January Boardgame Round Up

Back at the beginning of January when I posted my Game Plan 2017 I mentioned I had come up with a list of 50 games I wanted to make sure I was going to play SOMETIME this year. The kids have followed suit and made up lists of their own – though their lists are shorter – Finnegan had 25 on his list and, I think, The Girl has 37… which is okay, they can add to it later – or just play some of those game MULTIPLE times – I suspect it will be the latter – in fact I HOPE it is the latter! Luckily some of the games I want to play most are games that are on all three lists – which means we’ll get to play those at least 3 times this year. Amanda even said she’d pick one game a month – thought couldn’t be bothered to make a list in advance.

We didn’t “officially” get started on the lists until the second week of January. The first week was still part of our winter holidaze 12 Days of Gaming.

As the end of the second week I did a brief update - I had thought I’d do a little weekly update on the games we’d played each week.. but since I’m already doing a weekly Vimy I thought I’d forego a second weekly update (which I’d probably end up wanting to do on Sunday as well) – at least for now. Maybe I’ll do this at the end of the month for the next few months… or have fortnightly updates… just because I like the word fortnightly and I don’t get to use it nearly often enough!

So here is what we got up to since that last update…

The evening of Sunday, 15 january, we played Amanda’s pick for the month: Olympus

It had been a while since we played this (over a year!) I’m not sure what sparked Amanda’s memory but it was fun to dig it out and play it again.

I recalled the getting the Temple of Athena early in the game was a huge benefit and managed to grab it – not only does it give you extra levels of other stuff when your priest worships at the temple of Athena, at higher levels it causes your opponents to LOSE levels in something of their choice – which is nasty. It is one of the few things that mess with your opponents in the game – that and building up your army and raiding them or bringing down plagues by worshipping at the Temple of Apollo.

When we last played the kids were a bit younger and didn’t take offensive interactive play very well and everyone pretty much left every one alone and concentrated on building up their stuff. I didn’t do that so much this game. I raised my army up and attacked their cities a few times. I worshipped at the temple of Apollo when I had the last priest and no one else could join in and save themselves from the plague I brought down. But I was only able to do each ONCE. After I did it once, everyone else followed suit and built up their army or would worship at Apollo (taking the victory points instead of the plague) early in the round to prevent me from using such things against them.

On Monday we played Five Tribes. This wasn’t anyone’s “pick” for the week… we just decided on Monday afternoon that we should play it, and we did.

Wednesday we played Race for the Galaxy. This was one of Finnegan’s picks for the month. I didn’t even bother putting games like RFTG or other games that we play in less than an hour (like 7 Wonders or Dominion) on my list as I knew that we’d get in games of them anyway – whenever we had an hour to spare… but Finnegan had it on his list so  we picked this for our Wednesday game.

The last few games of RFTG were pretty… I don’t know… unsatisfying…? I couldn’t get a theme going or get anything working together and felt like I didn’t even get started before it was over. This game went a bit better, I got some cards that worked together and had a bit of a theme going. I can’t read those six-cost developments, but I’m sure I had 50-60 points. I’m not sure I even won with that, because the kids also had great games it was all very close and entirely different strategies were taken – The Girl always like setting up production and consumption worlds and just producing and consuming for 2x victory points and usually does pretty good with that – racking up VPs with just a few worlds while were all scrambling to fill out our tableaus before she eats all the VPs.

Friday we had another crack at The Big Book of Madness. This is a co-operative, deck-building game where all players are students at a school of magic where one of the students went looking through the restricted section of the library and accidentally unleashed a bunch of horrors into the school and the players are busy trying to banish them all before they take over and everyone goes mad. WE tried to play this as a five player game over the holidaze and lost – big time! It was SUPER hard and was almost unimaginable how the game could ever be defeated.

Well… playing with fewer players is one key to the game. You face 6 monsters in the game and have rounds to deal with them – so 30 rounds. In a five player game that means everyone gets on round of play per monster and a total of 6 rounds of play in the entire game (if it lasts that long) which is precious little time to advance your character – build up your deck and get better spells.

We STILL didn’t beat the game this time around, but we got a lot further, and got a better sense of the strategy of how to play. I think this would probably play even better with just two players… which isn’t as awesome as we usually like to all play games together (which means minimum 3-4 players, depending on whether Amanada is available to play with us). Two player games hardly ever get played around here…

Saturday I spent the day at FreezerBurn VII (an annual invitationa game day hosted by my firend John) and played Small World, Roll for the Galaxy, Age of Industry, Viticulture, and Power Grid Deluxe. As Power Grid Deluxe was on my list, I counted it as one of my picks for the week.

During the last week of January, on the Wednesday, we played Olympus again – it was one of Finnegan’s picks and he wanted to play it again while it was all still fresh in his head. They let me get the Temple of Athena again – though The Girl did try to scoop it, I was quicker… I think she went for the 2 VP from Apollo EVERY TURN through the whole game – which put her in a pretty commanding lead and had me wondering if that was maybe a pretty good strategy to do that through the game… until we did the final points tally and Finnegan and I raced WAY ahead of her.

