December Games - Part the Second

 And thus began our Holidaze.... ...

The kids finished up skewl on Friday. And Amanda took MOST of this week off... She went in Tuesday, because she had to go to campus to teach a yoga class anyway... But took the rest as vacation or used up a small amount of the excessive accrued overtime... and a personal day... Next week, between Xmas and New Years, the university is closed and EVERYONE has the week off - except for a few essential staff that need to go in to take care of critters used at the Vet college, etc... 

Lots of time for GAMING! 

Friday, 17 December 2021

Kicking things off, Keiran, Amanda and i sat down to play a game of Carcassonne - we added in Traders & Builders and Inns & Cathedrals. Amanda cleaned up with the trade goods - scoring 30 points for having the most of the wine, grain AND cloth! But then I got 64 points just from farming - which kind of won me the game! 

Afterwards Amanda and I watched The Expanse with Finnegan and then just the two of us watched Wheel of Time together. 

Saturday, 18 December 2021

our Friend Kurtis came by for an evening of gaming. We finally tried playing the Century Golem Edition with ALL THREE games combined... It was a little much... It was interesting, I guess, to see the way they incorporated the mechanics of three different games into one. But there were a LOT of moving parts. 

Since it was so much work to set it all up and figure it out... We played it again. 

I like each of the games on their own. Mixing two together was interesting. All three was a bit much. 

Afterwards we played a couple of games of Kingdom Builder. EAch game used two of the new(-ish, to us) Marshlands edition boards and cards. 

In the first we played with the Hermits, Captains, and Geologists Kingdom Builder cards and the Tower, Fountain, Canoe, and Barn boards. This was the first time I saw the Canoe being useful. It seems like it could be a VERY powerful Extra Action... but only really if you can get BOTH. 

The Game was CrAzY close - Kurtis and I tied at 42 and Amanda has 41!

I the second game we played with Scout, Miner, and Messenger Kingdom Builder Cards and the Temple, Harbour, Farm, and Refuge boards. Only one of the extra actions allowed putting down additional settlements (the farm), the others only allowed up to pick up and replace settlements. I grabbed two farns quite early on so for most of the game i was placing five settlements every round to the three that Kurtis and Amanda were placing... and I just cleaned up!? 

That long orange line across the board, alone, gained me 44 points from Messengers... thats more than any of us scored in TOTAL in the previous game!? 

Monday, 20 December 2021

Monday evening we played a quick game of The Hanging Garden. Keiran had suggested it, so I wasn't going to pass up the opportunity. We haven't played it since June of last year. 

Keiran and Amanda started clearing away their garden while I was laying out my tiles!? So I didn't get all three extended gardens. 

Anayway, here's what my garden looked like at the end of it - along with all the tiles I'd collected... 

Amanda won. By lots. 

Tuesday, 21 December 2021

Tuesday Amanda went into work for one last day this year - and stayed very late!? When she finally did get home, we all played Codenames: Pictures. We ended up playing six games - every one had a chance to team up with every other member of the family and within each pairing, each took turns being the Spymaster and the Field Operative. 

In Game One, Amanda and I were the Spymasters. I was paired with Finnegan and Amanda with Keiran. Amanda and Keiran won when Finnegan accidentally selected THE ASSASSIN!  

Game Two - Keiran and i were partnered up and Amanda Played with Finnnegan. Keiran and Fnnegan were the spymasters. Amanda and Finnegan won this round. 

Game Three - Keiran and Finnegan remained Spymasters, but we switched partners again. Amanda and Keiran won. 

Game Four - Back to Amanda and me being Spymasters. Kerian and I won - but only because Finnegan, again, accidentally picked THE ASSASSIN! 

For the last two games Amanda and I were partner and the kids were partners. Finnegan and I were Spymasters first. The kids won. 

Then Amanda and Keiran took a turn at being Spymasters. Again, Finnegan and Keiran won, despite Amanda and me haveing a pretty commanding lead to start... 

Good fun. Wish we played this more. It is very quick! 

Afterwards, because we are heathens and there was zero chance we'd be doing our traditional family get together on the 24th... we just opened up presents on the Solstice. 

