September Game-A-Day Challenge: Week One

...or was it the September 30-Games-in-30-Days Challenge? I can't remember... The idea is the same, we're trying to play a different game every day through the month of September, and we've just finished up our first week. 

Day One - Friday, 1 September 2017
Legendary and Tales from the Loop



In the afternoon I played a game of Legendary with the kids. I'd wanted to play a "quick" game so I'd have time to reread some of Tales from the Loop. Finnegan went and chose Mysterio as the Big Bad Guy (Mysterio is NOT a quick game...). He did come up with a good selection of Heroes, however, which worked together really nice - Spiderman, some Spiderfriends, Black Widow and... someone from the Deadpool Expansion? It actually felt like I was able to BUILD a deck that worked well. 

The Girl had a really good deck going on with a lot of Black Widow. She ended up with two cards that allowed her to do damage equal to the number of innocent bystanders she rescued, so we let her recuse ALL of them. I think she had ten by the end of the game, and on the last turn drew BOTH of those cards! 

It was a fun game - even if it did take a little longer than I would have liked! 

Later in the evening I did start a game of Tales from the Loop - but we spent the entire three and a half hours making characters. I think it was the funnest session of making characters EVER! I'm actually glad we didn't get to playing the first adventure - partly because I didn't really have a chance to read through it and think it over, but also because the characters have so much depth I can try and weave elements of their own backgrounds into the adventure a bit better! Looking forward to actually PLAYING Tales from the Loop, but that probably won't be until October now...

Day Two - Saturday, 2 September 2017 

Forbidden Island

I'd hoped to run the family through a game of Pax Renaissance in the afternoon, but in the end Amanda dragged me all over the north end of town to look at tiles of backsplashes and dishwashers and sinks and taps and such... in the end we only had time for a quick game before watching a few movies I'd picked up at the library earlier in the day. 

So we all played Forbidden Island. I played the Engineer (can shore up two tiles with one action), The Girl played the Helicopter Pilot (with one action can move to any tile on the map), Amanda played the Navigator (can move other players two spaces with one action), and Finnegan played the explorer (can move or shore up on diagonals). Finnegan quickly picked up the golden lion. Keira grabbed the flame ruby thing. Amanda grabbed the bluish-green chalice. I nabbed the purple globe... and then the helicopter landing pad flooded and we lost... 

so close...

Ah well. It was going really great until then. Afterwards Finnegan pointed out that if I'd shored up the helicopter pad BEFORE moving to the place where I got the globe-thingie (because I had started next to the pad), we totally would have made it out... So... it's ALL MY FAULT we lost... 

Day Three - Sunday, 3 September 2017

A Study in Emerald (Second Edition) 

Again, I had planned to run the family through Pax Renaissance, but we kind of ran out of time. I suggested A Study in Emerald, because the last time we'd played we were getting games down to 30 minutes. This wasn't QUITE so quick because Amanda had kind of forgotten how to play and what you were supposed to be doing... 

The Girl looks a little grumpy because, as we found out at the end of the game, she was a Loyalist . AGAIN. She HATES playing the Loyalists 

(as in loyal to the dark gods that have seized control of the world!)but almost always seems to end up being on the Loyalist side ! 

Amanda gave up her identity pretty early by assassinating one of my agents. I'm pretty sure it was obvious from the get-go I was a Restorationist as I grabbed three restorationist agents in the first few turns, along with St. Petersburg (which can be played for Restorationist VP).

I ended up playing 8 Restorationist VP - and the Loyalist hadn't played one all game - which is pretty much what brought the game to an end. I don't think The Girl was trying very hard, though. 

The sh!t about to get real in Madrid! (Well, not really... I just went there in force to snatch up that City card and make sure Amanda couldn't assassinate any of my agents!)

Finnegan, it turned out, was also a restorationist (which I had suspected, but didn't know for sure).

Day Four - Monday, 4 September 2017 

7 Wonders

Monday was Labour Day. Amanda seems to be under the impression that on Labour Day one must do hard labour and decided WE MUST WRECK MORE OF THE KITCHEN!! So... still no Pax Renaissance... 

Instead we got in a quick game of 7 Wonders at the very end of the day. I got skooled by the lot of them. Oi! I just could not focus on any one sort of thing and didn't do well at anything. I think I was trying too hard to make things work with the Leaders I had, and should have just not bothered... Amanda did amazingly well, and the kids weren't too far behind her. It was a fun distraction from the utter chaos our house is in at the moment. 

Day Five - Tuesday, 5 September 2017 

Small World: Underground

The kids and I played Small World: Underground. 

