June got off to a bit of a slow start… We started off the month all sick with colds – one of the worst colds I can remember, I was coughing and miserable for a full three weeks! One would think while we were sitting at home not doing much of anything else, we’d get some boardgames in… but that was not the case. Everyone was thoroughly miserable and just not in the mood for gaming!?
Monday, 4 June 2018
We did get ONE boardgame in while we were all still sick… well… two, really… WE sat down and figured out how to play Cytosis: A Cell Biology Board Game (perhaps we should have been playing with the Virus expansion – included with the game!?). I had kickstarted the game last year…? I have a few other games from Genius Games and like them well enough.
We started by watching the how to play video and then quickly reread the rules and were on our way. Honeslty it was almost a month ago now… so I don’t remember how it all went… I remember it was pretty fun and according the the game play recorded on BGG I won…
Later in the evening when Amanda got home from work (oh, she was sick too, but she’s a bit of a martyr…) we convinced her to try playing it with us. As the person with a gen-u-ine biology degree I thought she might be able to go a little more indepth with the explaining the mechanics of what’s going on in the cell – the things the game mechanics are trying to mimic… She had a hard time remembering some of the stuff – that biology degree was 30 years ago!
She remembered enough to totally crush us all!
(It probably wasn’t really her knowledge of Biology that helped her win…)
Friday, 8 June 2018
This was supposed to be a Rogue Trader evening. But I was still sick… so we cancelled AGAIN…
Thursday, 14 June 2018
We didn’t play any more games for over a week and a half. I brought along Retro Lunacy to the dress rehearsal for our Irish Dance year end recital on Thursday. Finnegan and I played a couple quick games in the gents change room while waiting for his turn on stage, then we played a couple more with some of the girls out in the hallway…
I didn’t take any pictures on rehearsal day.
Oh, we were still all quite sick – but the show must go on!!
Friday, 15 June 2018
Again I took along a few games to play backstage while waiting for our time onstage. We got in four more games of Retro Loonacy as well as a game of Love Letter and two games of Set. It killed the time. Fun was had.
Saturday, 16 June 2018
Saturday morning we dragged our sick butts out to the Dragon’s Den for Free RPG Day!! I picked up Blessings Unheralded, the Wrath & Glory quick-start rules and adventure , Finnegan picked up... something? Dungeon Crawl Classics? or the Pathfinder Adventure...? The Girl picked up Kids on Bikes, which I hope she'll let me read at some point as I was interested in it too.
(Finnegan and I went back later in the day – just before closing - and picked up a few more items – I grabbed Eldritch Cock)
Sunday 17 June 2018
We had another crack at Harry Potter: Hogwart’s Battle.
So close… we got to Voldemort… but things when downhill very quickly at that point – especially with Belatrix Lestange out (drawing extra Dark Arts cards) and we hadn’t even finished with the Hoarcruxs.
Lesson learned: make sure you deal with the Hoarcruxs early in the game!
Later in the evening, Amanda and I went over to Aaron and Emily’s to play in Bob’s Numenera game (along with Bruce, Adelle, and Richard). We missed the previous game and apparently have been hired by someone new to go back into the Jade Colossus and… do… something… I can’t remember…?
Monday, 18 June 2018
We apparently played Century: Golem Edition on Monday…
I won with 72 points. Amanda and Finnegan both had 60 and The Girl had 58.
Thursday, 21 June 2018
Amanda and I went over to our friends Kurtis and Shannon’s for the evening to play a few games. We started off with Azul – which was a fun game of making tile patterns… sort of…? I guess you could call it a tile drafting game…? I don’t know. It was pretty quick and fun. I’d totally play it again. Not going to run out and buy it or anything.
Apparently, I won with 67 points. I like pattern games...
We brought our copy of Century: Golem Edition over for fun. They actually have Century: Spice Road (which is the exact same game – but with different components – wooden cubes representing spices instead of little plastic games and different art on the cards)
I won this one too!? With 84 points!
Then we played Deluxe Weed. I sooooo didn’t win this one… Amanda and Shannon tied with 38 points, Kurtis had 30 and I had… 18…. I probably shouldn’t be a marijuana grower.
Kurtis suggested we play this again on 17 October (the official date for the legalization of Marijuana in Canada…)
Friday, 21 June 2018
This Friday was another Rogue Trader evening, but I decided to run Blessings Unheralded – the Wrath & Glory Free RPG Day adventure (with quick-start rules). Initially Bob and Bruce showed up to play with us (and The Girl even joined us to play this evening) but then Bruce got called away (family crisis!)
Bob played Pater Nemoris, a ministorum priest, and Amanda played Battle Sister Henna Orten (and finally got to use one of her Sisters of Battle minis!).
Finnegan played Battle Brother Trujon Kull, a space marine of the White Scars chapter, and The Girl played Sergeant Gael Harden.