Wednesday, 22 December 2021

Got the whole family together again to play O Zoo Le Mio

We haven't played this in YEARS, but played it a fair bit about 6-7 years ago. It's a fun little game where you play a zoo (or... the Zoo Manager) trying to build bigger better attractions at your zoo - by matching up tiles to make bigger enclosures. Fairly simple, very clever and not too long.. 

Out little zoos at the end of the game. 

Thursday, 23 December 2021

Initially, a friend of Amanda's was initially supposed to come over and play Wingspan... but kind of bailed on us. 

So Amanda and i just played on our own... 

This was the THIRTIETH game of Wingspan we've played since Amanda got it for her birthday in may. 

It was all festive colours.

(and apparently failing at math...) 

Friday, 24 December 2021

For many years we used to go over to my folks place on the 24th for our family gathering - spend the afternoon and evening there. presents were opened, games were played, puzzles put together and FAR TOO MUCH FOOD was consumed. Because of the pandemic and my parents current situation, this was just not feasible. 

I did get out for a bike ride in the early afternoon, despite feeling a bit run down (probably from the Covid vaccine booster I'd had the day before).

When I got back we played some games. 

Managed to wrangle the whole family into playing Kingdomino again (because it is QUICK!) 

Did I mention that Keiran got rainbow hair the day before...?

 Oh, they got rainbow hair all right! 

The game was SUPER close and everyone built lovely little kingdoms around their castles. 

I ended up winning. I thought I had done well, but then when everyone was telling me their scores I was amazing they'd all scored 10-12 points MORE than me... then they reminded me about the bonus for not having any blank spaces and for ending with the castle in the middle! That bonus fifteen put me in first with 64 points, Keiran had 63, Amanda had 61, and Finnegan had 60!? 

Afterwards, Amanda and i played Castles of Burgundy. Amanda by the end of the first round Amanda was about 50 points ahead of me and stayed well ahead for the rest of the game. I ALMOST caught up at the end with bonus points... but not quite... 

After I post this I think we'll be settling down to watch the new episodes of The Expanse and the Wheel of Time. Loving the Expanse. Indifferent to Wheel of Time. After we are done the latter, I think we'll check out The Witcher... 

I still need to play two more games of Kill Team to finish off ten games of that for my 10x10 challenge... I'm not sure what I'll do for the tenth game... The easiest might be to just play four more rounds of Codenames: Pictures. It might seem lame to add that in to a 10x10 challenge... but I've played THIRTY games of Wingspan... THIRTY!!! I think we've done okay for playing games this year! 

I hope everyone out there is having a happy, HEALTHY holiday season - and I do hope you get in a few games! I expect there will be a few more games we'll be playing this last week (and binge-watching shows on Netflix), as we all have the week off and won't be going out much at all - with the Covid numbers skyrocketing again! 

December Games - Part One

Games we've played, so far, this month. 

I figured we'd played a few and we'll likely be playing a LOT over the Holidaze, so I thought I ought to split this into two posts. Possibly three. 

Friday, 3 December 2021

I went to my FLGS, Dragon's Den Games, and picked up Necromunda - Book of the Outcast, and traded in some games I'm not likely to play again and in exchange got Stargrave and...

Kingdom Builder: Marshlands! 

This is apparently the THIRD expansion, but it was the only one they had and Kingdom Builder IS a game we've played a bit of this past year or so (We'd played ten games already for the 10x10 Challenge!)... so I thought it might be fun to add a bit more variety to the game. 

In the evening, Amanda and I tried it out. We played with two of the new boards (Refuge and Temple) and two of the boards (Oracle and Barn) from the original game, and two new Kingdom Builder cards (Captains and Vassals) and one from the original (Knights). 

Amanda had a hard time wrapping her head around what all the new things did - good thing we only used a few of them and didn't just play with ALL NEW THINGS!? 