This past Saturday Brent came by and played Power Grid Deluxe again with me and Finnegan – this tiem we tried the Europe board (which I hadn’t played on before) . With three players there were only three areas available – we had ended up picking the France/Spain, Germany, and Russia/Poland areas which left a bit of a bottleneck which caused to trouble early in the game. It ended up being the closest game of Power Grid I’ve played – in the final turn we ALL powered 17 cities and it came down to counting coins to see who won (I think I won by a few “Elektros”!)

Monday and Tuesday we had a bit of catching up to do as we’d missed a few of The Girls picks for the month...

Monday, 30 January, we played Bottlecap Vikings. The Girl won this game at a local event at Dragon’s Den Games for International Tabletop Day last year (which I thought I had done a post about… but can’t seem to find it..? Maybe I just posted pictures on facebook…) – and she has been HOUNDING us to play it ever since… I have to admit I’ve been reluctant to try it out – mostly due to the name. “Bottlecap Vikings”? Seriously? WTF is a Bottlecap Viking!? That and that fact that it’s supposed to take 15 minutes to play didn’t strike me as a game that would be very interesting.

I was wrong.

For a small game there’s quite a bit going on – lots of decisions to be made strategies that could be taken and lots of replayability in that the board is modular and only half the board elements are used in any game (as they are double sided and you randomly select one or the other). It did take us a bit more than the 15 minutes the game claims it takes to play, but with a few more plays, we could get it close to that…

I guess I should have been so prejudiced (and then surprised!) – Love Letter is a very quick-playing game that is a lot of fun.

Finally… at the very last moment we got in The Girl’s last pick for January: Submarine. This is another game we haven’t played for over a year and a half.

The kids weren’t pleased with me (as may be evident in the picture). Rereading the rules I quickly ascertained that this game really isn’t about picking up the treasures as it is about card management and always trying to make sure when someone else picks up a treasure they have to give you a card as well and positioning yourself to give up a minimum number of cards when picking up treasure yourself – you start the game with a finite number of cards. In a three player game everyone starts with a deck of 15 – from which they draw a hand of three. Every time you pick up a treasure you have to play a card of the matching colour. If there are submarines of another player in the same space of above you in the same column, you have to give a card off the top of your deck to the other players for each of their submarines so positioned – which they then place on the top of their decks.

Halfway through the game the kids were down to only a few cards and I had a HUGE pile… yeah… so… this may sit on the shelf for another year and a half before we play it again (or however long it takes them to forget how badly I crushed them…). I had hoped they’d get wise to my shenanigans earlier on and try to block ME from picking up stuff without having to pay for it, but by the time they sort of figured it out they’d pretty much given up…

Next Month...

Earlier this week we sat down and tried to plan out what games we’re going to play for the next month – trying to fit in all the games we want to play around all the stuff I need to do for the Vimy Project, and all the kids activities and… y’know… actual schooly-stuff… Luckily there is a stat holiday in February followed by a week-long school break – one might think the school break wouldn’t matter to us (being homeshoolificators) but when there is a school break, it usually means all the kids other activities (dance, violin, karate, swimming, theatre school, etc) are all cancelled which frees up a LOT of time. (I’M hoping to get a lot of terrain building done over the school break!).

The Girl picked Space Junk, Linkage, Agricola, and Smash Up. Finnegan wants to play Small World, A Study in Emerald (Second Edition), Arkham Horror, and Firefly. My games for the month will be A Game of Thrones, Railways of Mexico, Pax Porfiniana, and Illuminati (which I haven’t played in YEARS – probably even a decade!). Amanda decided her game for the month would be Nations.

So today we are playing Smash Up and A Study in Emerald (Second Edition) on Saturday. Next week is probably Railways of Mexico on Wednesday and Firefly on Saturday. The following week is Small World on Wednesday and A Game of Thrones on Saturday, Agricola, and Nations on Monday (that’s the long weekend). I think we were going to play Space Junk one of those evenings. Sometime during the break the following week we’re going to play Arkham Horror, and finally – on my birthday (Saturday, 25 February 2017) we’re going to play Pax Porfiniana in the afternoon and Illuminati in the evening!

Well… that’s the PLAN… but our plans tend to be like the Pirates Code (“they’re more like…’guidelines’”)

We didn't get to playing any skirmish miniature games last month, but I'm hoping we might get to that on Sunday evenings this month... or maybe every other Sunday evening...?

Gaming Our Way Through History… (Part 1)

I may have mentioned once or twice that I homeschool my kids and that games are a big part of our “curriculum”. Games are great. There’s so much going on there that can be used across the various “subject areas”. The ability to simply read, comprehend, follow and explain to others very complex instructions (like the rules for games with wildly differing mechanics) are vital “language arts” skills necessary for functioning in society today. A lot of games require logical thinking, planning, resource management, and quick mental calculations – of both simple math (adding, subtracting, multiplying and dividing multiple sets of numbers) and considering the statistical probability of success and balancing risk and associated rewards and recognizing there are multiple pathways to achieve a desired outcome. And, as we shall see, a lot of the games we played this year (all the games I’m talking about in this post) were related thematically to our study of the ancient world – providing the kids with a hands-on, interactive way of understanding the dynamics of relationships and interactions between different peoples and cultures we read about and the relationships of power and authority within those various societies, as well as understanding the decision-making processes concerning the distribution of resources. Well… sometimes…

This past year we began reading A Story of the World Volume One: The Ancient World.  I think it’s a pretty good series so far – for what it’s set out to do (provide a very basic general survey of world history for children). It may be a tad western-judeo-christian-euro-centric, but the beauty of homeschooling is I can bring my children’s’ attention to the fact that it may be written from a certain point of view and that others may have a different point of view and that I can supplement it with additional stuff about topics/areas/cultures that I don’t think got enough attention… I’m trying to use it for what it is - a very basic general survey of world history for children – that, when we are finished, the kids will have a pretty decent general understanding of world history that we will use as a springboard for further study of periods and cultures that we are interested in studying more in-depth.

