December 2019 Games - Part Two - The HOLIDAZE

Part The Second...

It kind of felt like the holidaze officially began on Saturday, 21 December (covered in Part One)- as that was the last scheduled activity for the year (Keira's last dance class and Finnegan's last D&D game in the campaign he's been running since September). But we're starting with the 24th...


Tuesday, 24 December 2019

Amanda's last day of work for the year. They always let everyone go at noon, but Amanda ALWAYS stays a couple extra hours to get "just a few last things done!"?

The plan was to head over to my folks for the afternoon. We've always kind of done Xmas on the 24th - opening presents and all that - since I was very young. I think it was because they wanted to sleep in on Xmas morning... For years I didn't celebrate Xmas at all, but once you have kids... grandparents can be relentless... and you have to pick your battles... so we started celebrating along with them. somehow the tradition, for a while was Xmas eve at my folks... then Xmas day at my sisters... AND THEN they'd all come over to our house on Boxing Day... well... after going shopping for Boxing Day bargains... that only lasted a couple years before it was decided it was TOO MUCH! So everyone stopped coming to our place... then we stopped going to my sisters and all that remains is supper at my folks... which turned into snacks and hanging out and doing a puzzle and getting a few gifts... So that was THE PLAN, anyway...



But then this guy got sick and started puking. At first, when he was just feeling a little queasy, he suggested maybe he could just stay home and the rest of us could go... but then he started puking and up came his breakfast - Now Finnegan has a HUGE breakfast of oatmeal every morning - which contains a very large amount of carbohydrates for which he has to take a LOT of insulin (being Type One Diabetic) unfortunately, puking can cause a lot of trouble when you've just taken a lot of short acting insulin and then suddenly don't have the carbs on board for it to deal with. Blood-glucose levels can drop quickly and they did - like, to dangerously low levels. for a brief moment we thought we'd be heading to Emergency (the first time we'd have had to do that for this reason!) But then he managed to get some Powerade into himself and the blood sugar level crawled back up into not-so-panicky zone and we decided to stick it out here.



Meanwhile, Amanda had come home and My mother and sister bundled up all the food and presents and brought them all over here! Family gift exchange took place on the boy's bed - who was starting to feel better...

My mom and sister didn't stay long. They went back to my folks and had their meal and did a puzzle. We ate some of the food they brought over and then spent most of the rest of the day watching TV and movies (finished off Supernatural Season Three and... watched a movie...?)

Wednesday, 25 December 2019

Had our own little gift exchange and the kids opened a few things Amanda's folks had sent.



Our Xmas haul. The Hellboy stuff was our collective gift to ourselves. Last year when we kickstarted it, we agreed it would be the only gift we got this year and that I would only open it when it arrived (earlier this year) so I could paint some of the miniatures. The Warscryer Citadel and Wrath and Rapture were from my folks (I'd said get ONE for Xmas and ONE for my birthday... but then they just gave me both NOW!?). CO2 was also from my folks - sort of for all of us. Amanda got the Terraforming Mars expansions from my folks. I got Amanda the 7 Wonders Duel expansion (Pantheon). and Pax Transhumanity Bios: Origins...? Well, they weren't really an Xmas gift - they just happened to arrive this past week and it FELT like a gift to myself, so I included them in the pic...

Finnegan also got a few things - the Expanse Role-Playing Game and The Expanse: The Board Game. He'd expressed interest in the series and the role-playing game a few months ago (when Dragon's Den Games was having it's anniversary sale!) so we'd pick that up for him... he seemed... less than 100% enthusiastic about recieving them... He was VERY excited about the pack of Graph Paper my mom got him!? (He's been playing - and play-testing - a lot of Four Against Darkness lately...)



He's what came in that big Hellboy Kickstarted box... or... at least... the FIRST of the TWO big Hellboy Kickstarter boxes. I haven't even painted HALF of the miniatures yet. I did sort it all out and figured out which were needed for the stuff that was THEORETICALLY for the CORE BOX - as OUR "core box" included the regular core box plus two or three kickstarter excuse expansions and a pile of extra minis!?



On the afternoon of the 25th we played our way through our first game of Hellboy.

You can read more about that here:

Hellboy - Game One - Eviction Notice

Later, in the evening, I played a few games with Amanda. She wanted to try out her new Pantheon expansion to 7 Wonders Duel



We started with just a run through the base game - because it's been a month or two since we last played... and more recently we've played regular 7 Wonders... so I thought it would be a good idea to play a game of Duel to remind ourselves of the rules and mechanics and how it all worked.

She utterly crushed me.

Seriously, she had ALL FOUR of her wonders built before I even got ONE done! Somehow I pulled it out of the fire enough with some last minute military and a PILE of money to make it Not-Quite-A-COMPLETE-Disaster... but she still won 63-54... It was very well played...



