September Game-A-Day Challenge: Week Four

The last week the game-a-day thing was wearing a bit thin - oh we made it, we've played a different game each day of the month so far!



The remaining two days are the first two days of ToonCon (which I'll have a separate post about on Sunday) where we will be playing another half dozen or so games...

But this last week, for various reasons, we pulled out all the super quick games and were trying to squeeze games in between different activities or just before bed...

Day 23 - Saturday, 23 September 2017 - Warhammer:40K/Timeline: Historical Events



In the afternoon on Saturday we finished off the game of Warhammer 40,000 (8th Edition) we'd started the evening before - a full report of that game can be found here:

First Crack At 40K 8th

Because, technically, that was a continuation of the previous day's game, we'd decided we should play another. Originally we'd planned to play through Pax Renaissance, but then got watching Heroes Season One and everyone seemed more interested in watching more episodes of that than playing Pax Renaissance....



...so, between two episodes, we quickly got out Timeline: Historical Events and played a quick game of that. I won. I pretty much always do. We went back to watching Heroes.

I don't win the game because I know more about history that everyone else in the family... okay, I DO know more about history than everyone else in the family, and it is a significant factor in me winning all the time, but I also play smart - I always do the hardest ones first and leave the easier ones - the ones that I DO know the exact date for for last, which seems to be the opposite of what everyone else does. For example, I have no idea when the Mutiny on the Bounty was... I would guess between 1600 and 1800... so I'd try to get that our first before there are other 17th and 18th centre cards out there. When the only other cards out are the Roman invasion of Britain and the Beginning of World War One... well, it's going between those!


Day 24 - Sunday, 24 September 2017 - Pax Renaissance



FINALLY we got to playing through Pax Renaissance. I'm running a Learn-To-Play event for this at ToonCon this weekend and, while I've played it a fair bit this year, it's been a couple or so since I last played. So I wanted a chance to brush up on the rules and have them fresh in my head for this weekend. I also wanted an opportunity to try explaining the rules to people that had never played and, for the most part, weren't even really familiar with Phil Eklund games.

They've all actually played Pax Porfiriana - once, over a year ago. Both kids have played Pax Pamir as well - The Girl, again, once, over a year ago, and Finnegan played it twice. Finnegan has also played Pax Renaissance once, but it was a while ago as well. So they were pretty much like newbs.

Amanda was utterly lost, she looked like she was about to fall asleep through half the game -not from boredom, just from being very, very tired. She said it looked really interesting but was just too tired to figure it out. The Girl was actually really close to winning with a Renaissance victory - Laws and Republics, but a second comet showed up and Finnegan scooped a Imperial victory!

It was a really fun game! It seems like everyone would be willing to try it again sometime. Perhaps on an afternoon when everyone is still wide awake!

Unfortunately the following morning I remembered WHY we had originally planned to play it Saturday. I actually had a nagging feeling when I told the kids on Saturday it was okay to put it off until tomorrow that there was some reason why we couldn't play it on Sunday, but couldn't think of what it was. Amanda and I had tickets for a play at the Persephone Theatre Sunday evening... totally missed it... DOH!?

Day 25 - Monday, 25 September 2017 - Codenames: Pictures

We were out to dinner at my folks to celebrate my sister's birthday and then the kids had their swim lessons and when they got home they desperately wanted to watch more of Heroes... so we play ONE quick round of Codenames: Pictures. I teamed up with The Girl and Amanda played with Finnegan. Amanda and Finnegan got a bit of a head start when The Girl guessed wrong on my first clue and actually picked on of THEIRS. We got it back by the end and actually won! 

Day 26 - Tuesday, 26 September 2017 - Coup

 

Amanda and I had spent a long day out running around looking at countertops and tiles for our kitchen renovation. by the time we got back in the early evening, finnegan's D&D group had arrived and they were well into their game. After they left, we got in a super quick game of Coup before we all went off to bed. I don't love Coup, but we were running out of quick games to play. I actually ended up winning - mostly by NOT EVER bluffing!?