So below are listed the games we played along with reading various sections of A Story of the World Volume One: The Ancient World. (We did play a LOT or OTHER games as well… but these are the one specifically related to the sections of history presented in A Story of the World Volume One: The Ancient World).

Ideally what I was looking for (and didn’t always have or was able to find) were games with maps of the regions and some method of showing the movement of peoples and/or the aforementioned dynamics of relationships and interactions between different peoples and cultures, the relationships of power and authority within those various societies, as well as understanding the decision-making processes concerning the distribution of resources, etc…. a tall order. Some were better at this than others. I wasn’t really looking for “war games” – though there were some - which showed the conflict involved when cultures clashed and Empires expanded. In some cases I already had some of the games (I bought a HUGE pile of games about five or six years back from a distributor that was going out of business and dumping stock on ebay) others I sought out and bought specifically for our “studies”. At times I knew of better games out there, but I don’t have limitless resources to buy games to cover EVERY chapter of the book – I did the best with what I had.

I also tried to look for games with les luck/dice-rolling and more planning and decision-making.

(Remember: click on the pictures for a bigger version)

Ur

The first chapters – after discussing what IS history and how to we know what we know and a bit about prehistoric hunter gatherers – focused on the development of the earliest civilizations in Mesopotamia – Ur was one of the city states that developed there and was the first game we played as part of our “gaming through history” program.

This game was fairly abstract. Each player is supposed to be the leader of one of the city-states of Mesopotamia developing their own civilization. The gaming area itself is a modular “game board” made up of tiles There are five different types of tiles representing different aspects of civilizations; agriculture, trade, law or politics, culture and military. Ultimately players want to control as many tiles as possible of as many different types to have the “most rounded” civilization. There is some ability to change the layout of the tiles. It is also possible to built a ziggurat… but I forget how that worked. At the end of the game victory points are counted and players are awarded more points for more complete sets of tiles.

I guess it reinforced some of the ideas of civilization building and that to succeed one has to have a balanced civilization…? 

Ra

Then we moved to Egypt…

(Despite the fact that we've played this game more often than any of the other games - so far -  I somehow never got a picture of us PLAYING it?!)

Another fairly abstract game bidding and set collection. Tiles representing different aspects of ancient Egyptian society – pharaohs, the Nile, floods, civilization (agriculture, art, astronomy, religion, writing), monuments, gods are drawn out of a bag and set out on a track – throughout the rounds there are a number of opportunities to bid on the sets of tiles laid out. There are three rounds representing Old Kingdom, Middle Kingdom, and New Kingdom periods. At the end of each period/round points are awarded for collecting various sets of tiles. I felt the theme was a little bit stronger in this one than Ur, but it was still fairly abstract.

Ark

Not all of them have two letter names - this one has THREE!

While covering straight history the Story of the World also covers various civilizations… well… stories – they’re myths and legends and such. While many other stories of the bible are included – Noah’s Ark wasn’t – there was a very similar much older story in the epic of Gilgamesh, which involves a great flood and someone collecting up pairs of animals to preserve in an ark… So we busted out Ark – a fun little game of trying to load animals onto the ark. It’s been a while so I can’t remember how the game is scored, but I do know you have to keep the ark balanced (lest it capsize in the water) and you can’t have carnivores omnivores loaded up in stalls with herbivores, and can’t have herbivores in stalls with feed and can’t have cold climate animals in with warm climate animals…

Age of Mythology: The Boardgame

Okay this one was not so historical… and not tied specifically to any of the stuff  we were reading about. I had it… there were Greeks… and Egyptians… (and… er… NORSE!?) and the kids had fun playing it….

Babel

This was only a two-player game and I only got around to playing it once with The Boy one night. Again, very abstract, “bolt-on theme” with cards/tiles could easily have just been different colours – but they were supposed to represent different peoples on the ancient world (Medes, Sumerians, Hitites, Persians, and Assyrians – all peoples we did read about) building monuments…

Hanging Gardens

We did read about Nebuchadnezzar and the gardens he built for his Persian wife Queen Amytis – which would become one of the seven wonders of the ancient world. In this game you are using cards with different garden elements on them to “plan out the gardens” when a certain number of grouped together you get to select from a number of tiles that are available – variable points are awarded at the end of the game for those who were able to collect certain sets of tiles. It’s fairly abstract and there’s more pattern recognition and planning than history… but it sort of tied into what we were reading. Sort of…

7 Wonders

In this game players represent a civilization trying to build one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient world.



You collect cards from hands that are passed around putting into play cards that represent buildings or resources that your civilization builds or develops some just give you victory points some just make it easier to complete the next stage of your wonder.

