April
ended with a weekend of gaming (International Tabletop Day!) and I wondered if
the game playing would peter out a but due to gaming exhaustion, but it turned
out to have the opposite effect – it kind of reminded us how much fun we have
gamin and inspired us to get gaming MORE! Well… at least for the first week or
so… Towards the end of the month we got wrapped up in kids activities that were
wrapping up for the (skool) year.
I have to admit I started
writing this post at the beginning of May and tried adding a bit to it after each game – hoping
to jot down some notes about each game AS THEY WERE PLAYED rather than trying
to remember what the hell happened at the end of the month. Sometimes I
remembered to do this… other times not-so-much… hence more detail about some
games than others.
(Remember: click on the pictures
for a bigger version)
Kicked off May with another game
of
Hero
Realms! (forgot to take a pic during the game). Finnegan played the
Cleric,
The Girl took the
Thief,
and I played the
Ranger.
I crushed them… and made them cry… Looking forward to the launch of the Co-op
version of the game!! I think the trick to the game is to try to get as many
champions as you can and focus on one or two of the colours – I mostly went for
green and red and laid down some serious hurt. Though early in the game I did
pick up a few bribes and a blue guild mage (or something like that) to give me
some buying power – to get the big nasty heavy hitters from green and red –
giants, trolls, vampires, etc…
On the Second we played
Roborally
(with a soundtrack of Chemical Brothers and Le Tigre cranked on the stereo).
This was The Girl’s choice, but I love Roborally too. We don’t pull it out
often largely because Amanda isn’t fond of it – but she was away in BC at a
Yoga Nedra workshop, so…
The Girl played Twonky, Finnegan
played… um… I forget who he played…
and I played #5 (whatever his name is…? I always thought he looked like
that robot from… dang what was that movie called…? With Ally Sheedy and a robot
named Number Five…? Short Circuit?
Finnegan had the worst game – he
drove his robot off the board or into pits THREE TIMES!? He only ever made it
to the second marker (out of four). He took it all rather well and laughed the
whole time – which is a HUGE improvement from previous games we’ve had when he
was driven to tears of frustration!
I had a pretty commanding lead
for the first bit. Got to the first marker while Finnegan was still floundering
on the first board. Made a clean getaway before The Girl’s robot got there.
I made a mistake trying to get
to the third marker and got turned around on the conveyor belts surrounding it.
I still got there before The Girl, but I kind of took the long way around
trying to extract myself from this mess while avoiding The Girl and her robot’s
presser beam option/upgrade – which could have spelt disaster with all these
conveyor belts leading into pits! Then she had a couple of turns with hands
full of Forward Threes and Twos while I had a couple of mitt-fulls of nuthin
but Turn Lefts!?
It was a REALLY close race
between me and The Girl – it came down to the very last turn and THIS register
above (I think it was the third register of the turn) where she would have shot
forward to claim the prize, but mine went first and bumped her off her path so
I was able to turn and get to the final marker on the very last register!!
Didn’t play games again until
Friday when Bruce, Bob, and Brian came over to play in our bi weekly
Primeval
Thule D&D
5E campaign. We didn’t get up to much as three players were missing.
Still on our way back to Quodeth from the Slavers city – ship got attacked by a
mososaurus – or something like that. Lost a crewman and had to put into shore
to do repairs. One of the parties sent into the woods didn’t come back and so we
had to go search them out and got ambushed by some strange golem-like creature…
On Saturday
Dragon’s Den
Games was having another 20% off sale… apparently because it was Free
Comic Book Day… but they didn’t have comics to give out… because they’re not a
comic store… So they had a sale… Whatever, I went and bought a copy of
Codenames:
Pictures and
Kingdomino.
My mom had asked me to get a couple of games that we didn’t have, that we’d be
interested in playing, that thaty could keep at their place and that THEY’d be
able to play… not too tall of an order.
We happened to meet my folks for
dinner at Amigos and we tried out
Codenames:
Pictures while we waited for out meals. It’s okay… our game was a bit
rushed… I ended up buying this one because I had a few promo tiles for it from
International Tabletop Day. I’m beginning to feel like I like the Words one
better (which I played a year and a half ago…). A well… this one is fine.
Perhaps I need to give it a few more tries.
Afterwards we walked back to my
folks and tried out
Kingdomino.
