Tag Archives: board gaming

December Gaming

Lots more gaming over December, including many more flaming balls of lava with Fireball Island and the Curse of Vul-Kar.  With the local Scotts Valley gaming group, we finally got to grow some trees with a full four players in the gorgeous Photosynthesis and we successfully terraformed Mars again in, of course, Terraforming Mars.  With Clay, Kevin, Rachel and Dan, we had a battle of alliances in the classic Cosmic Encounter; Troy joined me and Darlene for New Years Eve and a couple plays of Clank! In! Spaaaaace!, a lot of pushing our luck too far with Diamant, as well as a relaxing run of Tokaido.  Darlene got me a copy of Alchemists for Christmas which she quickly became so obsessed with that we found ourselves playing multiple games until the early morning hours.  That and she’s also hooked now on deck building games like Clank! and Dominion.  We also enjoyed some more dice puzzle solving in Sagrada, building out our fiefdoms in Bunny Kingdom and uncovering lost Mayan ruins in Tikal.

Unfortunately, I only sometimes remember to snag some pictures while we’re engrossed in the games:

  

      

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Great Balls of Fire

Lots of fun first plays of games this month both at home and meeting up several times with the local gaming group at the Scotts Valley library.  Alchemists has you experimenting on yourself and your students to figure out the ingredients for magic potions and then publish for fame and fortune, Decrypto pits two teams of codebreakers against each other, Inis has several Celtic clans competing to elect a king across all the land, in Mechs vs. Minions you must continually program your mechwarriors to beat back the onslaught of minions and accomplish the co-op mission but lastly, via Kickstarter…

…it’s the silly, flaming marble madness of Fireball Island and the Curse of Vul-Kar:

 

Speaking of Mechs vs. Minions, check out the absolutely incredible components that come with this campaign-style co-op game:

We also got in some great repeat games of Great Western Trail (drive cattle to market), Whitehall (track down and catch Jack the Ripper), Flamme Rouge (bike racing), Bärenpark (design an animal/bear park), Azul (lay pattern-matching tiles), Sagrada (pattern matching with dice), and Arboretum (build out paths of different tree species).

      

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Vancouver and SHUX 2018

Darlene joined me for a trip to Vancouver, British Columbia, last week to enjoy three days of board gaming at Shut Up and Sit Down’s very own, second annual board gaming convention (SHUX ’18).  I only discovered Shut Up and Sit Down and their most excellent and entertaining board gaming content last year.  I’ve since been hooked on their written and video reviews as well as their podcast. They’re also responsible for me being driven to buy a trunk load of additional games over the past year.  (As if my game collection wasn’t large enough already.)

We got to try out a bunch of games I’ve been meaning to check out, meet some new people, get to see Quinns, Paul, Matt and Pip live and even see a little bit more of Vancouver – including tooling around on some electric bikes for a few hours. It was a great trip and great convention, though I wish we had used our time a little more wisely and squeezed in a few more games as well as been prepared for the early closing of the game-lending library.  Also, would’ve been great to participate in one of the day-long megagames (if the convention were longer) or in a more involved version of Two Rooms and A Boom.  We only got to try the basic version with just a couple of people with roles.  We did get to try and got hooked on several great ones: Bunny Kingdom, Mystery of the Temples, Bårenpark, Great Western Trail, Sagrada, and Azul.  Not so great: Crows, Koi and Kodama: The Tree Spirits.  Terrible: Cat Lady, Nefarious.

I also wish I had thought to take pictures of all of the games we tried (and the folks we played with), but click through for the full gallery:

      

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Another Pre-Movie Gaming Day

Roland, Clay, Mark, Steven, Troy and I gathered for another gaming day and movie night (Blade Runner 2049) this past Sunday:

  • We managed to escape the singularity after many hilariously haphazard gravitational maneuvers in Gravwell.
  • We cleverly dodged almost certain disaster on K2 by decisively turning away from the mountain entirely.
  • We successfully secured pirate booty aplenty in Libertalia despite the efforts of many mutineers among us.
  • Although many boats were violently smashed by whales, many swimmers torn apart by sharks, and several refugee-laden ships utterly destroyed by sea monsters, a handful of survivors made it to shore to tell the tale of Survive: Escape from Atlantis.

It was indeed a day of many adventures.  (And a good movie, too!)  Thanks, guys!