We played this a lot - with different groups of people - it's pretty easy to teach the basics of and because of the simultaneous action adding more players doesn't make the game any longer - as it does with most games.

Olympus

Each player represents a Greek city-state. This is a worker placement/resource management game – the “workers” are priests that you send to different temples to pray to different gods of the Greek pantheon which offer different rewards to further the advance of your city.



Victory points are awarded for building certain buildings and for being the first to reach the maximum value in the six aspects of each city’s civilization are tracked: population, culture, military and productivity of the three resources (grain, venison and fish).

Parthenon: Rise of the Aegean

Love this one.  Now this was more what I was looking for in a “good game” for learning. WE played it a few times... 

This is a commodity trading/resource management/building game set in the Ancient Aegean (c600BC). The game board is a map of the Aegean sea (with all it’s islands),  some nearby lands (the Greek mainland and the coast of Ionia – where lots of Greeks settled), and some foreign lands (Egypt, Carthage, Italy). Players control one of those islands in the Aegean and try to develop the civilization on the island – first by developing resource production, and then trading for other resources required to build other infrastructure (to increase or diversify resource production or allow other special activities/abilities). Players can trade with other islands (the other players) or with neighboring lands or further “foreign” lands. Journeys to neighboring or foreign lands are more risky - storms or pirates can mean losing entire fleets – or one can arrive only to find there is a surplus of what you want to trade at that port… but there can also be big pay-offs… Players who are co-operative and trade more with the other players can do quite well.

It’s way more fun with more players as there is a lot more deal making and trading amongst the islands.

Alexander the Great

This was another really great one. I had really wanted to include some sort of game about the campaigns of Alexander the Great - unfortunately most of them are two player war games where one player plays the roles of the Army of Alexander and the other plays the role of the Persian Empire and other opponents… play doesn’t necessarily follow the route of Alexander’s campaigns…

Then I stumbled across this game – which was perfect (for what I was looking for). The campaigns of Alexander are pretty much a forgone conclusion in this game – the army marches on, conquering lands following, more or less, the route that Alexander took.

Players represent various generals/advisors in Alexander’s army. The game is mostly a  game of resource management. The campaign is broken down into six stages. Each stage take two or three turns to complete and at the end of each turn and stage victory points are scored for areas controlled (most army markers in each province within the area of the current stage of the campaign) and for cities founded and temples built. There is a final scoring for whoever has the most temple/cities in total and the most in each stage area.

I like it because it’s sort of a war game, but not really a war game. The game board is a great map of the region and the play follows the route of Alexander’s campaigns, but the focus is not-so-much on the battles (which most war games are) but on the resources that have to be managed to keep the armies marching and the spread of Greek culture through the region (through the building of temples and founding of cities) that followed in the wake of the campaign.

Alexander’s Generals

The wars of the Diadochi (Alexander’s Successors) was a bit of a footnote in the chapter on Alexander the Great – but, I felt, an important part of understanding that whole period of history. Alexander spent all this time and effort building this HUGE empire… which was then shattered immediately after his death – shortly after returning from his last campaign – when the empire was split between his generals, who immediately started fighting against each other…

 This is a more traditional area control war game that was simple enough for my kids to play, allowed a number of players. Play is similar to the old Milton Bradley big box game Shogun/Samurai Swords - the provinces are even supposed to be dealt out at random.



I changed this a bit to give each of the generals a core of four or five provinces in the area they historically controlled (Ptolemy in Egypt, Seleucus in Persia, etc).

Palatinus

Players play different tribes trying to settle the seven hills that will eventually become the city of Rome. The board is modular, roughly hexagonal tiles representing the seven hills of Rome.



The players take turns placing different inhabitants (Soldiers, Merchants, and Farmers) which will interact with the others placed next to them – depending on the number and type of inhabitants - then the hills are scored and victory points awarded. Seemed simple enough. We played a couple quick games one afternoon, but haven’t returned to it.

Italia I

Another great game for learning history – though it covers a great deal of history of one particular area - in this case 330-80BCE.



The game board is a map of Italy and surrounding areas and plays over a long period of time with successive groups moving into the area, dominating the previous groups (or at least trying to) and then being dominating by other groups moving into the area

It’s sort of like an historical version of Small World (if you’re familiar with that game). The game is based on another game called Britannia. I have a copuple other games based on the Britannia system which I will be using later on - Maharaja for India, and China: The Middle Kingdom. I also would have LOVED to have been able to track down a copy of Britannia itself or Chariot Lords, but they’re all out of print and not-so-easy to find…

Italia is a fairly complicated game and it took us two days to play it. The game also includes a second set of tiles to play a completely separate game covering the period of history from the fall of the Western Roman Empire in 390CE through the tumultuous period of  medieval Italian history until 1100CE – so we’ll be playing that again pretty soon!

There were slightly different mechanics to represent different kinds of incursions - some turns are played over decades or even hundreds of years - representing groups of people slowly migrating in, while others are played as specific military campaigns over just a few years:

hannibal marching across the alps with his elephants... Except unlike what actually happened, Flaminius there stopped Hannibal and his elephants dead (I just had the WORST luck with the dice...)



...and here is Scipio (soon to be called Scipio Africanus) after he lays waste to Carthage! 