I thought I was doing rather well, but in the spirit of her mother (who was
still in BC at the yoga workshop) The Girl complained all game that she wasn’t
doing very well… and then CRUSHED us all… well… I think she had 43 points, my
mom and I were tied in second with 39… I forget what Finnegan had. I don’t
think he was much behind…
If that weren’t enough for one
day Brent and Kurtis came over in the evening to play
Pax
Renaissance. It’s been a little too long since we last played and I’d
pretty much completely forgot the rules. I took them with me while I was out
all afternoon running The Girl around to her Saturday dance classes – but I was
SO TIRED I could barely keep my eyes open all afternoon – let alone read Phil
Eklund rules! I remembered the basics – two actions, buy cards, play cards… I
was a little fuzzy on how a lot of the ops worked…. And had no clue how to put
it all together to put oneself into a position to… y’know… actually come close
to achieving anyting resembling any of the victory conditions…
Brent seemed to have it figured
out and got this incredible juggernaut of European renaissance high finance
rolling and I had no clue how to even create so much as a speed bump, let along
STOP HIM!?
I feel like I need to play this
game every night for a week – like we did with Race for the Galaxy when we
first tried to figure it out – then MAYBE I’ll start to get a clue how to play!
In the morning I had originally
planned to go for a bike ride with the kids, but one thing lead to another and
we didn’t end up going out… but we DID play another game of
Hero
Realms! This time The Girl played the
Ranger,
Finnegan played the
Wizard,
and I played the
Fighter
(which I’d picked up earlier in the week…).
From this moment on I pretty
much knew I would now forever be the first one to die in Hero Realms – in this
ONE TURN (pictured above) I put out 15 points worth of guards, dealt about 30
damage and healed myself for 30… yeah… from that point on it was pretty much
GANG UP ON DAD, HE’S TOO GOOD AT THIS GAME!
Thursday the 11th was The Girl’s
11th birthday. While waiting for supper we introduced Amanda to Hero Realms.
I’m not sure we even finished the game…?
After Supper we played a game of
Super Dungeon Explore: The Forgotten King - as The Girl
wanted to practice before running the game for some of her friends at her
Birthday party the following evening. I played my Wandering Minstrel and Amanda
played her Fallen Succubus (
pictures of those from when we last played). Finnegan played the Deeproot Druid. We didn’t get
through a complete game, but The Girl got the practice she needed.
On Saturday the 13the I wandered
over to Kurtis’ to play another game of
Pax
Renaissance with him and Brent again. This time I was a bit better
rested. I played the Fugger bank of Austria and… I can’t remember who Brent and
Kurtis played… I could look at these pictures and look it up... but I'm feeling too lazy to do that at the moment.
My first stab at victory. I
think I had three kingdoms here and the others only had one – the feudalism
victory condition was in play, but I didn’t have an action left to declare
victory. The situation would change drastically before I had another turn. It
was back and forth between me and Brent for a number of turns – I came close to
winning a few more times, but Brent always had LOADS of money and was always
able to foil me before I could declare victory. Finally he took enough away
from my that he was able to declare victory. Seriously, I think he had just
about every empire on the map in his pocket by that point…
Out of three games, we’ve only
ever had feudalism victories…
Fugger bank sucks. (Or maybe it’s just that I do…). I feel
like at the time I’d thought out some actual reasons why it was no fun to
play.. they have to go first and start with less money…? I can’t remember… Need
to play it again. And
Pax
Pamir
On Sunday (the 14th)
we met my sister and folks at Amigos Cantina for a supper with them to
celebrate The Girl’s birthday. They brought along Codenames; Pictures again. We
played a couple quick games while waiting for food (boys vs. girls – with me
and The Girl as Spymasters, we started a third with Amanda and me as
spymasters, but the food arrived before we really got into it.
On Tuesday we tried out
Monarch.
Ever since we watched the
Tabletop
Season Four episode about Monarch back an the beginning of February,
The Girl has been super stoked about tracking one down. I’d actually added it
to the list of games my Mother-in-law could look for to get for my birthday –
but when Amanda told be she went and got ALL of the games on the list I
suggested she could hold onto Monarch until May and give it to The Girl for her
birthday. So she did. The Girl was SUPER EXCITED to get it!!!
