I may have completed only one book, but I did get some game playing in during the month.
Played a game of Everdell at a meetup. I lost.
A friend is restarting a pre-COVID tradition of weekly dinner & game nights on Fridays. We played The Crew: Mission Deep Sea at the first event. It’s a cooperative, trick-taking game of restricted communication. Not my personal favorite of game mechanics, but it was still a good time. We played several missions with a mix of defeats and victories (they get harder as you succeed).
I finally made the effort to corral a group to play some of the many campaign games I’ve purchased over the years. By “campaign game” I mean any game with continuing state from session to session, but focusing on off-the-shelf experiences which don’t require a game master (so not something like Dungeons and Dragons).
I got a group of 4 of us willing to make a reasonable effort to meet approximately every other week. We’ve met twice now and the first rule is to always schedule the next session before we start playing. I figure that gives us the highest likelihood that we actually keep it running.
The group selected Kinfire Chronicles: Night’s Fall as our first game and we’ve played through 3 quests so far. Victorious in all 3–though by the absolute barest of margins in the third. The monster we were fighting died just as it was about to land the killing blow on our revenant.
At another meetup I played Critter Kitchen. It’s a lighthearted game of gathering ingredients to prepare dishes for a set of food critics. It can be rather frustrating as ingredient gathering depends heavily on what the other players try to collect. So it can commonly happen that you end up with very little while other players collect copious bounties. But it was decent overall. Has enough going on that it would take a few plays to get the full hang of it and has a lot of variability built in to which shops/critics are in each play through. I lost.
The couple who host the regular meetup occasionally hosts all-day events at their home. I was able to stop in for a few hours in the afternoon after the Mathcounts tournament. Lots of turn out this time around. I jumped in to a group that included a 6 year old so we played a couple of simple games. First was Moose Quest. You need to lead your herd of moose on their annual migration. Grow your herd, limit your casualties, cross lands to earn points. To me, the game would have been stronger with a more serious take on the theme. But it’s designed to be more whimsical and goofy. Probably a better design for a target audience of <10. I lost.
Next up we played Taco vs Burrito. This game lands in the same vein as “Exploding Kittens” in that it’s extremely simple, short, with little strategy. Draw a card, play a card, antagonize the other players. I lost.
Next the groups rearranged and I moved onto a more serious game, rather misleadingly so given the art and theme. Fort is a game of improving your play fort to be the best while recruiting kids from the other players to help you. It has a lot more going on that it seems like there should be. We decided that was intentional to play on the idea of kids making up new rules as they go about whatever they’re doing when playing “fort.” I won.