Glory to Rome

I don’t actually have this game, a friend brought it over one weekend and The Boy and I got to play it. I really liked it – it’s card game of city building and resource management after the fire of 64CE – there are lots of different ways to use each cards and multiple paths to victory. The Boy was a little overwhelmed…?

Ostia

Ostia was the port of Rome. This is another trading game. Rather than shipping anything you are simply buying the stuff coming off ships from… wherever… and storing it or selling it at the markets in Rome to make money or donating it to the senate to gain favour (and victory points!). You do need to sell a certain amount to stay solvent – but the more you sell of any one commodity on the market the lower the price per unit gets – so you have to keep track of what other players have bought that round and guess at which they will be donating and which they will be selling. An interesting game, but the theme was a little “bolt-on” – in that it could be easily be any port anywhere in time (or even a space port in the far future). But the box said “Ostia” and the commodities were right for the period so it worked.

Quo Vadis?

A latin phrase meaning “where are you going?”

You are trying to get your candidates into the senate – that’s where! Moving up through comities – needing a majority of votes from the committee. Other players will ultimately have playing pieces in said committees so you need to negotiate to get the aid of other players and help other players – but not help them TOO much – because ultimately you want YOUR candidates to get to that senate chamber…

ZhanGuo

It’s hard to find games with eastern themes set in ancient times that had the elements that I was looking for - which I really wanted to do because they are kind of glossed over in the book. I didn't really find anything for India - either the Harapan/Indus civilization or the Mauryan Empire that we read about - but I was super excited to find ZhanGou as it fit the bill perfectly – Board game is a map of China – it takes place just after Shi Huang Di unified china and became the first Qin Emperor.



The players are Emissaries of the Qin trying to culturally unify China through the various building projects and establishing governors and quelling unrest. You had a hand of cards each round that could be used in different ways to recruit officials or workers or build stuff or establish There was a LOT going on in this game and different ways. I liked it.

Rise of Augustus

In this games players are legati Augusti – Representatives of Augustus – trying to maintain the empire and vying for the title of consul. To do this the players must gain the support of influential senators to take control of the various provinces of the empire.



The provinces and senators take the form of “objective” cards that require a certain number of parkers on each to win over. Markers are drawn randomly from a bag. Once a player has completed (gained the support of or taken control of) seven of these objectives the game ends and victory points are calculated for various combinations of stuff… it’s quick.

Downfall of Pompeii

I don’t think we actually read about Pompeii in the story of the world – but did read about it in some of the supplemental readings and some other books we read on our own about Rome. There are two phases to the game – phase one players are trying to populate Pompeii with as many of their friends and family as possible…



Then, once the volcano starts to erupt on 24 August 79CE, phase two begins where you try to evacuate as many of your friend and family as possible before they are buried under tones of pumice and ash…

Song of Shadows and Dust

This is a set of rules for playing miniature skirmish wargames set in urban areas of the ancient Mediterranean in the first century BCE (+/- a century or two). We played a few games of this with various different factions we put together.

You can find more detailed reports of some of the games we played below:

Song of Shadows and Dust

The Bees of Iskedumtrum

On the Way to the Forum

The Egyptians of Iskedumdrum

The Bad Legatus

The Wolf of Iskedumdrum

 ...and an article I posted about putting together a faction for the game here:

Song of Shadows and Dust Faction

Still to Play...

Conquest of Empire.

A larger war game similar to Alexander’s Generals that I’ve been trying to organize a game of for months, but just haven’t been able to get the game on the table with people around it ready to play. It’s a longer game and would take up most of a day. I’ve been trying to get a bunch of players together (up to six can play) – but I should probably just sit down one day and play it with the kids…

During out study of the ancient world we had a few “missed opportunities”…

I have a BUNCH of De Bellis Antiquitatis armies for the ancient world; Egyptians and Nubians, Multiple Greek Hoplite armies, Skythians, Thracians, Macedonians, multiple Alexandrian Successor armies, multiple Early Imperial Roman armies, Ancient Germans, Picts… Unfortunately none of them are completed. I had hoped studying history might have motivated me to get a pile of them finished so we could play out some historical battles with them… alas… I didn’t really get to finish up any of them.

We also could have played more skirmish level games. I’m not sure how much useful history there is to be learned there – but playing some historical miniature games has got to be somewhat more educational that playing straight fantasy games… We totally could have played A Song of Blades and Heroes with various historical figures I have – or Song of Arthur and Merlin…

Getting a little less historical – I totally could have run  Of Gods and Mortals with a mix of historical and Mythological Greeks…

Nothing can immerse players in a setting like a good role-playing game – I’ve been itching to run a Cthulhu Invictus campaign… but just didn’t find the time to prepare and run it…

While we were originally doing about a chapter a week - giving us time to do other activities and additional readings and activities for each chapter – I realized this will take us about four years to get through the four volumes… So we’ve decided to speed things up and are doing 4-5 chapters per week… so hopefully we’ll be done this survey of world history by the end of December this year. We are already well into Volume 2 – and have been playing lots of game to go along with it!  WE should have the second volume finished up by mid August – so I’ll post again then about all the games we’ve played along the way. 