Now, no adventure ever survives first contact with the player characters, but at every single junction, these guys did something COMPLETELY different than what the adventure’s author expected players would do, after the first contact with the Pox Walkers I was pretty much making shit up as I went… Both Bob and Amanda played their characters as demanding and arrogant and pissed off, or simply blew off and discounted, a number of important NPCs that they were supposed to ally with and gain important information from. Finnegan – playing the impetuous White Scars space marine– ended up being the Voice of Reason, more often than not!?
We didn’t even get to finish the adventure… Hopefully next session… I am really looking forward to the full release of the game later this year! Though it looks like it ain’t going to be cheap! The “All-In” pre-order bundle is $275USD (+$50 shipping to Canada!?). I’m not pre-ordering for a number of reasons – I like my FLGS and try to support it whenever I can, the shipping (seriously, it’s apparently cheaper to ship to anywhere in Europe than it is to Canada!?), and there are a few things in the ALL-IN bundle that I’m just not interested in (why would I want a set of acrylic tokens to represent characters, enemies and NPCs when I have MINIATURES! The dice and soundtrack(?) and “deluxe collector’s box” I can also do without).
Saturday, 23 June 2018
ANOTHER crack at Harry Potter: Hogwart’s Battle Uuuugggghhhh... getting so sick of this... We actually started with a few low powered villains so we tried to concentrate on building decks and trying to get rid of the Hoarcruxs... didn't work. Finnegan (playing Neville) just couldn't get healing cards when we needed them - when he did get them, no one needed them anymore because they'd been knocked out and just recovered with 10 health. I couldn't get lightning bolts... I had cards that would removed tokens from locations, but the only time I actually got them, the old location card had just been removed and there were no tokens on the new one... couldn't get any cards with dice on them... I picked up Arthur Weasley (gives all players two coins) just in time for the Hoarcux to come out that doesn't allow anyone to gain coins on other players turns (effectively making a six cost card USELESS!?)...
Worst. Game. Ever.... I think we only took out ONE villain (Peter Petigrew) and maybe two of the hoarcruxs...
Then we played a game of Dominion which we haven’t done for a while. Once again the kids put together a themed set - Keira called it "Fancy Folk" it included: Butcher, Baker, and Candlestick Maker from Guilds, Fortune Teller from Cornucopia, Duchess, and Noble Brigand from Hinterlands, Chancellor and Woodcutter from the base game, and Baron and Duke from Intrigue. The Girl totally crushed it. She ended with 39 points. Amanda had 38 (so close!), I had 29 and Finnegan had 28… It was an interesting set to play with.
Finally, we played a few rounds of Bananagrams. I won the first round because apparently there is a rule where if you claim to have completed yours when there are less tiles than there are players left in the center (which normally ends the game), but have a misspelled word in your… whatever it’s called… your called a “rotten banana” and kicked out of the game… I think she’d tried to spell “mutt” with one “t”…?
The first round went pretty quickly se we played a second.
Again, Amanda probably COULD have won – she’d finished hers, but then realized one word was incomplete as she’d taken a letter from the end of it to put in the middle of another elsewhere in her bananagram(…? Is that what they’re called!?) upon realizing this she had to totally rejig most of it and I managed to finish mine up before she could…
Sunday 24 June 2018
Ugh... this fucking game... we burned through the first two location cards by the end of the second round and everyone had been stunned at least twice. Called it at the end of the fourth because we were onto the last location card, hadn't taken out a single hero and were drawing four Dark Arts cards per turn - because Belatrix Lestrange was out - and had been since the beginning.
There is just too much random chance in this game. I was starting to realize by the end of this that it's probably harder with more players - as there are a LOT of cards that assign damage to ALL players and each time a player is stunned a token goes on the location card - which draws the game closer to the end with the players losing. It would be interesting to try with just two and see how much better they actually do.
We lost so fast, Amanda managed to convince us to try it again…
It started off not too bad… the Basilisk sucks though.
Very quickly the market place was full of stuff I couldn’t buy… I only gained four cards in the entire game (Cedric Diggory, Confundus, Proteago, and the Marauders Map - and the last one I only gained on the second or third last turn and never really even got to use it...).
Sweet Jupiter! We FINALLY beat this fucking game... Hermione (played by The Girl) having Proteago(?) really helped – the spell that allows you to cancel the effects of one villain for an ENTIRE ROUND. In fact, I think it really is the only way to possibly beat Voldemort. He just wrecks everything so fast otherwise.
Everyone was quite happy to finally win.
Their characters.
This was my last hand.
Keira's gone and bought the expansion, but I hope we can take a break from this for a while...
The game really needs some way of ditching cards from your deck and ditching cards from the market...
I would be curious to see how the game goes with less players, though. Not curious enough to actually play it again anytime soon… but maybe sometime.
Afterwards we played a quick game of Splendor. Amanda was up to her usual tricks – constantly going on about how she has no idea what she’s doing and questioning herself and each move and how poorly she’s doing and then…
“Ooops! I guess I won” (with 16 points). The Girl was almost there with 14. Finnegan just couldn’t get the jewels he wanted to pick up points – he had a LOT of cards at the end of the game – just not very many that gave points and Amanda had scooped the Nobles he’d been working towards. He ended the game with only 3 points!
