Tag: games

Despite my hopes from last month, I did not get much game playing in this month either.

Played a session of The Guild of Merchant Explorers at a board game meetup. I won.

Played a scenario of Mechs vs. Minions and introduced the game to friends. We ran the gauntlet and succeeded in reaching the other side while subduing the minions along the way. Victory.

After playing Creature Comforts at a board game meetup last month I thought Jess would enjoy it. So she found it under the Christmas tree. We played with friends and I won after a very productive final turn bringing in 29 points in just the one turn.

Tallying up the blog posts gives us 63 games played in 2024.

I got even less game playing in this month than last month. Hopefully I’ll be able to turn that around next month.

Jess and I completed Quest 10 in Kinfire Chronicles: Night’s Fall. We didn’t manage to destroy the giant moth monster, but we escaped without dying and reached our objective. So kind of a draw.

At the board-game meetup I played Creature Comforts. A very cozy game about collecting little luxuries and comforts to prepare your woodland-creature home for the long winter. Make the coziest home to win. I lost.

Had a friend over and played Wyrmspan with Jess. Jess won handily.

Didn’t get much game playing done this month. Too much going on with birthday preparations and Halloween I guess.

I made it out to one game night and one afternoon of games at a friend’s house.

At the game night I first played Flamecraft. I’d played once before when the owner first got it and brought it to a game night–which was probably at least a year ago. It’s got really cute artwork about dragons and the town they inhabit. I had thought the girls would like it, but the gameplay can be a little challenging and I deferred adding it to my collection.

On each turn you choose from a variety of actions to collect resources or help grow the town. It’s competitive, but not adversarial. There are several actions you engage in which require you to give other players resources or points and it’s not a zero-sum game.

I had a difficult start, but had two turns where I was able to really capitalize on fortuitous situations on the board and pulled out a sound win at the end.

After Flamecraft I played Zoo Vadis. I knew I wasn’t going to care for this game from the beginning as it’s a wheeling/dealing negotiation/backstabbing game which just isn’t my jam. But I go to play and this is what people wanted to play. Unsurprisingly I lost.

You play as a group of animals in a zoo and your goal is to negotiate with the other animals to get your group promoted up to the premiere animal enclosure.

At the afternoon of games we started by playing Apiary. I played part of a game previously to take over for someone leaving, so this time I got to play through from the beginning. It’s a bit of an odd game–sentient space bees building out spaceships–but, it has solid mechanics (as can usually be expected from Stonemaier Games).

I made a run for points via the “Queen’s Favor” track and chalked up another sound win for the month.

After Apiary I convinced a group to play The Stifling Dark. I got this from a crowdfunding campaign in December 2023, but hadn’t gotten around to playing it yet. It being October it seemed like a good time to give it a go.

I originally backed it because it’s a bit of a table-top incarnation of an online game I’d been playing with friends for a while called Phasmophobia. Team of investigators need to go into a haunted location and avoid being killed by the ghost while completing some objective. So same concept, but here someone has to play the ghost.

Having not played before (which I warned everyone about) it was a learning experience and the game ran quite long. I played as the ghost stalking and attacking the investigators who were trying to escape the abandoned sawmill. The team managed to get the gate powered up and one of them made it out alive, but I got the rest–which counts as a win for me.

I think the game could easily be shortened by skipping the “Act 1” evidence-collection phase and instead dropping the characters in the map and randomly drawing an objective for them (with some balance adjustments to the ghost as well). That would probably get a game down to under 1.5 hours. Our game, with learning, making mistakes, looking things up, and trying to make sense of it all, ran for ~4 hours–which was a bit much.

Didn’t get a ton of gaming in this month. Board game group moved to a new location because the restaurant we were at was grumpy with our existence. I think the group is quite well mannered and we’ve never taken up so much space that they couldn’t seat other guests, but they felt we weren’t spending enough money so asked us to find somewhere else to go. Which, fine, that’s their prerogative, but groups like this meet on Tuesdays because restaurants tend to be dead so our presence is just extra money with little work for them. The last night we met there they had a total of 4 other tables the whole evening.

Anyway. We’re trying a new location, however the new location is a brewery and limited to 21 and over so we’ll likely keep looking for locations since there were often people in attendance that now can’t attend.

Played the first scenario of Peacemakers: Horrors of War again with 2 players at the meetup. We were successful in ending the conflict.

At the next meetup we played Heat with a full group of six. I’m still really enjoying the game. I did not win this time. I believe I came in 4th due to poorly handling the final 2 turns.

Celebrating Jess’ birthday we played Everdell with a friend (without any expansions to keep it a little more simple). Jess won handily.

And the following weekend, to further celebrate Jess’ birthday with other friends, we played Harry Potter: Hogwarts Battle. We played Year 4, without any expansions, and were victorious.

Did a fair bit of game playing in August.

Played Heat a couple of times. One loss, one win. I’m enjoying this game much more than I expected to. It’s pretty straightforward to play and there’s no adversarial interactions, but the competitiveness pushes me to play more aggressively than I normally do in games.

I got tagged in to Apiary take over for someone two-thirds through a game at the board-game group. I did not win. It was not what I was expecting from the few times I’ve seen it go by on the Internet. It’s not about being a beekeeper. It is about a far-flung future where bees have evolved sentience and you need to manage a bee spaceship to out-compete the other bee species. I’d play again to at least get the full experience.

Jess and I played Quest 19 of Kinfire Chronicles: Night’s Fall and got drubbed by a dragon. We limped back to town to lick our wounds.

Later we played Quest 9 which went far more successfully. We caught and defeated an illicit arms dealer as the mystery of his customer network deepens.

Played a game of The Guild of Merchant Explorers at a board-game group. I lost.

Got two of my crowdfunding games this month. The first to arrive was Defenders of the Wild. Which in my head is “Everdell goes to war.” You play cooperatively as a confederacy of woodland creatures defending their homes from marauding machines. Played at the board game group with experiences gamers–we lost. And what’s more is none of us had a clear idea what a winning strategy looks like. We were really close to winning at one point though. Need to give it a few more goes to see if I can “figure it out.”

The other crowdfunding game that was delivered in August was Peacemakers: Horrors of War. This one, in my head, is “Everdell tries to stop a war.” You play cooperatively as a team of woodland creatures trying to stop battling tribes from destroying each other. It’s a very unusual game. Your ability to influence things is subtle. You’re looking for opportunities to nudge events just a little in one direction or another in order to create conditions for the warring factions to negotiate a peace.

I played the first scenario two handed (two players, but only me playing) and was able to eek out a victory and get the ocelots and macaws to stop fighting.

The family continued our time-traveling adventure in Escape the Crate: Escape from Sherwood Forest. We successfully completed both chapters and rescued Robin Hood and Little John from the sheriff’s jail.

Before Peacemakers: Horrors of War the publisher released another game Lands of Galzyr which takes place in the same universe. This is a purely story-telling game however. You take on the role of one of 4 woodland creatures making your way through the world. You have a personal quest you’re embarking on but can engage in any number of side quests and narrative vignettes along the way. It’s not a game you win or lose–it’s a game you experience for the joy of the journey.

We played through one session as a family, but with 4 players I think it moves a bit too slowly. I think it would be significantly more enjoyable for everyone to play with no more than 3–and preferably just 2–players.

And finally, on the last day of the month, we played Ex Libris with friends. Jess won again, as usual.