May Games

Well... we played a FEW more games in May... 

Sunday, 1 May 2022

Amanda and I kicked off May with a game of Wingspan. First day of the month and we've already played as many games as we play in all of April... so things were looking up! 

I felt like I was flailing most of the game... somehow I managed to keep up with the Round End Goals... 

AND somehow managed to scored 20 points on bonus cards - (sets of next types, birds worth less than 4 points, and different colour/action types on bird cards in a single habitat) - largely because of a lucky random-from-the-top-of-the-deck card in the third round that just happened to work for two of the bonus cards to tip them over into the higher scoring amount - had it not been for that incredible bit of luck I probably wouldn't have won... or it certainly would have been very close! 

Not the highest scoring game we've had... I guess we were BOTH a little out of practice! 

Sunday, 8 May 2022

The following Sunday, Amanda invited someone they know from work (and her two daughters) to come over and play Wimgspan. 

There were some interesting Round End Goals - NONE involved Eggs in nests of any kind or location!? 

My sanctuary at the end of it..  I COULD have gotten one in the forest... but it was worth more points to just keep the card in hand and win the last Round End Goal (most cards in hand!) 

They've clearly played a lot of games before - though not wingspan. The daughters totally picked it up right away and did exceptionally well... Mom... had to have a lot of things explained... and re-explained... and... 

Sunday, 15 May 2022

Again, on the following Sunday, Amanda and i played Terraforming Mars. 

And Terraform it we did! 

My tableau at the end of the game. 

As per usual, Amanda rocked it 

Thursday 19 May 2022

Brent came over on Thursday to play something and we settled on Warhammer Underworlds. 

Despite having finally just finishing Magore's Fiends... I did not play them!? 

Brent has never played and it's been half a year since I last played... so it took some explaining (and some remembering!?). Brent took Morgok' s Krushas. I took Ironskulls Boyz. 

GRAAAARRR! First Blood! Bonecutta charges 'Ardskull and takes a chunk out of his hide. 

Now we gots a Proppa Brawl goin' on! 

Ironskull's Boys had the right mix of numbers and hard-hittin' MFs to whittle Morgok's Krushass down. 

Right down to the end. 

Not a point was scored for holding objectives! All MURDER and Mayhem! 

Ironskull's took the day! 

Despite time taken figuring things out, we still had some time so we played ANOTHER ROUND! 

This time we switched things up a bit and I took the Storm of Celestus - a Stormcast Eternal warband. 

Despite these guys and gals being Sigmar's supreme bad asses, I have just had NO LUCK playing Stormcast... like... EVER...!? 

Couldn't even take ONE of them out!? 

Brent won this one! 

Sorry, no detailed, blow-by-blow report for this one... maybe when I get playing with Amanda or Finnegan again... 

Friday, 27 May 2022

Our friends Ryan and Andy came over to play Wingspan

I just had the worst time meeting Round End Goals and only had one Bonus card for most of the game and thought for sure I'd be dead last. In the end, all the OTHER stuff - points on bird cards, Nectar, a second Bonus card I got on the very last round, all added up and put me in the lead!? 

It was a SUPER CLOSE game in the end, though. I think the lowest score was 94 and I won with 101!? 

Amanda and i had planned to play Warhammer Underworlds on Sunday... but didn't - hopefully through June we'll get going on that again

Tuesday, 31 May 2022

Brent came by to play games again and this time we tried out Quebec 1759. I bought the game, used, YEARS ago and just never got around to playing it. It is the first edition of the game and we tried playing the rules, as written and... honestly... I have NO IDEA how the British are supposed to win that!? 

In the rules i have, Amphibious Assaults are CRAZY hard - the defender DOUBLES their CV AND scores hits on 5 and 6 (instead of just 6 in all other cases - and in amphibious assaults the second edition!?)

This was the British at the end of the first round of battle... BEFORE the pursuit fire due to the routing... I think they escaped with a total of 2CV - out of the 16 that had been committed to that battle!? 

The British second attack at Beauport... went similarly... I lost on the THIRD round (out of potentially sixteen)!? We actually played a fourth, which saw the rest of the British utterly wiped out, but then remembered that the British lose if they fall below a total Combat Value of 20... which I'd for sure done by the third round... or maybe even the second...!?

We had a downloaded copy of the current (2.0) rules and made a few changes (mostly dropping this hits on 5+ in Amphibious Assaults ) and tried again.

This was a MUCH CLOSER game. 

I played the British again and made it to the Plains of Abraham seized it by battle and held it against counter attack - pretty much utterly wiping out the French... I forgot to count the British total CV at the end of it... if I had less than 20 I would have lost anyway. It would have been close! 

We played one more game - this time with me playing the French. This was the final battle  - the British trying to seize Quebec by a battle on the Plains of Abraham on turn fourteen... he had too few forces left, though... and after the battle had dropped below 20CV! Whew! 

In total we played Nine games this month (better than the ONE we played in April!?) 

So far this Quarter we've played: 

• Quebec 1759 x3
• Wingspan x3
• Warhammer Underworlds x2
• Splendor x1
• Terraforming Mars x1

For the Quarterly 5x5 Challenge I'll likely try to get in two more games of Wingspan and Quebec 1759 and three more games of Warhammer Underworlds. I'm not sure what other games we might get in. 

Next week Brent and I were planning to play Wizard Kings - another Block Game (similar to Quebec 1759) from Columbia Games. It seems like there might be enough replayability there to get in five games over the next month (but maybe we'll knock off two more games of Quebec 1759 first!). 

That's potentially four (Quebec 1759, Wingspan, Warhammer Underworlds, and Wizard Kings). I'm not sure what else...? FATE maybe...? 

A week or two ago, Amanda and I had planned to reserve Friday evening for boardgames, Saturday is for role-playing games (finnegan running his D&D game, in-person, in the basement Games Room, and me running a FATE game online), and Sunday evening for Skirmish Games (like Warhammer Underworlds - but possibly also returning to Blackstone Fortress or trying out Kill Team or Warcray or Cursed City...). So far we played ONE game on the Friday night, no one showed for my FATE game on Saturday, and we were too tired this past Sunday to play Warhammer Underworlds... Maybe next weekend... (Although I already know THIS Friday is out, due to a final dance recital!)  

And so far this year we've played:

• Wingspan x10
• Five Tribes x7
• Terraforming Mars x7
• Azul x6
• Carcassonne  x5
• Quebec 1759 x3
• Splendor x3
• Warhammer Underworlds x2
• Wrath & Glory x2
• Bananagrams x1
• For Sale x1
• Marrying Mr. Darcy x1
• The Silver Bayonet x1

As far as a possible Annual 10x10 Challenge - I already have enough games of Wingspan in... Five Tribes and Terraforming Mars will definitely get 10 plays. Azul would be easy to get in four more of. I still have hope that we WILL get playing Warhammer Underworlds again and get in at least 10 of those through the rest of the year... That's five of them (four of which were in last year's Challenge - at least Five Tribes is new...) I have no idea what the others might end up being... 

Playing games with Brent every week (now that he's kind-of-sort-if retired) should get a few NEW games on the list (he's mostly interested in 2-player wargames - which is nice, because I have a few and NO ONE in my family would ever play THOSE!?). After we've played a few games of Wizard Kings we might try out Hamer of the Scots (ANOTHER Block Game from Columbia Games!?) and we've even talked about trying out some of the GMT COIN games - or Twilight Struggle or Labyrinth!? We shall see...