I started the game with Vampire Mummies - mostly because they sounded cool... They weren't THAT cool. I only got to use the vampiric ability once during the game (there was a second time that I could have used it, but forgot...). You do get a LOT of guys with the Mummies - but it cost an extra token to take over stuff... So they're a bit ponderous, but often leave your places well defended. In the first turn I got two popular places - one that controlled a Balrog and another than gave bonus points for each of the same type of location (which happened to be mushroom forests). I think by the end of the third turn I controlled ALL of the mushroom forest areas on the map and was bringing in 13 gold per turn, which the kids weren't even close to doing. So I was willing to just sit on that and collect my 13 every turn...

Then Finnegan went into decline with his first race and took Fisher Shrooms and we started battling for control of the mushroom forests - which, ultimately, doomed us! A turn later The Girl was brining in 17 (SEVENTEEN!) gold per turn and we were both brining in six or so... I eventually took back control of the mushroom forests, but the damage had been done.

Then I lost control of Balrog. 

I put the mummies into decline and took some Wise Cultists and seized control of the area that controlled the Balrog, but wasn't able to do much of use with it at that point.

The Girl ended the game with 132 gold, I had 115, and Finnegan had somewhere around 85?


Day Six - Wednesday, 6 September 2017 

Star Trek: Five Year Mission

Wednesday we played Star Trek: Five Year Mission. We actually played with the Next Generation crew this time, which we've never done before. I played Captain Jean-Luc Picard, Finnegan played Commander Riker and The Girl played Dr. Beverly Crusher. 

It's been a LONG time since we last played so I don't know if they were any different from the original series crew. We played at the easiest level - also because it's been so damned long - and we actually won! Wasn't even that hard - definitely have to play at the Lieutentant level next time. I would have suggested that we continue on, but we had the Communication Failure card in effect (players are not allowed to communicate with each other in any way!?) and still needed ones on two red and one yellow to resolve it, so... I kind of let it go and called it a win and a night... 

I feel I'd like a different Star Trek game... This is okay, but a little abstract. I don't LOVE dice games and we already have Elder sign if I feel the need to just roll dice. We do have Star Trek Catan - which we'd actually bought for my dad for xmas a few years back, but he's since passed it on to us. I only played it once (it's also the only Catan game I ever played) and I just don't care for it. Star Trek: Ascendancy looks COOL but it's also a bit pricey and it looks like another 4X game... do I NEED ANOTHER 4X game!? Actually I don't personally own that many - but within the members of this group, there are LOADS...

Star Trek Panic? Maybe? Anybody out there played it? I've never played any of the Panic games. Has anyone played Star Trek Panic? fun? does it fit the theme? Are there any other Star Trek games out there!?

Day Seven- Thursday, 7 September 2017 

Dominion

Today we decided to play Dominion. I decided to let Finnegan come up with a group of cards for us to play with.

He does enjoy putting little themed sets together. So he came up with a set of cards from Intrigue (Mining Village, Bridge, Scout, Trading Post, and Margrave) , Hinterlands (Oasis, Silk Road, and Nomad Camp), and Guilds and Cornucopia (Hamlet, Horsetraders). The theme for this one was "Trade Beyond the Borders". The Thematic sets he comes up with  have more to do with the THEME of the cards rather than whether any of them will actually work together or not... We don't play nearly enough to have any clue what works together... 

These weren't too bad. There were some that we've played with before and I kind of had an idea how to play with them. Others we had never played with (or I've forgotten about playing with them) and had no idea what to do with them - just couldn't wrap my head around some of them. 

So we got off to a slow start and I felt like I just couldn't get the deck working and then all of a sudden the Hamlets were gone and then the Duchies were gone and just started buying up whatever victory point card I could - I think there must have been at least a half dozen turns where I had a bridge and 6 gold - one short of being able to buy a province, but I WAS able to buy a Silk Road AND an Estate... meanwhile the kids were still adding actions to their decks!? I tired warning them that the game was just about over and they should just try and pick up whatever victory cards they could - Estates and Silk roads if they couldn't afford Provinces, but they kind of turned their noses up at those... 

I think I had one of my highest scoring game ever and left both kids in the dust - doesn't happen often, they usually destroy me at Dominion. It's been a while and they weren't on their game, but I'll take it!

Coming Soon to Tim's Miniature Wargaming Blog:

I do have a Jet Bike finished up that I shall hopefully get to posting tomorrow... 

Other than that...? I have been working on rebasing and priming most of the Tallarn and I've even been painting a few.