Day 27 - Wednesday, 27 September 2017 - Drakon



We actually had a bit more time today, but spent way too much time deciding what to play and ended up settling on a game of Drakon - which we played in, like, 15 minutes. The Girl suggested we play another round, but I was feeling a bit of gaming fatigue and said "no"...

 Day 28 - Thursday, 28 September 2017 - London

Today we had a bit more time on our hands - or at least we THOUGHT we did, so we broke out London. It's been a LONG time since we played but everyone seemed to have pretty fond memories of it and I was feeling like more Martin Wallace games play the same (sort of) and we've got A Study in Emerald down to just over an hour, so surely this wouldn't take us THAT long to play.. by the time we had a quick review of the rules and got it all set up and started playing the first turn, we realized we had less than an hour before Finnegan would have to leave to go play D&D (he's joined a group that plays after school on Thursdays and it just happens to be run by an old friend of mine that happens to teach there). But we left it out hoping to finish off the game after both kids get back from their classes at Persephone School of Theatre... which we did. 

Final score: 

Keira - 103 points

me - 73 points 

Finnegan.. 3 points... 

Seriously, he had 62 victory points accumulated at the end of the game, but Keira had managed to get rid of almost all her poverty and Finnegan was sitting on a pile that added up to -59 points!! He also did not get into the land buying and only had 4 stacks at the end of the game. Early in the game I thought his strategy of having only a few stacks would do well in reducing poverty, but whenever he ran the city he'd gain a bunch from cards in hand and didn't really get much out of each time he ran his city... I think it's more efficient to have about five stacks - that way it's a bit more efficient when you run your city, in that you at least get some stuff out of it each time you run it. Also - BUY LAND! 

I like London. It's been waaaaay too damned long since we last played it. I do feel like it's another  game that we should play, like, 4-5 times in one week and then the rules (and maybe a bit of the strategy) will be solid enough in our heads that in the future we can just pull this out and play it in an hour (like we can with A Study in Emerald - Second Edition - well, except Amanda she always has to be reminded of the rules... and then still kicks our butts...).

Coming Soon to Tim's Miniature Wargaming Blog:

As I mentioned this weekend is ToonCon! We're all signed up for a lot of fun games. 

I think Friday night we're all signed up to play 7 Wonders and then I'm playing Dominion, but some of the others are playing Roll for the Galaxy (I know Finnegan is, and maybe The Girl...?). 

Saturday is a long day! I'm starting off with Castles of Mad King Ludwig and Finnegan is signed up for Sentinels of the Multiverse. I'm not sure what Amanda and The Girl are doing. After that I'm playing Scythe - so many people have raved about it, I thought I'd best check it out. Everyone else is playing Viticulture (which I'm kind of wishing I'd signed up for instead...). While I'm still playing Scythe I think some of them are playing 5 Tribes, or maybe Imhotep or Terra Mystica...? I can't remember. After that is the game auction (we had a pretty BIG HAUL from that last year!). Finally, in the evening I'm running my Faustus Furius: 3000 game while everyone else is playing... Small World..?  or Codenames...? I'm not sure... I know Nations is on in the evening, and despite everyone having played it and liked it, I don't think any of them signed up for it. 

Sunday I think I'm starting with Kingdom Builder and Finnegan is playing Dominant Species... Again, I can't remember what Amanda and The Girl signed up for...?! After that I'm running the Pax Renaissance Learn-to-Play game for the rest of the day. I have a feeling Amanda and the Girl are signed up for Castles of Burgundy and Amanda may have signed up for Tzolk'in: The Mayan Calendar. I know Finnegan didn't sign up for anything in the last slot on Sunday because none of the games were of interest to him. The convention had a HUGE games library which you can just play pick up games with anyone who isn't doing anything, so I think he's planning to do that! 

Stay tuned for reports of the entire weekend and a separate report of the FF3K game!