Then we tried with the new Pantheon expansion. It was really interesting. Added a whole lot of new stuff to the game - which DOES make it a fair bit longer as there is a lot more to think about and do...

I ended up winning with a Military Victory just part way through the Third Era...

Amanda was kind of annoyed by this and called it "anticlimactic"! She'd expected the pantheon to play a MUCH larger role in the victory. It did play a bit of a role in my victory. If I HADN'T won with military though, she would have won by a landslide - she had gods that gave her a pile of victory points and I think all of the grand temples were ones that she should have collected up and scored another 21 points for the three of them alone...


Thursday, 26 December 2019

The day started off with a trip to a medical clinic with The Boy. Would have gone the day before by all but ONE in the entire city was closed and they stopped taking walk-ins at noon because it was so busy. And it wasn't really EMERGENCY level of concern at that point, so...

After he got home I headed out to Dragon's Den Games for their annual Boxing Day Sale.



Here's what I hauled home from that...

Do you see a theme developing...?

(It's "CHAOS" - I'm kind of working on a Chaos force based around Slaanesh - daemons and maybe some Emperor's Children Chaos Space Marines, some Cultists, and backed up by some Chaos Knights.... I'm not buying any NEW Knights! Just modifying the ones I picked up last year and haven't even completed!?)

(wait... was it last year...? Or the YEAR BEFORE!?)

Later in the afternoon we sat down to play a SECOND game of Hellboy!

Finnegan also brought home a pretty HUGE pile - his was ALL D&D, though. three or four (or FIVE!?) books and a half-dozen packs of monster/encounter cards.



We all played the same characters. This time we were rescuing a missing agent from Rasputin's Ghost! You can read more about that here:

Hellboy - Game Two - Perils of the Job



In the evening Amanda and I played Terraforming Mars - and tried with her new Prelude Expansion. I can see why it's so popular... I've read a lot of comments that people "will not play without it"... I liked Terraforming Mars just fine... I like Prelude, but I wouldn't say that the base game is now, somehow, unplayable without it!?



I played Cheung Shin Mars with Early Settlement and Martian Industries. Totally had a Builder Theme going from the word "go". I think I snapped up the Builder Award by the Second or Third Round!? I had about FIVE cities built, before I remembered that they're really only worth points if you have GREENERY around them (snapping up the Mayor Award)! Spent the rest of the game trying to get out as much green as I could (and grabbed the Gardener Award - just before Amanda got The Planner - there might have been an f-bomb or two dropped at that point)! I also ended up with the Thermalist Prize... I ended the game with 114 points! My highest score ever... mind you it was the first time we played with just the two of us... as the same amount of work has to be done to Terraform Mars whether you're playing with two or five... with less players, each player, individually, WILL score more points...



Amanda tried out Point Lunar with Business Empire and Self-Sufficient Settlement. I swear she put out more than TWICE as many cards as me... and definitely scored about three times as many points as me from just cards. Despite all those cities and greenery and awards... I only JUST squeaked out a win, nine points ahead of Amanda's 105!


Friday, 27 December 2019 

Wow... feeling like the week was just FLYING by at this point!?

Didn't play any games.... went for a bike ride, stopeed by the library and picked up a few DVDs, watched a few episodes of Good Omens.


Saturday, 28 December 2019

Again, no games... Another bike ride. Watched more of Good Omens. Keira was feeling sick, now too! Not flu sick... just sick.. and tired and maybe a bit of an earache and spent most of the day in bed.


Sunday, 29 December 2019

well... We FINISHED Good Omens... The only time Keira got out of bed was to watch the couple of episodes of Good Omens. Went to bed early with a fever.


Monday, 30 December 2019

And... then there was Game of Thrones Season Eight.... Keira's fever was gone and her ears weren't hurting so much.


Tuesday, 31 December 2019

To start off Tuesday, Amanda and spent most of the afternoon running around doing errands... the evening we spent doing family stuff.



First we ordered take-out from Seasoned Fusion - a fantastic Asian restaurant in downtown Saskatoon with LOADS of Vegan and Vegetarian options! YUMMERS!



And then we DID finally play another game of Hellboy. There'll probably be a game report for that in the next day or two.

Afterwards we watched a few episodes of Brooklyn Nine-Nine - which we just started watching and could all agree on...

And that's the rest of our December games!

Didn't quite get to play as many games as we'd hoped this past week... but was a little hard with both kids feeling sick a good chunk of the week. The plan for tomorrow is to play games and watch movies all day! You'll have to read about that in the January game report!

Happy New Year Everyone!


Coming soon to Tim's Miniature Wargaming Blog:

A look back at 2019.