December Games

December got off to a slow start... Then slowed down a bit more... and then picked up again over the holidaze... but not so much as in previous years (we watched a lot of movies this month...).

Monday, 3 December 2018 - Wrath & Glory



I was getting excited about the "imminent" release of Wrath & Glory (STILL WAITING!), and so decided to run Blessings Unheralded (the Free PRG Day quick-start rules and introductory adventure) again - for a different group of players.

I ran it for a bunch of guys from the local 40K league. While the last group approached he'd things from a completely different way than the authors intended... These guys when in a completely different direction - also apparently not envisioned by the authors. Ultimately they saved the day... sort of... and were much quicker about it. Being regular 40K players - who have read a lot of the fluff - they picked up on stuff that the other group would have had no idea about. Fun bunch of guys - kept me on my toes...

Tuesday, 4 December 2018



Not a game I play in, but on the 4th Finnegan played in the final adventure of a D&D campaign he's been playing in for three years now. They started playing at King Me Boardgamery, but somewhere in the second year it was just getting too busy and noisy there and so we offered up our place to play at. The character he started the campaign actually died a couple months in, and since then he's been playing a draconian cleric/paladin of Tyr... We always know when he was about to hit something as he would shout out "TYR'S JUSTICE!". I am curious to know what his new character's battle cry will be? I was trying to convince him it should be "NOT THE FACE!"


Saturday, 8 December 2018 - O Zoo Le Mio



Fun little game of managing and expanding a zoo. There and bidding/drafting and tile-laying elements to it. We haven't played in a while.



My zoo at the end of the game. I totally crushed it. Like, I had more points than both kids combined. You really have to get as many tiles early on in the game - I feel like if you end the first turn with money, you're probably doing something wrong.


Saturday, 22 December 2018 
Colonial Twilight: The French-Algerian War, 1954-62

Didn't get in another game for two weeks...



My friend Kurtis came over and brought his copy of Colonial Twilight: The French-Algerian War! I LOVE these COIN games from GMT, but I am apparently utterly clueless at how to prosecute either a guerrilla war or a counter-insurgency campaign!?

I played the Front de Liberation Nationale and Kurtis played the French Government. This one was interesting as it's a little different than the others in that it's only a two-player game - all the others I've played are four-player games, so you always have a supposed ally - whose one victory conditions are often at odds with your own!


Tuesday 25 December 2018 - Race for the Galaxy



Another family favourite that we haven't played in a while: Race for the Galaxy! My initial start cards didn't really point to any sort of theme (I love having a solid theme to my tableau - it's probably more important to me than, y'know, actually winning...), but I had a little bit of an Alien theme going on by the end of the game - and I think I even won...? Probably all the prestige - and the bonus victory points for being the only one with prestige for most of the game. It's my least favourite element of the game. I don't really feel like it adds anything to the game...


Wednesday, 26 December 2018



Well, first we went out to the annual Boxing Day Sale at Dragon's Den Games...



Always busy at the Den on Boxing Day... Line up went all the way to the back of the store - and for a bit wrapped around and back towards the front!



I mostly picked up 40K stuff: a Valkyrie, a few metal minis (Cadian Snipers, Kal Jericho and Scabs, Castellan Crowe, and a eldar Warlock), two Kill Team Commander boxes (Astra Militarum and Drukhari), and a bunch of Black Library books - including the fluffy book to go along with Blackstone Fortress (which I'm about half way through, now).

Finnegan bought a D&D book, a Read Dragon Inn expansion, A Star Wars: Edge of Empire adventure, a D&D mini for his character in the NEW campaign his group will be starting in the new year, and some Kroot (because I pointed out the January White Dwarf preview where there will apparently be rules for Kroot Mercenaries in Kill Team).

The Girl grabbed Codenames: Harry Potter, The Shadowrun Crossfire Prime Runner Edition refit kit (to make the edition she has playable with the new stuff they're coming out with?), Kids on Bikes the Role-playing Game, a harlequin Solitaire miniature and a great big Owlbear miniature!



Later we tried out her new Codenames: Harry Potter game



Like, FOUR TIMES. (It plays pretty quick).



This is a more co-op variant of the regular Codenames games - both sides are giving clues to the other side (and have different maps). You are both trying to locate members of the Order of the Phoenix. Unlike other versions of codenames that have only one assassin, there are three Deatheater/assasins on each map (that if the other team guesses, you automatically lose!). Interestingly, some of the positions that are death eaters one YOUR map are . We lost three of the four games. The maps are two sided and each side has nine locations for Order of Phoenix members, some are the same as the one on the other side that the other team is looking at - between the two maps there are 14 spaces that will eventually be covered (if you complete it and win!).



We also played Unstable Unicorns. One of the main things The Girl had been looking forward to getting at the Den was a couple expansions for this... but they were all sold out of them!



My stable at the end of the game. I won.



Later we played a game of Castles of Burgundy. Fun game. Still takes us a while to play - so we were up quite late playing it. I felt like I was doing good... Wasn't too far behind Amanda and thought I'd be getting a fair few points at the end of the game.... but then Amanda got MORE and just crushed us.


Thursday, 27 December 2018 - Terraforming Mars



I actually got this from my folks for Xmas LAST year... and still hadn't played it!! I had signed up to play it at ToonCon this year, but was utterly exhausted by Saturday evening and went home to sleep instead of staying to play.