14 Days of Gaming

(or “What I Did For My Winter Vacation”)

I mentioned in Game Plan 2015 that starting on Monday, 22 December 2014 we were going to play one new game every day until the new year. I decided shortly thereafter that we should extend that right up to The Boy’s birthday – which was today (well... yesterday now...) – Monday, 5 January 2015…  

So here is what we’ve been playing over the last two weeks….

(Remember: click on the pictures for a bigger version)

Monday 22 December 2014

Roborally

This is one that falls under the category of “played-it-lots-back-in-the-day-but-not-in-the-last-8-years” category. I played a LOT of Roborally back in the day. I don’t know how it got shelved and left for so long. I was a bit worried that the kids wouldn’t catch on - but they totally did. I was especially pleased when The Boy – after accidentally driving his robot off the edge of the board and having to start over again – just carried on. I’d half expected tears of rage and frustration – but apparently he had so much fun (even though he was dead last) that he hounded to play it again all week.

Tuesday 23 December 2014

Age of Mythology: The Board Game

We played an EPIC - FOUR AND A HALF HOUR - game of Age of Mythology: The Board Game (Now that we know what's going on I really hope it take less time next time we play!).

I'm going to go ahead and brag a bit here.... I have seriously awesome kids. How many other 8-10 year olds can sit and play a board game for 4.5 hours and remain totally focused on the game for the whole time - paying attention to what others are doing on their turns, and planning their turns in advance!?

I was pleasantly surprised by the game - I had originally picked it up super cheap from distributor that was going out business and dumping all their stock on ebay. When I got it and had a look at it I didn't think too much of it - I it looked a little simplistic - but the kids were excited about it - likely because of all the little toys that come with it. They've been bugging me about busting it open and trying it out for ages so I told them we'd try it out when they finished their school-y stuff for the year. The first time we sat down to try and play it we ended up just spending two hours simply cutting all the little toys off the sprues and trying to wrap our heads around the rules. When we finally sat down to play it - it turned out to be far from simplistic, but instead there were a few different routes to victory and a number of different ways to go about either of them - I think the game really rewards having a good strategic plan from the get-go and sticking to it.

The Boy won this first game with 10 victory points - I was just a hair behind with 9. The Girl only got 2 victory points - BUT - she was so very, VERY close to building The Wonder - which would have scored her another 8 - tying with Finnegan.

Finnegan tried a martial approach - building up his army - he found, however, that actually using the army for combat wasn't really that advantageous as, in his own words, "combat is the most unpredictable part of the game". (The points he got were simply from having the largest army at the end of the game)

I'm curious to see how it turns out next time we play - now that we have a better idea of how the mechanics work.

Olympus

In the evening when Amanda got home we got her to play a game of Olympus with us. I’d played it the previous week with the kids and they had been telling her how much fin it was ever since so she was curious to have a go.

I got this one from the recent Fantasy Flight Games sale.

Wednesday 24 December 2014 – Xmas Eve

O Zoo Le Mio

In the afternoon I played a game of O Zoo Le Mio with the kids. This, as with Age of Mythology above, was another of the games I originally picked it up super cheap from a distributor that was going out business and dumping all their stock on ebay a few years back. This is a clever little game where we played Zoo Directors trying to build the most impressive zoo to attract the most customers - involving bidding and tile laying.

We also played a quick game of Breakaway Rider - a bicycle racing card game. Simple – but really brings out the feel of a bicycle road race. We’d figured out how to play this the previous week – so it didn’t count towards the “New Games Played”

In the evening we wandered over to my folks place for our Family Xmas get-together – as has been our tradition since… forever...

This was the Year of the Boardgames for Xmas gifts… so we opened up a few and played a few…

Fearsome Floors

My folks got this one for The Boy. Amanda is gloating just a bit. It was rather infuriating because The Boy and I spent so much time figuring out where the monster would be heading on the next turn – but were always confounded by Amanda and The Girl’s inexplicable and random movements – they would almost every turn unwittingly draw the Monster’s attention and having it raging off in a completely different direction than we had foreseen.

Ingenious

After that we broke out Ingenious (a game my folks got for me). I think The Boy won this one…? it was very close!

Thursday 25 December 2014

As I mentioned this was the Year of the Boardgames for Xmas gifts… by the time the dust settled on Xmas morning we were left with this stack:

So… we started cracking them and playing…

Chaos Marauders

The Boy got this game in his stocking (another game I picked up at the FFG sale). Everyone’s doing their best Orc or Goblin impression.

Amanda taking it rather well that she’d just lost ANOTHER battle line of her own sue to rolling the Mark of Chaos after completing it and attempting to attack someone else’s uncompleted battle line (1 in 6 chance). I think this was the third such line to be lost in this way. We were all laughing at the utter ridiculousness of it!?

I think the box said it was supposed to be  played in 30 minutes, but it took us about TWO HOURS!? The Boy utterly defeated us scoring nearly as many points as the rest of us together!

Small World Underground

After that (and after a very late lunch) we played one of The Girl’s games: Small World Underground. The Girl completely destroyed us all. She only played two races in the whole game but there were turns where she was scoring 20 VP!? The last few turns the Spiderines just sat on what they had and sacrificed her in decline Krakens to the Well of Souls...

