Tag: Kyle

With new games for my birthday we had to get to playing!

Made Mom & Dad play Turing Machine, Camel Up, and The Guild of Merchant Explorers while they were here. I lost Turing Machine, won one and lost one of Camel Up, and won The Guild of Merchant Explorers.

Turing Machine is an interesting little game. I received it for my birthday. A set of punch cards is used to define the behavior of each scenario. The coolness of that implementation isn't really relevant to the actual gameplay mechanics, but it's a triumph of design. The gameplay is like an advanced form of Mastermind/Wordle/Clue. You propose a hypothesis of the solution and then obtain information about how much of your hypothesis is correct which you then integrate with your existing information using deductive reasoning to arrive at the correct solution first.

There's no story or narrative behind the game, the theme is "Punch card 'computer'!". A straightforward mechanic which also means it plays quickly. For players familiar with the rules the 20-minute play time is accurate--and the rules are not complicated.

Camel Up I've covered previously. Still silly fun running camels around the track.

I'm still enjoying The Guild of Merchant Explorers, which is good as I received a copy for my birthday. I've been working on designing a 3D-printable organizer. I think it's done, but I'm letting the design sit a bit before I print it so I can look at it again with fresh eyes. Also it's 100+F here all week and I'm avoiding adding even more heat to the house that needs to be removed.

Played again with Jess and I won then too.

Went to a board game meet up and played another round of Faraway (previously discussed), then Call to Adventure, and Turing Machine. I won Faraway and lost both Call to Adventure and Turing Machine.

Call to Adventure is a simple and fairly quick story-telling game. I like to call it "short-story generator." The idea is that you're developing the narrative of an epic-story character. On your turn you attempt to advance your story in some particular way and to do so you consult the soothsayers and cast the bones in the air and read the result to determine whether you are successful in that endeavor.

The rulebook has one major omission that would ease learning the game, though, which is a simple diagram of card anatomy. Instead you have to read a bunch of text and then attempt to match what it's talking about to the cards you play with. A picture would resolve all the common questions that come up when learning it. I guess I should just make one and stash it in the box.

The family finally advanced our Mechs vs Minions campaign by successfully completing mission 4 with a flawless victory. Our mechs arrived at the target location without a single minion alive to tell the tale. But boy was it an emotional rollercoaster for some members of the family--I guess that made the victory even sweeter.

And to finish the month Jess and I continued our Kinfire Chronicles: Night's Fall story by successfully completing Quest 7, "Red Sky at Night". We escaped the fire, defeated a foe who we thought was a friend, and gained access to the next part of the city. I'm still mostly happy with the organizer I designed. I'm starting to think that were I to do it over I'd just have the cards sit vertically instead of angled. Room is a bit tight. Or maybe go through the effort of making adjustable dividers.

I managed to get a fair bit of gaming in this month and did fairly well over all.

Started out by going and playing games at a friend's house on May 4th.

First played a quick game of Faraway (which I lost). It has an interesting mechanic. You play cards that earn points based on the other cards you play, but you score them in reverse order of play. That is, you start by playing a card which will only score points if you play other cards to fulfill the conditions. You're acquiring a new card each round, so rather than building on what you've already done, your kind of playing backwards. You've done something and now you need to acquire and play the cards that make it useful.

After Faraway, we played a long game of Star Wars: Outer Rim in honor of "May the 4th be with you." Choose a character and then explore the Outer Rim on your way to fame and fortune. Take on jobs as a bounty hunter, smuggler, or mercenary. Upgrade your ship. Bring on new crew. I enjoyed the game--probably better the second time around once you have some idea of how things play out and how to run your character. I lost.

After finally wrapping up Outer Rim, we played a much-shorter game of The Guild of Merchant Explorers. Though I was the only one to have played previously, I did not win this game either.

As a family we finally got around to playing the second half of the Escape the Crate Sled Race mission (we played the first half back in March). We were thoroughly victorious and brought the diphtheria antitoxin to Nome.

Jess and I played Wyrmspan on Mother's Day. I won that one. And we played another time with friends and I won that one too.

At a board-game meetup I played Concordia. It's a game about establishing trade routes in ancient Rome. Decent theme, competitive but not particularly adversarial. I lost.

Jess and I continued our adventure in Kinfire Chronicles: Night's Fall by completing Quest 5. It came down to the skin of our teeth, but we survived. We got to play using the new organizer I designed and printed, but we'll get to that in another post.

Jess and I played a game of Everdell (the base game) with friends. I won that. Which I was surprised by because I started out with a pretty lousy hand and went in to autumn with a single green production card in my town.

And, finally, I played a game of The Wolves at a board-game meetup which I also managed to win. It's effectively a wolf-life simulator game. You have a wolf pack and need to expand your pack, hunt food, and defend your territory from other packs to earn the most points.