We all got to play sister
princesses filling up our courts to score crowns (victory points) which, it
think, were to gain the favour of our mother the queen..? It's kind of a card drafting game - most card go into your "court" and you play until someone has seven in their court. Other cards you buy improve the lands which benefit everyone. To draft/buy these cards from the market you need to have gold which you get from taxing villages, but to tax them you have to have food to feed them - which you get from harvesting. You can either tax or harvest once on your turn and then buy as many cards as you like (actually you can buy cards before and/or after doing your taxation or harvest - which allows you to buy and improvement and then make use of it before anyone else does!)
The first game we played without
banners because The Girl had read in the rules that it was suggested to play
without them for your first game or so – honestly, we could have thrown them
in. It’s a pretty easy game – for seasoned pros like us it wouldn’t have been
too much to just play with them for the start…
I crushed the kids going heavy
on Bounty.
In the second game I hammered
them again – I had some pretty incredible luck, though – One of the first cards
I got was the one that allowed you to get culture cards for 2 less gold and two
other culture cards in the first turn and then snapped up the Culture Banner
which meant pretty much anytime an unwanted guest showed up in the market, it
was going into one of their courts for free (except the one that The Girl managed
to buy and put into mine, before I could put it in one of theirs…). It’s a bit of a
double-edged sword of an ability, because it makes all the other players want
to buy the unwanted guests and put them in YOURS! If playing with four players
it could have gone much worse for me…
Later in the evening we introduced Amanda to the game.
I didn’t make note of how that game went. I think The Girl
won.
The third weekend in May was the Victoria Day long weekend
in Canada and I’d originally hoped to get in a LOT of gaming – at least seven
games – Friday night, Saturda Afternoon, Saturday Evening, Sunday Afternoon,
Sunday Evening, Monday afternoon and Monday evening… but then Amanda was
feeling super behind at work and ended up going in for the day on Monday.
Saturday and Sunday she decided we needed to get caught up on a bunch of chores
and errands… booooo… we did get in a few games…
Friday Evening we played
Legendary:
The Marvel Deck-Building Game with the
Deadpool
expansion that Finnegan had bought some time ago and never got around to
playing with. We played with mostly Deadpool hero cards… and some incompetant
Agent of Hydra… and our mission was to stop Macho Gomez from stealing all the
Chimichangas. It was weird.
Saturday evening I convinced the family to try out
Faustus
Furius - except with jet bikes! A full report of the ensuing
shenanigans can be found elsewhere on this bolg:
Finally on Monday a couple of the kid’s friends came over
and played
Star
Wars: X-Wing. I didn’t play in this one, and I’m not really sure how
it went down. The Girl played with one of the
Imperial
Veterans these same lads gave her for her birthday (the crazy looking
red interceptor thingie) and the younger of the brothers played a pair of bog
standard Tie-Fighters with Academy pilots. Finnegan played the
B-Wing
and the elder brother played the
Y-Wing.
Once again it was a victory for the Forces of the Imperium – furthering their
cause to promote peace, justice and ORDER in the galaxy by preventing the
radicalized, terrorist Rebels from spreading their hokey weapons and ancient
religion…
As I mentioned, the last week or so of May has been CrAzY
busy with dance classes at the Uof S School of dance wrapping up and final
rehearsals and recitals and getting a garden in and a bunch of other stuff
going on. So we didn’t play any games as a family for over a week! Hopefully in
June – and through the rest of the summer – we’ll find some more time for
gaming.
I did get in one last game at
John’s on the evening of the 31st. We played
Quartermaster General 1914. QMG 1914
is a lighter card-driven game of the Great War. John actually called it “not a
wargame, but an area control game with a war theme”. I liked it – I wish I’d
had this to play with the kids instead of Axis & Allies 1914 back when we
were
boardgaming
our way through history…. (I am reminded that I never actually
FINISHED the last two posts about our boardgaming through history… maybe I
should get on that…).
I played Russia, John played the
UK and the USA, Brent played France and Italy. Opposing us were April, who played
Germany, and Darrin playing Austro-Hungary and the Ottomans.
It was a weird game – The United
states was in the war quicker that the British!? In fact the British never
landed an army in France – but the Americans did! Italy marched through Tyrol and
marched on Vienna and captured it! This happened quite early in the war and
kind of screwed Darrin for the rest of the war as he was unable to do much of
anything (all his units being out of supply and unable to build new ones…).