Mony Python Fluxx

I totally won this one - but only because I could sing more Monty Python Songs than anyone else - there was a New Rule card that allows you to draw another card if you can sing a few bars (or lines?) of any Monty Python song and an additional extra card if you can sing one that no one else has sung before in the game. So I was drawing two additional cards every round (and conveniently was holding the "Stop It! No Singing!" card that specifically cancelled the New Rule)...

I’d hoped to get in another game (one of each of our games) in the evening but everyone wanted to watch Guardians of the Galaxy. So…

Friday 26 December 2014 – Boxing Day

The kids and I rode over to the Dragon’s Den for their Boxing Day Sale! We arrived shortly after 10 when they opened but there was already people streaming out with piles of boxed games under their arms! When we got in the store it was like being in a Rubik’s Cube and there was a line to get to the till that warped around the store.

I bought a LOT of games. I’m embarrassed to list them here. Sadly, the one game I was sure I’d be able to get – because there was a stack of SIX copies the previous Sunday when I’d been in scouting things out – were all sold out!? Ah well…

The Boy spent most of the rest of the day reading his Order of the Stick books he picked up. I did convince him to put them aside to come out and play ONE game…

Love Letter

One of the games I picked up on Boxing Day at the Dragon’s Den. In the end it was The Boy who won the affections of the Princess (though it was a very close game – both the Girl and I were only one token away)!

Saturday 27 December 2014

Smash Up

This afternoon we started off with Smash Up along with the Big Geeky Box that our friend “Other Tim” got us and the Science Fiction Double Feature expansion that The Girl picked up on Boxing Day.

7 Wonders

In the evening we played 7 Wonders - another gift for me from my folks. Amanda - the Military Dictator of Rhodes - crushed us all - and yet, there were still smiles all around. I can see why this game is so popular.

Sunday 28 December 2014

Shadows Over Camelot

On Sunday we tried out Shadows Over Camelot – we lost. Fun, but damn is it hard! Hopefully we’ll get to have another go at this again soon

Later we got in another game of Mony Python Fluxx...



...and introduced Amanda to O Zoo Le Mio

Monday 29 December 2014

Arkham Horror

We finally busted out Arkham Horror. We didn’t really get started until after supper (a late supper at that!) and by the time we had gone through the rules (mostly) it was already well past the kids regular bed time. We played a few rounds just to see how it plays (so hopefully we’d REMEMBER some of the rules the next time we had a chance to sit down and play it) – though we didn’t finish I’m still counting it as a play!

Tuesday 30 December 2014

Pandemic

 

Amanda’s gift from my folks.

I had The Researcher, Keria had The Scientist, Amanda was the Quarantine Specialist, and Finnegan played the Contingency Planner.



Things started off looking not great with three blue cubes on both New York and San Fransico, and two on Washington. As it turned out it was pretty easy to deal with (us all starting in Atlanta and all) and by the third or fourth turn Blue was eradicated (Woo-Hoo!). We were one player turn away from curing red and a second player turn from eradicating it when I drew TWO yellow on cities where there was three starting a chain reaction of outbreaks which lost us the game (due to running out of yellow markers).

doh....

The kids took the loss pretty hard. Amanda and I thought it was a LOT of fun – fast playing – a real nail-biter!

The Boy finally hounded me enough so I broke out Roborally again.

This time it wasn’t such a cakewalk for me! We played with options this time and The Boy had a double laser – on the register that I actually landed on the first checkpoint he dealt me a ninth point of damage – as laser fire is resolved before checkpoints are tagged I had so start at the very beginning with my archive copy…

It was a SUPER close race in the end! I ended up one square away on the register The Boy tagged the final checkpoint

Some of Amanda’s friends were over in the evening and she roped them into playing another game of pandemic.

Once again we were super close to finding a cure and eradicating a second disease when everything when to crap with a couple of unfortunate draws of cards which say chain reaction outbreaks...

So close...

SOOOOOOOO close...

So close that Amanda was so determined to beat the game she tried to convince me and the kids to try a third game of it after they left.

Instead we ended up playing Ingenious again. Super high-scoring, super close game – but despite scoring 18 in all colours but one… I was still dead last!?

Wednesday 31 December 2014 - New Year's Eve

Star Trek Catan

We bought a copy of Star Trek Catan for my Dad for Xmas. The kids go over there often so we thought we’d buy it so there’d be a game they could play with my Dad from time to time.

I have to admit I had never played any of the Catan games – none of us had had ever played any of the Catan games (oh, except Kids of Catan - but that doesn’t really count). The game took us a lot longer than the 75 minutes it says it’s supposed to take on the box… it was closer to 3.5 hours!



The Girl - pretty excited about her victory. 

Thursday 1 January 2014

The Game fest raged on into the new year.

Small World

We kicked off the New year with a game of Small World. We have played a LOT of Small World since we picked it up last spring – what was new was the Spider’s Web expansion that I picked up on Boxing Day and the Tales and Legends deck that my Folks got for me. The Spider’s Web stuff was so-so, but the Tales and Legends Deck added an interesting element to the game. I don’t know that we’ll ALWAYS play with it… but I would definitely like to play with it more.

Friday 2 January 2014

The Hobbit Card Game

I didn’t get a picture of this one. Another game I picked up in the FFG sale that The Girl found in her stocking Xmas morning. Fun, quick, trick-taking card game. Reminded me a bit of Kaiser…

We played three games:

Game #1 - Keira played Smaug - Good Guys won.


