November 2017 Gaming Roundup

We played very few games in November. There were a lot of reasons for this. The two biggest ones were the never-ending renovation kicking into high gear. The first week I was finishing up framing and electrical and preparation for drywall (y'know, in my "spare" time). The second and third weeks the drywalling and mudding was going on - which added more stuff to the living room and plastic berries between room and dust everywhere. This past week the hardwood floors were refinished in the Kitchen - and they turned out AMAZING!!



These were buried under two layers of linoleum - the lower level was glued to them and after scraping as much as I could off - there was still lots of tar-like adhesive and they looked pretty awful, but once that was sanded off the hardwoods underneath cleaned up really nice. Unfortunately they look SO nice that Amanda's going to want to refinish the entire first floor now!? That'll be next summer though - hopefully while we're away on a vacation!

The other big killjoy was the return of the dizzy-woozy-screwy-head feelings - with he added fun of nausea! I kind of didn't do anything about it for the first few weeks - other than taking it easy when I could - figuring it'd just go away like it did last time and the added nausea made me think, at first, that I'd come down with a mild flu and that had brought back the dizzies. After three weeks of it I finally went in to see my doctor - who berated me (just a little) for not coming in sooner. After a bit of a talk about what was going on she figured what might actually be going on is a weird form of migraine. Wouldn't have occurred to me as usually "migraine" is associated with headache and PAIN - which I really haven't had...? I'm on some new medication for that and HOPEFULLY that will clear it up! (Though it hasn't done much so far - but I've only been taking it for two days  so I'm still trying to remain hopeful and positive...)

Anyway... the games...

Around the end of the second week we hadn't played any games and we'd barely played any in October, so I said to the kids we should each pick a game every week and make sure we find the time to play it. Though there were some limitations - it had to be playable on the living room coffee table - as that was the only surface we really had available. Also it had to be pretty light and not require any role-reading on my part because of aforementioned dizzy-woozy-screwy-head feelings... We managed to do this for ONE week... then things kind of ground to a halt as renos intensified and drywall dragged on way longer than it should have and then we had to paint the entire two rooms in two days before the flooring guys showed up...


15 November 2017 - Five Tribes



I an't remember who chose Five Tribes, it might have been Finnegan - it is HIS game. This was actually the first BOARDgame we've played since ToonCon - last month all we played was 40K (miniatures) and Tales from the Loop (role-playing). I got some Djinn early in the game that gave me some sort of advantage - I think I could claim tiles that had no maples on them that no one else had claimed - and with that I scooped a BUNCH of fairly high-point tiles. I think I also had the most vizier and a pretty good run of trade goods... but I spent a lot of coins to keep going first to get all those things so I don't think I won - I can't remember who did or what the points were - but I think we were all fairly close...?


16 November 2017 - Ra



Well that's off to a bad start!



It's been a while since we played Ra. As I was entering the play on Board Game Geek I realized it was the 10th time I played it - which got me thinking I should check out my Fives and Dimes (one of the many stats BGG tracks for you - games which you have played five or ten-plus times) and I realized there were a bunch of games with nine plays that I decided I should totally make sure I play over the next month to get them to TEN plays (Coup, Firefly, Nations, Nature Flux, Pax Renaissance, and A Study In Emerald)!

Ra was another game that I THOUGHT I was doing really well on, but Finnegan ended up ROCKING it. I had lots of monuments - but most just one shy of being able to score bonus points for having multiples. I had lots of Nile tiles as well and scored those each epoch, but I always has a hard time getting culture tiles - which the kids always seemed to scoop up. It was fun to play though, and easy enough that it didn't hurt my head, so...


17 November 2017 - Pandemic: Reign of Cthulhu 



Pandemic: Reign of Cthulhu was definitely The Girl's choice (it is her game). I think I played the Hunter. And we won - finally! That's about all I remember about the game - Oh, and I think Finnegan's character went insane at one point...?

The game basically a quicker version of Arkham Horror using the mechanics of Pandemic. I don't mind it, but I think I'd rather play regular Pandemic for a Pandemic type game and play Arkham Horror for and Arkham Horror kind of game... But The Girl likes it, so I guess I'll end up playing this from time to time.


18 November 2017 - Tales from the Loop



On Saturday Amanda and I headed over to our friends Emily and Aaron's to play Tales from the Loop. Christian and his daughter Maeve joined us this time, so we had some character making to get through and figure out a way to join the new kids up with the existing group. Progress was made. Should finish up the first adventure when we play again this weekend!

We were supposed to have played this on the 4th as well, but too many people were sick...


Coming Soon to Tim's Miniature Wargaming Blog:

Hopefully some miniature and some game reports! I've been getting a bit of painting done - not as much as I might normally do - due to difficulty focusing with dizzy-woozy-screwy-head feelings. Some days have been better than others - on those better days I get some painting done, on the not-so-good days I've done a bit of prep work - gluing figures to bases or priming - painting the tank - things that require less focus.