to the farmer’s market. After eight rounds, you score points for harvested crops, perennials, the apiary, fruit, and some shed items. Whoever has the most points wins.

Three Sisters has a solo mode in which you try to top your own score against an “opponent” that drafts dice and blocks areas of your sheet.

Why (we wanted it / like it (or don’t): We all love ‘roll & write’ or ‘flip & write’ style games but there have been a ton of them in recent years and they continue to grow increasingly large and complex… this was one such game BUT, it revolves around a method of gardening and Julie loves growing stuff… 🙂

There’s one more game I hadn’t picked up nor intended to until Julie and I were watching some end of year videos a few nights ago and one of the Dice Tower’s Games of the Year videos was talking about Planted… I wasn’t sure Julie was even watching or still awake but she started elbowing me and screaming, “Yes – please!! Yes – please!!”

Why (we wanted it / like it (or don’t): I’m sure Julie wants it for the theme… I’m interested because we have loved many games by this designer – Phil Walker-Harding like Silver and Gold, Gizmos, Bärenpark, Sushi Go, Sushi Go Party and Imhotep… the gameplay looks like fun, the components in the BASE game are worthy of a deluxe Kickstarter version and the price point rivals many very bad mass market games… the next time I picked up Julie’s prescriptions at CVS in Target (of all places) I brought home a copy.

Hmmm. discount sales on games… Yeah!! That’s the ticket… 🙂

I was thrilled to be playing again on New Year’s Eve but I’ll save that story for the next chapter after I return home…

Happy 2023!! What should we play??