I wasn’t too far off… 11 points. I forget what was out, but I feel like I was only a turn or two away from scoring 15…
Amanda wanted to play someCentury: Golem Edition, but the kids decided they’d had enough game playing and so she and I sat down to play a game together.
(apparently the kids had really just had enough of being crushed by mom and scurried off into Finnegan’s room to play Bananagrams!?)
I should say, tired of being crushed by their parents. Centruy: Golem, unlike Soplendor, just isn’t Amanda’s game (yet….)…
It’s my game (oh, Amanda bought it, it’s “hers” in the sense of who owns it, but so far I’ve been dominating the game for the last little bit). Won the first game with 68 points (Amanda had 47).
It was a quick game, though, so she decided we should play again before making supper…
That next one I won with 85… (though Amanda also improved her own score, gaining 63).
She was not impressed.
So… we played again…
86… (to Amanda’s 60)
One more game…
She actually ended this game (by collecting five cards)… but still lost as the total for my four was greater (68 to 65). She is closing the gap. Soon it will be just like Splendor, she’ll beat me once, and then I’ll never win another game of it…
Not today though…
Monday, 25 June 2018
Monday, after work, Amanda wanted to have another quick go at Century: Golem Edition. “just one game” she said, while supper was cooking.
We played one quick game. It was quick.
That’s the “are you fucking kidding me” look I get when I scooped the card she was working towards and it happens to be my fifth card ending the game…
Which I won… with 85 points… to her 50…
Apparently that one quick game was too quick, she demanded a rematch... also before supper...
She's catching up. Next game she'll probably win, and then I will never win again...
Honestly, she COULD have won this game if she'd been paying a bit closer attention. There was a card requiring five blue gems that gave 15 points she was working towards, but there was also one requiring four blue games that gave 12 points - but was in the +3 coin column (so, still worth 15 points, effectively) she could have gotten a turn before - that extra turn got me one last card for +8 points
76 – 73… Yeah, my days of dominating this game are drawing to a close…
Thursday, 28 June 2018
On Thursday I picked up a couple new games from Genius Games – Peptide: The Protein Building Game and Virulence: an Infectious Card Game. I like Genius games. They are fun, well thought out games – with the added bonus of having pretty strong sciency themes. I often wonder if the kids actually pick up on the science behind them – Cytosis, which we played at the beginning of the month, is basically a worker placement game – much like any other. It could easily be played without knowing ANY of the science behind it. (I place my thing on this spot and move this over to there and complete the conditions for this cars which gets me X points…). But when I mentioned I was going to pick up Peptide: The Protein Building Game, Finnegan actually said “oh, so it’s on a smaller scale then…?” recognizing that the game was focusing in on protein building which was just ONE of the things you could do in the cell in Cytosis! Educational gaming FTW!
We didn’t play Peptide, though. We ended up playing Virulence. Which is a really quick, fun game involving bidding and set collecting. You play “viruses” of varying virulence (cards from your hand) trying to infect a cell to build more “viral components” (cards that gain you either points at the end of the game or cards that give you an in-game benefit – or sometimes both…)
My hand and the mess of cards I’d collected at the end of the game. This was worth 54 points… The Girl, however, had 85! (even though she had -6 from having the least number of Spherical Envelope cards!)
Afterwards we played four rounds of Retro Loonacy. Originally, I said I’d play just one. I won that first round in less than a minute. So, I said I’d play another… I think Finnegan won that one, but it was also SUPER quick, so we played again.
Seriously, I think these were the fastest games of Loonacy we’ve ever played. In the end, we played four rounds – three of which were won without anyone drawing an extra card from the deck! I ended up winning two, as did Finnegan. The Girl was a little frustrated by this and ended up throwing cards at us – but she was smiling and laughing while doing so and so I guess it was all in good fun...?
Whew, that WAS a fair bit of gaming in the end… I had hoped to get in a few games of 40K this month – especially with Amanda and her Battle Sisters which STILL haven’t seen action (well, other than the ONE she used in Wrath & Glory). Next month, for SURE we’ll have to get some 40K in…
We also didn’t tick much off the 30x5 challenge board… I think there was only ONE game we played towards this (Dominion). But we were having fun, so…
Coming soon on Tim’s Miniature Wargaming Blog:
July… I do have some projects to work on and might not have as much time for hobbies. I would like to finish up at least the FIRST Knight… and finish off a platoon of Valhallans… and maybe play a few boardgames on our 30x5 list – how hard could it be to get in a few games of Dominion or Railways of the World or London…? Now that we’re done with Harry Potter (for the time being, at least) hopefully we can get started on one of the other campaign-type games we’d planned to play this year – Hero Realms or Mice & Mystics or Shadowrun: Crossfire.