I decided over the holidaze I would sit down and figure out the rules and set up a game for the family. As it turns out the game rules are pretty simple and straightforward (somehow I imagined they would be very complex...?)



I really like the game - some resource management... Not a lot of luck or chance - other than the random cards drawn... so many different approaches to victory. Amanda totally hammered us this game. We were pretty close in Terraforming Rating at the end of the game, but then she got a pile of points for tiles on the board...

Lessons were learned.



Friday, 28 December 2018 - Terraforming Mars, Again.



We played a second game of Terraforming Mars on Friday and my friend Robyn joined us. Having learned a bit from the last game - I was determined not to be left behind on the placing of tiles..



All my stuff at the end of the the game.



A lot more greenery and cities out there this game.



A lot of them were mine (I was red)... I kind of left everyone in the dust. Looking forward to playing this again - and having my ass handed to me now that they've all cottoned on to the necessity of getting tiles out there!


Saturday, 29 December 2018 - Star Wars: Edge of Empire

Finnegan offered to run a game of Edge of Empire for us. He's been playing in a campaign since September - they play almost weekly.



In the afternoon we made characters. Amanda made a Rodian (like Greedo) Bounty Hunter named Lakshmi Gumong. The Girl made a Wookie medical doctor named Chirubnifer.

I decided I'd play an IG-series assassin droid (IG-37) that some smart ass reprogrammed to be a protocol droid. Captain Gumong purchased me at a bargain basement price from a pair of Jawas thinking I'd add some muscle for her bounty-hunting operation. The Jawas swore all I needed was a new power pack - the old one had died and wouldn't recharge any more... and they didn't happen to have any they could sell her. By the time she found some and fired me up they were long gone. She first discovered my "inability to harm" programming in a armed stand off where she ordered me to shoot some thugs defending her quarry and I told her "But I can't do that, it's against my programming!" she says something like "and you waited until NOW to inform me of this!?"

Oh, and I convinced both Amanda and The Girl that Amanda's character didn't understand Wookie, and for some reason, out of the 3 million forms of communication I've been programmed with, my Wookie language program is a bit faulty - so any time The Girl's character wanted to say something She would growl and howl like a Wookie and I would "translate" - basically just totally making something up that generally had nothing to do with the matter at hand...

Hijinks ensued.

There were a lot of laughs..



We ended up doing a job for a Hutt - going to check out a mini facility he'd recently acquired as part of some winnings at in a game of chance. We were to ascertain the profitability of the enterprise and bring back 100,000 credits - the profit he was expecting to receive for the last cycle. We arrived to find the place seemingly abandoned - and then discovered some rogue droids that seemed to have taken over the place. We need up staying up pretty late  and have to leave it on a bit of a cliffhanger... hopefully we'll be able to continue the campaign in the new year.


Sunday, 30 December 2018

We'd originally planned to play Scot Pilgrim's Precious Little Card game - one of the games on the Tower of Shame - a pile of games I've acquired in the last year (or so...) but have yet to play. I ended up spending the entire day assembling this crazy new bed that Amanda ordered for The Girl. At the end of the day I was feeling a little ill and crazy tired and just not in the mood for reading rules and learning new games so instead we ended up playing... well... some other games.



We played one round of Codenames: Harry Potter - and won!

I like this better than Codenames: Pictures (the other Codenames game we have). There are actually pictures on the other sides of the Harry Potter cards - but they're pictures from the movies (usually of the word on the other side) and so they're of a specific thing - unlike the illustrations in Codenames: Pictures which are often like; WTF is that?!



Then after a bunch of "I don't know what do you want to play... I don't know what do you want to play..." we eventually settled on Century: Golem.



I totally thought Amanda had this one in the bag. I ended the game with five cards, but the last one I picked was only eight points, and she'd picked up a twenty and a sixteen and I was sure I'd only picked up cards that were around 12...



Kind of forgot about the eighteen I picked up early in the game... edged her out by four points, the kids weren't far behind either.


Monday, 31 December 2018

Today we planned to have a day of playing games together and watching movies. We ended up sleeping in really late and not really getting around to starting with the games until mid afternoon. I still have a headache, but wasn't feeling as bad, so I sat down to figure out Scott Pilgrim's Precious Little Card Game. I had talked to someone who had played and, I can't remember exactly what they said, but I got the impression that it was confusing and convoluted. When I finally read the rules, they seemed pretty straightforward...?



The first Evil Ex we decided to face was Lucas Lee. I played Stephen Stills (the Talent), Finnegan played Ramona Flowers, The Girl played Knives Chau, and Amanda played Scott Pilrgrim.

I thought it was actually a pretty fun little deck-builder with a totally entertaining theme. If you're not a Scott Pilgrim fan, you might not dig it quite so much... but maybe you might, if you really love deck-building games...?



I ended up winning - just barely - Finnegan had defeated Lucas Lee and had a nice little engine going in the acquisition phase - picking up PILES of extra cards every turn. If I hadn't acquired a Crappy Apartment, he certainly would have and totally won...

This evening we're planning to finish up the Star Wars: Edge of Empire game and then watch a movie (or two) - if there's time...


Coming Soon to Tim's Miniature Wargaming Blog:

The next two posts will probably be a brief look back at 2018 and then some planning for 2019.

Thanks for stopping by and for all your kind comments this year and I hope you all have a fabulous New Year!