Near the end of the game – I
used up all of my little men half way through the game and thus could expand no
further – I could have used guys to attack into adjacent areas (on the rare
occasion that I HAD land battle cards) but I wouldn’t have been able to take
them over – just remove enemies from the areas denying them victory points –
But the Germans had so many readied defence cards, I figured it would be
pointless and tried to look for other ways to gain victory points (mostly
through the use of event cards).
In other news…
I had a talk with John
- who is the chief-organizer-guy for
ToonCon - and I’m
going to be running either
Pax
Renaissance or
Pax
Pamir on Sunday afternoon as part of their new “Learn to Play” series
of games – Games that they figure very few people will have played
- some of which may be “heavier” games
(ones that can be a bit of a slog to try and read through the rules without
having played something similar before) - that people can sign up with no
previous knowledge and know that the person running it will basically walk them
through a game (and hopefully not have one super experienced person show up and
crush everyone else because they had no clue how to play). My Faustus Furius
game (which I’ll be running on the Saturday evening) will be part of this
series. There might be a
COIN
game in this series or
High
Frontier 3rd Edition - both of which I’d be excited to play as well.
We have a few more weeks of furious activity – two or three
more violin lessons, two more Irish dance classes (then two rehearsals and the
final recital) and then our year-end homeschool reporting on the 20th. After
that we are free and clear (mostly) for rthe rest of the summer… well… okay, we
are renovating the kitchen – and I’m doing a lot of that… and the kids are each
taking a week long theatre class at Persephone Theatre and Finnegan is going to
Diabetes Camp and we’re all going on a short trip up to Prince Albert National
Park for a few days of hiking and mountain biking… but OTHER THAN THAT – we
don’t have much planned through the summer and I hope to get in a lot of biking
and playing games!
Through June I do hope to get Saturday games in on at least
three of the weekends… maybe even four (if Amanda can take the kids to one of
the Irish rehearsals)…? This Saturday we’re planning to play
Arkham
Horror. As The Girl is done all
her Saturday dance classes she’ll actually be able to join us, unfortunately
Amanda is at a conference all weekend – so it’ll just be me and the kids and my
friend Jasper who said he’d come and maybe I’ll be able to get one more player…
On two of the other Saturdays in June I’d like to get in
games of
Pax
Renaissance or
Pax
Pamir - so I can let the ToonCon peoples know which one I’m going to
run.
I’ve been feeling the urge to
run a role-playing game again. I’m pretty stoked about the idea of running a
Cthulhu
Invictus campaign. I’ve been considering running it with a very
simple system based on
A
Song of Blades and Heroes or
Fear
and Faith (I’d been thinig if I’d run a more modern Cthulhu campaign
I could have called
it Fear and
Faith and Fthagn!). I’d really like to run it for the kids – and maybe some
others… I’m not entirely sure WHEN I’ll run it though… Ideally I’d like to get
started over the summer – like, right after we’re doing with the Homeschool
reporting!
Bruce, who has been running the bi
weekly
Primeval
Thule D&D
5E campaign, has said he’s hoping to wrap it up by the end of the
summer and then he’d like to take a break and has asked if my or Bob (one of
the other players) if we’d step up and run something. I could possibly run
Cthulhu Invictus then (perhaps a separate second campaign – or rerun the games
I’ve already run with the kids?)… or possibly I could run something else
entirely. I did just back the
Astropolis
II Kickstarter - the Astropolis figures look PERFECT for a
Rogue
Trader….
Bah – I’ll worry about that
after ToonCon. I need to get building some Jet Bikes!
I've noticed that these Boardgame round-ups are my most popular posts - they are getting almost double traffic my regular posts of painted miniatures and miniature game reports!? Is it the labels? Searches for boardgames? If you're not a regular and you popped by to read this - leave a comment and let me know how you got here - I'm just curious.
Coming soon on Tim’s Miniature Wargaming Blog:
Probably some pictures of
Dwarves I’ve painted for the Highland Dwarf
Dragon
Rampant warband – not to be
confused with the Mountain Dwarf warband (yeah, I’m working on two totally
separate dwarf warbands for Dragon Rampant). The hopefully a Giant Robot and
the onto some Jet Bikes and more game reports!!
