Long Weekend Gaming

This past weekend was Thanksgiving (here in Canada, at least…) and we had a bit of an blast of winter-like weather earlier in the week, so we mostly stayed in and played games all weekend.

Friday night Amanda and I played our regular Friday night role-playing game – currently we’re playing in a D&D 5E Primeval Thule campaign.

Saturday afternoon we played Firefly: The Board Game which I already posted about.

Saturday evening we played host to ANOTHER D&D 5E game – but this time it was the group that The Boy plays with every other week at King Me Boardgamery - and Amanda and I hid in the basement and started watching The Walking Dead season six (which I’d pick up from the library that morning).

Sunday we played  Super Dungeon Explore: The Forgotten King. The Girl got it last Xmas from my folks. We tried playing it once – ages ago… probably in January. Some time after that she had mentioned to me that she thought it was the best gift she’d ever gotten, so I vowed to try and play it more. I even went out and secretly bought and painted two characters for Amanda and I to use as our own:

(Remember: click on the pictures for a bigger version)

These are Succubus Vandella and Wandering Minstrel from Soda Pop Miniatures. I’d actually been looking at them for a while at our friendly local games store - Dragon’s Den Games  - and I was pretty sure I was going to get the Wandering Minstrel for myself, but wasn’t sure which of the female characters I was going to get for Amanda. But the day I went in to pick them up these were the only two left! The Succubus was one of the ones I was considering picking up anyway… saved me some decision-making though…

I painted them in the spring May… or maybe June…? But then we got busy doing other things end of the skewl year activities and then got busy with cycling and kayaking and  our summer vacation and all the stuff that followed… we just didn’t get to playing. So I was determined to get playing this fall. I’d hoped we’d get started in September during our 30 Games in 30 Days Challenge, but I got busy with making terrain for the Regina Trench Game and we ended up playing mostly short games and not having time to set up a game of Super Dungeon Explore…

I even came up with part of a back-story as to why they’re adventuring together – she was going about her succubus ways – seducing men and draining them of their… uh… essence…? One night she spied the Wandering Minstrel and determined he would be her next prey, but when she approached and heard his beautiful song she fell in love and gave up her succubus ways and the two have been traveling together ever since…

I digress…

So The Girl set up a game for us to play in “Arcade Mode” – which is basically a co-op game where the dungeon monsters follow an A.I. She included some of the baddies from the Claws of the Wyrm Warband she’s also picked up.

The Characters for our adventure. Amanda and I played the minstrel and the Succubus, The Boy played The Royal Paladin and The Girl played The Riftling Rogue (both of which were painted by The Girl - so far she's only managed to paint a few of the Heroes - but after playing this hopefully she'll be motivated to paintup some of the others)… so both girls were playing demonic women…?! 

Starting out.

It took some time to puzzle through the rules. The Girl is the only one who has actually READ them. Usually I read the rules and explain them to everyone, but I thought since it’s her game she should try. She tried her best, but she is only ten and, while she can play all sorts of games when the rules are explained to her, reading rules on your own and explaining them to others is a whole different kettle of fish.

We made quite a few mistakes… with both the A.I. controlling the monsters and how the player actions worked. The Girl thought that the monstes would only attack the player with the most “Wrath” (you get wrath tokens for doing stuff against the monsters) when actually they only move towards the character with the most wrath, but will attack anyone at had wherever they end their movement. The Girl had also thought we had to do all our movement first THEN spend actions – when actually we could have spent movement and action points in any order – which would mean a LOT more options for moving about the board and doing stuff.

The Boy’s Royal Paladin snuffed it…

Things not looking great for us.

That’s me pretty much standing along against all the stuff on the first section… The girl wasn’t being touched because she had no wrath points. (actually she should have been taking hits too… ah, well… it was our “figuring stuff out” game).

And then I got beat down by one of the “mini-bosses”….

We took a break in the early evening to head over to my folks for a thanksgiving-ish supper (Chinese take-out from Szechuan Kitchen). There we played a few more games - Museé (above), and a few games of Loonacy

Later we came back home and played some more Super Dungeon Explore. The Boy and I were restored to life.

We almost managed to clear out the second board….

Then The Girl got squirrels in her pants…

Seriously, there’re these squirrel like things that move around and when they get in contact with you they are removed from the board and put on your card – because they are, literally, in your pants – and they can only be attacked by you and until removed they lower your armour – or something like that…?

Eventually we had to call it an evening… well… for the kids… Amanda and I stayed up stupid late again an watched more of Walking Dead season six

Sunday one of my oldest and dearest friends came over with his girls to play some games for the afternoon. I haven’t seen them in a long time - so it was great just to see them and even more fun to play a bunch of games with them.

We started out with a game of Monty Python Fluxx.

After that we played a game of 7 Wonders

After that we got to try out a seven-player game of Star Trek: Five Year Mission - and we WON!! (though it was a pretty near thing a couple of times!) I played Chekov.

And then The Girl played a game of Pandemic with them.

After they’d left and we’d all had supper, everyone seemed to decide they’d had so much fun playing 7 Wonders that we should do it again!?

So we did – and added in the 7 Wonders: Leaders expansion.

Later Amanda and I finished off Walking Dead season six…

Phew! What a weekend!

(I even managed to keep up with my Inktober drawings - and get started on painting a few new minis!?) 

It's supposed to warm up a bit over the next few days - hopefully enough to melt the rest of the snow so we can get the carrots and potatoes out of the garden before it snows again! 

Coming soon on Tim’s Miniature Wargaming Blog:

Hopefully I’ll get back to painting minis and making terrain…