First of all, I've decided to stop trying to update this blog in order. I'll try to go back and fill in the 3 months of stuff I've logged but not written up, but in the meantime, I'm going to try to at least keep up with the stuff I'm playing now.
Every Thursday night, my new favorite place in the world, Just Awesome Games hosts "adult game night". No, that doesn't mean porn. It means you can bring beer, wine, et al. This week was actually pretty calm - I think people might have been out watching basketball. Anyway, I arrived with a 6-pack of something called Stone IPA, which seemed appropriate because of the demony thing on the bottle.
When I arrived there were a couple of games already going on, so I dithered about the store waiting for more people to show up. An older guy (well, older than me anyway) named John showed up, evidently looking for some friends who were supposed to meet him there. I decided to show him Lost Cities since it is quick and easy to teach.
I asked him if he wanted a beer and he gave me the recovering-alcoholic standard answer of "yes I *want* a beer, but that's not a good idea." Yikes. Well, seemed like it would be a real dick move to drink one in front of him, so I decided to hang on to them for later. The game went all right; by the end John seemed to be catching on to how to play. I didn't bother noting the score since he was just learning.
Chris 27, Debbie 16, John 2 11, John 1 -1
I was just offering to play another round of Lost Cities with John when his friends John (another one) and Debbie showed up. I went over to Just Awesome's shelves full of open demo copies of games (did I mention that I love this place?) and pulled out Roll Through the Ages, a game that combines Yahtzee and Civilization with more success than one might think.
Before the game I used Just Awesome's copy of Start Player (a deck of cards that have a bunch of different starting player criteria) and pulled one out that said that the youngest player went first. Amazingly enough it turned out that Debbie and I were born less than 24-hours apart. Kind of a trip. At some point Debbie mentioned that she didn't drink either (though not with as much pathos as John), so I decided that pulling out a beer would still be filed under "move, dick". My liver is bored.
Ah yes, the game. So, like Yahtzee, Roll Through the Ages involves rolling dice, keeping some, and then rerolling others. And like Civilization, you're trying to feed your people, build cities and monuments, and avoid drought, famine, and pestilence. John (the first one) had a tendency to just take his first roll instead of trying to figure out what was better to keep. He ended up staving his cities quite a lot and make some kind-of-funny, kind-of-creepy Stalin references. To the game's moral credit, the "starve your people" strategy turned out to be a loser.
Yeah, yeah, "junior". John, John, and Debbie took off and I wandered across the store to find Pictionary for the unartistic aka Squint, Jr. I asked why we were playing Junior and Erik (one of the owners) said that the regular version had just proved a lot less popular. Like Pictionary (or any number of charades-derived party games, really) players have to try to get other players to guess what word they are trying to portray, but in this case, their medium is clear plastic cards with simple shapes (lines, arcs, circles) on them, which you have to assemble into a mouse, a teapot, or a Wankel-rotary engine. I liked the idea, and the pieces were cool. The words were probably too easy, so next time I'd try to find a game with harder clues (It's dignity Luanne!"). Oh winner: someone probably won. Whatever, I got beer. And got to share some too.
Shane 100, Chris 97, Aiko 94, Aiko's Husband 76
Having finished Squint, a few people left and the four of us who remained pulled out Small World. I was joined by Shane (the other owner), and a married couple - Aiko, and, umm, Aiko's husband. Aiko and her husband were new to the game, so I taught them the rules, and off we went. I almost won with a steady pace that saw me score between 8 and 14 every turn, but Shane rode a 21 point turn with the Merchant Amazons to victory.
Lost Cities
I asked him if he wanted a beer and he gave me the recovering-alcoholic standard answer of "yes I *want* a beer, but that's not a good idea." Yikes. Well, seemed like it would be a real dick move to drink one in front of him, so I decided to hang on to them for later. The game went all right; by the end John seemed to be catching on to how to play. I didn't bother noting the score since he was just learning.
Roll Through the Ages
I was just offering to play another round of Lost Cities with John when his friends John (another one) and Debbie showed up. I went over to Just Awesome's shelves full of open demo copies of games (did I mention that I love this place?) and pulled out Roll Through the Ages, a game that combines Yahtzee and Civilization with more success than one might think.
Before the game I used Just Awesome's copy of Start Player (a deck of cards that have a bunch of different starting player criteria) and pulled one out that said that the youngest player went first. Amazingly enough it turned out that Debbie and I were born less than 24-hours apart. Kind of a trip. At some point Debbie mentioned that she didn't drink either (though not with as much pathos as John), so I decided that pulling out a beer would still be filed under "move, dick". My liver is bored.
Ah yes, the game. So, like Yahtzee, Roll Through the Ages involves rolling dice, keeping some, and then rerolling others. And like Civilization, you're trying to feed your people, build cities and monuments, and avoid drought, famine, and pestilence. John (the first one) had a tendency to just take his first roll instead of trying to figure out what was better to keep. He ended up staving his cities quite a lot and make some kind-of-funny, kind-of-creepy Stalin references. To the game's moral credit, the "starve your people" strategy turned out to be a loser.
Squint, Junior
Small World
Having finished Squint, a few people left and the four of us who remained pulled out Small World. I was joined by Shane (the other owner), and a married couple - Aiko, and, umm, Aiko's husband. Aiko and her husband were new to the game, so I taught them the rules, and off we went. I almost won with a steady pace that saw me score between 8 and 14 every turn, but Shane rode a 21 point turn with the Merchant Amazons to victory.
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