I really like the new additions to the game. I like Kingdom Builder. There is a fair bit of variety and interesting challenges and replayability with different board orientations and combinations of  WAS starting to feel a little bit repetitive after 20 plays, and the new elements definitely added some fresh new elements and combinations and challenges! Looking forward to playing more. I have a feeling this w

(Of course, some of that repetitiveness may be partly due to the fact that we don't seem to HAVE two of the Kingdom Builder cards that are supposed to be in the core box!? Not sure whatever happened to those? Did we EVER have them...? Were they left out/misplaced after one of our earlier games...? Luckily the expansion came with multiple sets of the new Kingdom builder cards - in different languages - so I was able to cross that off two of them and write in the stuff for the missing cards and can now add those back into the Kingdom Builder cards available!

Saturday, 4 December 2021

In the evening, after his D&D game, I actually got Finnegan to join me and Amanda for another game of Kingdom Builder - with the new Marshlands expansion. We tried out two more of the new Kingdom Builder Cards and the other two boards 

Finnegan was pretty disappointed with his own performance in the game - dead last, Way being both me and amanda... 

We tried to point out that he hasn't played in years - while Amanda and I had played TEN TIMES - THIS YEAR! (so far!_

Sunday, 5 December 2021

Holy CARP, guys!? Somehow, I actually convinced BOTH teenagers go join in yet ANOTHER game of Kingdom builder. Finnegan made up for the previous evenings less-than-optimal showing by utterly crushing us ALL! 

Monday, 6 December 2021

Monday evening Ryan and Andy joined us again for a game of Wingspan. 

I thought I'd try something different as add the cards from two sets together. I know it's a thing you can do, but we've kept the cards from different expansions separate up until now - and played with them on their own... But I decided to mix the original (North American) with the European expansion - just start with one... not have to worry about how they will work with the addition of Nectar... 

After I had done so I was thinking "WOW! That's a LOT of cards..." and then realized I'd mixed all three sets together!? GAH!? Well, I wasn't about to go separating them out... so, we played with ALL THREE!?

It was pretty fun. I actually feel like it played a little BETTER with all three mixed in! Maybe with JUST the Oceana ones, there were a lot of birds that generated nectar (which is basically a wild card) and everyone just ended up with PILES of it... 

I got lucky with some draws early in the game and totally cleaned up. I'm kind of starting to think that, when playing with a group of reasonably competent people - as all I play with are - it really comes down to luck of the draw... I don't mind, because it's fun and i like birds... and it generally means one person doesn't just win ALL THE TIME!!!

Friday, 10 December 2021

Friday, Finnegan and I played another game of The Silver Bayonet!

You can see all the pictures and a full report here:

The Silver Bayonet - The Ruined Chapel

Saturday, 11 December 2021

Initially we'd planned to go over to our friend Kurtis' to play some Kingdom Builder... but that kind of fell through... 

So another friend, Tanya, that lives in the neighbourhood stopped by in the evening to play Wingspan! 

And she brought her dog, Obi. 

And Amanda was wearing a funny "festive" hat...? I'm not sure why. "Because December"? Maybe...?

Another friend, Barb,  had told Amanda about an app that could be added to a phone that allowed you to hold up a Wingspan card to it, and it would play the bird's song!? So Keiran added it to their phone and played all the birds songs that we put into play. 

It brought much delight to the evening. 

In the end Amanda totally crushed us all. Again. But everyone had fun. And... BIRDS!

Sunday, 12 December 2021

Sunday evening, Amanda and I played Kingdom Builder. We played with one of the boards from the Marshlands expansion, the rest ended up being from the original core box. We had the Merchant, Knight and Farmer Kingdom Builder Cards, and the Temple (from Marshalnds), Farm, Tavern, and Barn boards. 

We hadn't played with the Farmers Kingdom Builder Card for a LONG time, and I'd forgot about it. You get 3 per settlement in the sector with the least of your settlements, s you really need to make sure you evenly distribute your settlements. I think ended up with 9-10-10-11 in each of the sectors! 

Amanda, unimpressed by me cutting her off and ending the game WAAAAAAAAAY before she even got out a pile of her settlements (by her elbow...). 

I'd picked up both barns and two taverns in the first two or three turns and was putting out SEVEN settlements per turn... I totally unintentionally cut her off from one entire sector so she got zero points for the farmers. 

Monday, 13 December 2021

After school, Keiran and I played a quick game of Patchwork. 