Game #2 - I played Smaug - I rained down death and destruction across Middle Earth killing all in my path! MWA-HA-HA-Ha-Ha- ha-ha-haaaaaa...! (I won).


Game #3 - Amanda played Smaug - Good Guys won.

Saturday 3 January 2015

We had a busy day on the 3^rd… I don’t even remember what happened in the morning… In the afternoon Amanda and I did a belaying course at a local climbing gym (and the kids hung out at my folks) then we picked them up and headed home for a quick supper and a game before taking them back to my folks for the evening while we went out to The Interview… The game was…

Ingenious Challenges

Well… the card game part (there’s three different games in that tiny little box!?

Sunday 4 January 2015

Arkham Horror

Again…

This time we played a full game to the finish. 

I played Joe Diamond, Private Investigator

The Girl played Amanda Sharpe, The Student

Amanda played Mandy Thompson, The Researcher

The Boy played “Ashcan” Pete, The Drifter

It took us four hours – but we actually WON!? I think it was more blind, dumb luck that skill or mastery of the game. We did in the early part of the game – perhaps in the first six turns or so – manage to seal three gates. Foe many of the following turns when we drew Mythos cards we kept drawing THOSE same locations – so instead of a new gate opening up or another monster surge… nothing happened… We also had a lot of mythos cards that took monsters away… as we neared the end we found ourselves on a few turns wondering what to do – there were no monsters to chase down… and maybe one gate open – but we didn’t have clue tokens to seal it and there were none on the board.

It was long and pretty fun. I could see it really going badly if one WEREN’T so lucky with the cards. I could also see this being a LOT harder with fewer players. Unlike Pandemic where new bad cards are drawn EVERY Player turn, with Arkham Horror Mythos cards are drawn after everyone’s had a chance to do something. So if there are more players there are more opportunities to DO things before the next batch of badness arrives.

Of course I could also see games with a lot of people taking a LONG time to play… maybe if you had a lot of people that all knew and loved the game it could go a bit quicker and people wouldn’t get bored along the way.

I am definitely stoked to try it again – but it probably won’t be a “regular” simply because it potentially could take too long to play.

Kaiser

Because the trick taking element of The Hobbit Card Game reminded me of Kaiser – a game I played a LOT of back in the day… I decided to teach the kids how to play. WE didn’t get to play a full game, but we played a few hands together (with open hands) and then played four rounds with Amanda – so they could get a sense of the game.

Monday, 5 January 2015

The BIG DAY – The Boy’s Birthday – we called it FinnCon1 (hopefully to become an annual day of gaming and cake)

We started the day with opening some presents…

Among the presents was a suave new housecoat and a copy of Space Hulk (we did crack it open and have a look, but didn’t get to assembling the toys or playing the game… perhaps tomorrow…). We had also planned to head out to the Dragon’s Den - because he Nana got him a gift certificate – but we got up a little late and friends were coming after lunch and I hadn’t finished the cake(s) yet (and it was -41°C with the windchill!!!), so we decided to go on Wednesday after our violin lesson (as the Den is not far from our instructors studio).

Then, after lunch, friends came by to start our DAY OF GAMING!

Small World Underground (again)

This was pretty fun… There were some interesting new combinations (well they’re all new and interesting as we have only really played this once before…)

King of Tokyo

I think this is the first time we tried playing with this many people - we had to use Tokyo Bay! I tried to sit in Tokyo and just deal damage to everyone and win by eliminating them all, but stayed a little too long and ended up dying and getting kicked out of the game first (probably because I was playing the Kraken and not my traditional Cyber-Bunny…).

After our friends left I hurriedly finished of The Cake:

Did I mention earlier that The Boy has recently discovered Order of the Stick…? Yeah, he's pretty excited about it and requested that I make him a Vaarsuvius cake. (I know, I know... head's too small/body too big... Everyone that mattered got it and it was all eaten an hour later anyway...)  

Other friends came over after supper to have some cake and ice cream - and play more games!

Roborally (again)

We had a pretty big, six-player game of Roborally – with two completely new-to-the-game players. It went well enough, but our friends had to leave around 8pm bfore the game was finished.

We tried to play a bit longer and finish the game

But around the time we all finally got to the irst checkpoint it became evident that the kids were getting a bit tired and were having not-so-much fun so we decided to pack it in and call it a day.

We finished off the day reading a bit of Colour of Magic by Terry Pratchett – which we’d started reading together a couple of weeks ago… but them got busy doing other stuff with the holidaze…

WHEW!!!

So... what next…!? Though I have a few more board games lined up to play in the near future – I think it’s time I got back to some miniature gaming… My (gaming) priorities for the coming weeks (in roughly order of priority) are:

Make a Kraken and a Vauban-style fort/shore battery for Galleys and Galleons

PLAY some games of Galleys and Galleons

Get that second plastic faction done for Song of Shadows and Dust.

Get the kids working on THEIR Song of Shadows and Dust factions

Get making buildings for the Song of Shadows and Dust campaign

PLAY some games of Song of Shadows and Dust (and Song of Blades and Heroes)!

(Some of this may be held up by the more pressing concern of finishing the bookshelves in the kids rooms and the return to regularly scheduled activities and schooly work)