Click through for the full gallery:

    

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Tahoe Gaming Weekend

Darlene and I joined Roland, Charles, Mark, Jon and Steve last weekend in South Lake Tahoe for a couple of fun filled days of gaming – thanks again for hosting, Steve!  We had adventures in Welcome to the Dungeon, Bang! The Dice Game, Sidereal Confluence, Raptor, Crazy Karts, Viva Java, Category 5, Chameleon, Codenames, and Ladies and Gentlemen.  Click through for the gallery:

      

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New Years Eve Gaming Day

We got a fun crowd together for gaming on New Year’s Eve day with Roland, Troy, Rachel, Dan, Kevin, Vanessa and myself:

And we got in games of Terraforming Mars, Raptor, Deception, Viral, Splendor, Bang! – The Dice Game and King of Tokyo!

Click through for the full gallery:

    

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Pre-Movie Gaming Day

  

Clay, Roland, Vanessa and Kevin joined Darlene and me for some board gaming ahead of the full crowd we had for last Saturday’s BBQ/movie night.  (I should’ve taken a couple of pics of the full house.)  We got in a long game of Power Grid followed by trying a few rounds of the cute new Cheaty Mages.

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Gaming Day @ Charles’ Place

Finally got to experience a proper run-through of the team-based, submarine hunt “Captain Sonar”  as part of our full day of gaming at Charles’ place with Mark, Jon, Roland, RC, Steve and Stefan.  It was tense and it was a blast!

Roland’s follow-up:

  • Space Cadets: Dice Duel was total mayhem.  Charles, I let you down as captain!
  • “Oh, is that a Category 5?”  Yah, Stefan, go ahead and take that.  Category 5 is such a solid filler game.
  • Sushi Go Party was good, but not sure about how good it really is with 8 players.
  • Steampunk Rally… much mayhem.  Pretty sure I avoided DFL, but not by that much!  I had a great time despite Christopher feeling isolated.  :P
  • Captain Sonar was as good as advertised.  We got to see Charles snap as Captain.  Dunno about the other sub, but on ours Mark did a tremendous jobs as Radio Operator.  Jon and Stefan were a fantastic engineering/first mate duo.
  • SpaceTeam.  Yah…  Sure, we cheated a bit (picking up cards and showing them to ask for tools), but we did eventually win!  In celebration of our victory, I put together a video.  Truly, it was my pleasure…

“Pleasurizers! I need pleasurizers!”

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Gaming Day @ Charles’ Place

Pictures from our epic game of “Eclipse” (and later, “Chaos in the Old World”) at Charles’ place with Roland, Mark, Jon and Karl:

      

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Tahoe Skiing

Here’s a handful of pictures and a video montage from a couple of Tahoe ski trips in March with Darlene and the Outdoor Adventure Club.  Unfortunately, I didn’t catch everyone on camera on these trips.  One weekend was with Greg and Erin but we never caught up with Bruce and Jane on the slopes and the other was with Stéphane, Evan, Richard and Jennifer but you can’t tell that from the photos.  We also met up with Resi and Troy (and baby Aiden!) one day and foolishly I didn’t get a single shot of Aiden ripping up the slopes!  At least I did get a shot of our massive Carcassonne game where we played with four of the major expansions at once.

Click on through for the gallery and video:

  

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Skiing/Gaming Week in Tahoe

Here’s pictures and video from a week of skiing and tabletop gaming in North Lake Tahoe with Jon, Stan, Bill, Brin and Lewis. We went to Alpine Meadows, Sugarbowl, Northstar and Squaw Valley over the course of six days.

  

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A Couple of “Involved” Board Games

Just some pictures from two different days involving some rather involved board games.  In other words, *lots* of setup and a *long* time to complete!  The first one I recognize as being the “Lord of the Rings” board game, but I don’t remember what the second was — other than that Roland was very excited to finally get to try it….

 

 

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Ski Utah!

A fun week of skiing (and board/card gaming) with Jon and his college friends in Utah’s Wasatch Mountains at Alta, Snowbird and Solitude:

 

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David’s Birthday

Click through for a gallery of pictures from a little gaming party for David’s birthday at my place:

 

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A Game of Blow Hard

Anybody for another game of ping pong… table soccer… “blow hard”… whatever you wanna call it?

pingpong1 pingpong2 pingpong3

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Clay’s Birthday

Pictures from Clay’s birthday/gaming party at my place – with Patty, Keith, David, Jennifer, Syd, Jon, Jeff and Terry.





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