Boardgaming
Dec. 8th, 2012 05:58 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rowynLast weekend, I continued my headlong plunge into RL gaming by playing at Fred's house with him and Corwyn on Saturday, and at Tyson's place on Sunday, with Tyson, Rebecca, Nick, and Brett. Then last night, I went back to Tabletop for MOAR GAMING, this time with Fred, Tim (who looked terribly familiar, although I'm not sure from what context -- maybe he'd played Mark in the Little Fears game?), Meg, and Robert.
Fred, Corwyn and I met in the early afternoon on Saturday, although not as early as I planned because I fail, repeatedly, at navigation. D: Fred has a daunting selection of games and he was all "I'll play whatever, you pick" and we were "DUDE we don't even recognize most of these". After too long dithering, I arbitrarily picked Urbanization because he'd just gotten it and so hadn't played it either.
Urbanization is a resource gathering game like Ruhrschifffarht*. Unlike Ruhrschifffarht, it was not painful to play, although we did mess up some of the rules in ways that I suspected made the game less annoying than it would be by the intended rules. The theme is that you buy up the limited amount of land available and develop it, trying to attract population by producing housing, goods, food, and attracting businesses. It was pretty fun as we played it; I am not sure about 'as intended'.
* probably spelled wrong because I'm not looking up how to spell it again.
After that, I bullied Fred into a game Eminent Domain because it was one of like two games he had that we all already knew how to play. Next we played Nefertiti, a bidding game where the theme was 'buy gifts for Nefertiti'; you got maximum points for gifts that were (a) rare and (b) few or no other players were giving copies of them. Also pretty fun.
Sunday, the group met in the evening and had dinner around 7PM, so gaming itself started fairly late. We played Defenders of Camelot, a co-op game where you try to finish various quests before Camelot is overrun by Picts/Saxons/evil/etc. I played King Arthur because Tyson recommended someone take him, and no one else was keen on him.
We lost pretty ignominiously, which is thematically appropriate if you think about it.
The game can have one of the players turn out to be a traitor, but none of us were. Given how badly we lost without a traitor, I am not sure how this game is winnable if there is one. o.O King Arthur can be a traitor too, which I thought was pretty funny.
We talked for a bit after this -- Rebecca and Nick had some funny stories about their dog, whom they'd brought -- and then I went home 'cause late and work tomorrow.
I am going back to Tyson's on Sunday but not Fred's, because Corwyn can't make it and I kind of get my fill of two-player games playing with![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
terrycloth. I am conceptually open to two gaming slots on weekends, but I am not sure about gaming on both Saturday and Sunday; it kind of fills up the whole weekend. Maybe I should offer to meet Fred for gaming during the day on Sunday, since Tyson's game is in the evening.
Also, with Tabletop on Thursday in the mix, three gaming slots a week may be excessive to needs.
Thurday evening started with Fred and I getting Indian food at the restaurant next to Tabletop. I learned that he's a programmer at a tiny local company that makes and supports a subscription-management system.
Gaming started off with another round of Urbanization. ("I played this game already! We're allowed to play games I already know?" "We'll be playing with the expansion cards and the right rules this time." "Oh, all right then.") As I feared, the correct rules made the game somewhat less fun. I'm also not sure we've got the rules exactly right; the inventions have symbols that look like they ought to mean something, but which as far as we can tell do not.
Meg and Robert showed up just as we were finishing Urbanization (Tim won, though it was a pretty close game overall) so we searched around for a five-player game ("We brought Arkham Horror!" "We don't have time for Arkham Horror." "Yeah, we were looking at the time and thinking 'why are we bringing this?'") and settled on Vegas Showdown, a bidding game where you construct a casino. Pretty fun game, even though I lost horribly. (Well, not *horribly* -- I came in last but not by a huge margin). I kinda wanted to play again to see if I could figure out what I'd done wrong. :D
Tim had to leave after Vegas Showdown. so Fred, Meg, Robert and I played Alien Frontiers next. The theme is space colonization, and it's more-or-less a resource-gathering game, although it had a lot more randomness because your spaceships were represented by dice, and die rolls determined what you could do. Also a fun game!