I really like this game. My biggest complaint is, more ofthen than not, my final score is a negative number.... and I often WIN with a negative number that happens to be higher (closer to zero) than my opponents!? I get that they want you to take filling the board seriously... but rather than a -2 for every square not filled, why not give a bonus foe every square that IS filled... then everyone wins with positive integers as their scores. there is something just backwards about winning with -5 points, becauseyour opponent had a bad day and just couldn't 'make anything fit and ended up with -15!? 

I did not win... but at least we both ended with positive integers... so that was a win in itself. 

Later in the evening, after Amanda got home, Keiran joined us for a game of Abyss - another fun game we have not played in some time... 

Keiran had, over the weekend, actually made a list of games they wanted to play and we wanted to strike while that iron was hot! Monday was really the only day they don't have much going on, so I suggested we play the first one on their list on this day. Hopefully we'll get to more of them over the holidaze! 

I didn't do too badly... but Keiran was ON FIRE and Amanda played an excellent game as well. I think Keiran was over ten points ahead of Amanda, who was a point or two ahead of me. 

Tuesday, 14 December 2021

Finnegan actually ended up playing D&D on Tuesday. His Tuesday night D&D game, in theory on alternating Tuesday, but in actuality seems to be on a Tuesday on alternating months. He plays on the computer upstairs and is VERY LOUD... So, the rest of us had an impromptu game night in the basement game room..

WE started with a game of Kingdomino. It went very fast. So we decided to play another. 

This was my kingdom at the end of the first round. It was universally agreed that I had the most pleasant and orderly-looking kingdom. Kind of had the look of a large seaside or lake front estate... Unfortunately, looking pretty and orderly doesn't get you the most points. Apparently it gets you the LEAST points. 

My Kingdom after Game #2. I added some mines. Still didn't do so well... 

By this point we'd decided to play THREE games and take the total score of all three for the CHAMPION. This was my time to shine and catch them all up... 

Except I didn't... Lovely little estate... Dead Last... 

Keiran called it a night, but Finnegan was still bellowing upstairs so Amanda and i decided to play another game of Abyss - while it was fresh in our heads! I wasn't sure if we've played a two-player game of Abyss before... I went SUPER FAST! 

So fast, I couldn't even get a non-blurry picture of Amanda. 

So fast, we decided to play again... 

I swear this one was even FASTER!? And WAY higher scoring. I think the first game I won 65-63. The second game Amanda won with 87 and I wasn't TOO far behind with 83...? 

It was almost 10, by this point... but they often go to 10:30 or even a bit later.... So we set up Kingdom Builder and played another game of that! It was ALSO super fast!? Despite there being four boards to spread out on, we kind of had a little knife-fight-in-a-phone-booth battle at the edge of one side (I did stretch out a line of settlements into a third board to link up with a castle at the end of the game, but that was it!? 

Whew! What a night!?

Wednesday, 15 December 2021

Keiran was home early - not having Pom practice and their usual thing for WEdnesday evenings was cancelled, so they suggested playing a game AGAIN this evening. Amanda and I had tickets to a play at Persephone Theatre, so we had to play a QUICK one between when Amanda got home and we had to head out... 

So we played a quick game of Azul! I've played SO MANY two-player games of this with just Amanda this past year, playing with three kind of threw me off!? It messed Amanda up way more, tho... 

Amanda went so far as to proclaim it to be her WORST GAME EVER... she actually does this quite often when she's doing poorly. I always think these proclamations are a bit hasty - Especially when she's making the proclamation halfway through the game. When we check previously recorded games it'll usually be in the ballpark off her other poor scores... which are never really THAT bad... (compared to, say, some of MY scores!) 

This time, she was right though. Of the scores of the 24 previously played games the family has played, recorded on Board Game Geek, the lowest score was 41. This evening, she scored 27... 

Holy Mackerel! It's been a busy two weeks!

The kids are done school for the year on FRIDAY and have two weeks off. Amanda has most of that time off as well. I expect there will be a fair bit of game playing over the next two weeks, so... might be two more GAMES WE PLAYED posts this year!? We'll see. 

I just finished up some Russians for The Silver Bayonet this evening - which I'll hopefully get on the table later this week. I'll probably post pics tomorrow (or, later today, depending on where you live!?)