And now, no more boardgaming for me 'til Sunday. I have stuff I should be doing, like cleaning or laundry or writing, but mostly I am catching up on all the nothing that I haven't been doing lately. Because no matter how much time you spend doing nothing, there's always more nothing to do.
Fred, Corwyn and I met in the early afternoon on Saturday, although not as early as I planned because I fail, repeatedly, at navigation. D: Fred has a daunting selection of games and he was all "I'll play whatever, you pick" and we were "DUDE we don't even recognize most of these". After too long dithering, I arbitrarily picked Urbanization because he'd just gotten it and so hadn't played it either.
Urbanization is a resource gathering game like Ruhrschifffarht*. Unlike Ruhrschifffarht, it was not painful to play, although we did mess up some of the rules in ways that I suspected made the game less annoying than it would be by the intended rules. The theme is that you buy up the limited amount of land available and develop it, trying to attract population by producing housing, goods, food, and attracting businesses. It was pretty fun as we played it; I am not sure about 'as intended'.
* probably spelled wrong because I'm not looking up how to spell it again.
After that, I bullied Fred into a game Eminent Domain because it was one of like two games he had that we all already knew how to play. Next we played Nefertiti, a bidding game where the theme was 'buy gifts for Nefertiti'; you got maximum points for gifts that were (a) rare and (b) few or no other players were giving copies of them. Also pretty fun.
Sunday, the group met in the evening and had dinner around 7PM, so gaming itself started fairly late. We played Defenders of Camelot, a co-op game where you try to finish various quests before Camelot is overrun by Picts/Saxons/evil/etc. I played King Arthur because Tyson recommended someone take him, and no one else was keen on him.
We lost pretty ignominiously, which is thematically appropriate if you think about it.
The game can have one of the players turn out to be a traitor, but none of us were. Given how badly we lost without a traitor, I am not sure how this game is winnable if there is one. o.O King Arthur can be a traitor too, which I thought was pretty funny.
We talked for a bit after this -- Rebecca and Nick had some funny stories about their dog, whom they'd brought -- and then I went home 'cause late and work tomorrow.
I am going back to Tyson's on Sunday but not Fred's, because Corwyn can't make it and I kind of get my fill of two-player games playing with
terrycloth. I am conceptually open to two gaming slots on weekends, but I am not sure about gaming on both Saturday and Sunday; it kind of fills up the whole weekend. Maybe I should offer to meet Fred for gaming during the day on Sunday, since Tyson's game is in the evening.Also, with Tabletop on Thursday in the mix, three gaming slots a week may be excessive to needs.
Thurday evening started with Fred and I getting Indian food at the restaurant next to Tabletop. I learned that he's a programmer at a tiny local company that makes and supports a subscription-management system.
Gaming started off with another round of Urbanization. ("I played this game already! We're allowed to play games I already know?" "We'll be playing with the expansion cards and the right rules this time." "Oh, all right then.") As I feared, the correct rules made the game somewhat less fun. I'm also not sure we've got the rules exactly right; the inventions have symbols that look like they ought to mean something, but which as far as we can tell do not.
Meg and Robert showed up just as we were finishing Urbanization (Tim won, though it was a pretty close game overall) so we searched around for a five-player game ("We brought Arkham Horror!" "We don't have time for Arkham Horror." "Yeah, we were looking at the time and thinking 'why are we bringing this?'") and settled on Vegas Showdown, a bidding game where you construct a casino. Pretty fun game, even though I lost horribly. (Well, not *horribly* -- I came in last but not by a huge margin). I kinda wanted to play again to see if I could figure out what I'd done wrong. :D
Tim had to leave after Vegas Showdown. so Fred, Meg, Robert and I played Alien Frontiers next. The theme is space colonization, and it's more-or-less a resource-gathering game, although it had a lot more randomness because your spaceships were represented by dice, and die rolls determined what you could do. Also a fun game!
And now, no more boardgaming for me 'til Sunday. I have stuff I should be doing, like cleaning or laundry or writing, but mostly I am catching up on all the nothing that I haven't been doing lately. Because no matter how much time you spend doing nothing, there's always more nothing to do.
