Tag: board gaming

Gaming In Person Again

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With everyone fully vaccinated, starting in mid-June we were able to get together for in-person board gaming again – and so much more fun than the entirely virtual meetups during the past year.

Some of the titles we’ve been playing recently: The Crew, Now Boarding, Near and Far, Burgle Bros., Sagrada, Azul, Nidavellir, Viticulture and Viticulture: Tuscany, Mechs vs. Minions, Covert, Cartographers, Acquire, Cloudage, Captain Sonar, Railroad Ink, Pret-a-Porter, Bang!, Smartphone Inc., Crazy Karts, Kanban EV, Sidereal Confluence, Between Two Castles, Vindication and Brass: Birmingham.

Update: We got together again on the last day of the month for Shikoku, Steampunk Rally, Cosmic Encounter, Feierabend, Betrayal at House on the Hill, Master Word and Villagers.

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Gaming Continues

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Despite the upheaval that is 2020, the gaming continues with Near and Far, Elfenland/Elfenroads, Ecos: The First Continent, Cryptid, Galaxy Trucker, Streetcar, Memoir’44, Covert, Now Boarding, Great Western Trail, and a few Clank! expansions: Sunken Treasures, Temple of the Ape Lords, and The Mummy’s Curse.  Then there’s our new favorite trick-taking game, The Crew: The Quest for Planet Nine.

We also played a number of titles from the Exit: The Game series, but I don’t recommend them – they’re often a rather mixed bag and sometimes annoying in their puzzle designs.

  

Painted Tzolk’in Gears

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After painting my Middle Earth Quest miniatures, I turned to my Tzolk’in: The Mayan Calendar gears. People have done all sorts of very cool, detailed painting with these, but I was just intending to give them a simple wash to make them look a bit like weathered, stone Mayan calendar dials (like these).

Unfortunately, two coats of the wash spoiled the effect so I just added a little bronzing over the stain and called it a day.  (I got the 3d-printed center discs to replace the original stickers from here.) I was most worried about replicating the tiny food day icons/symbols with a painting brush but those turned out great!

 

Painting Middle Earth

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I snagged an old copy of Middle Earth Quest sometime last year and knew I’d want to eventually paint the plain, dark gray plastic miniatures to bring them to life – before actually playing the game of course!  Well, I finally got around to painting them over the past week or two.  This is my first time painting miniatures but with tips across the web on everything from priming and base-coating to layering, washing and dry brushing, they came out pretty well.

Okay, so now we can have some adventures in Middle Earth.

Yeah, these things are pretty small.

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Next up, painting the Mayan calendar gears from Tzolk’in: The Mayan Calendar.

Winter Gaming

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Well, the global pandemic has certainly put a stop to our frequent gaming meetups, and I don’t mean Pandemic Legacy: Season Two – although Darlene and I have continued to play through the campaign while the real world pandemic develops outside.  (And, so far, in the real world, Darlene hasn’t been called in to help at Stanford Hospital yet.)

Since hosting a gaming day for New Year’s Day and before the directive to “shelter in place” was declared in mid-March, I got in a couple of games of Clank! Legacy: Acquisitions Incorporated and my first adventure in Gloomhaven with Nacho, Luno and Lynette.  I picked up and introduced folks to managing the Taverns of Tiefenthal and manipulating empires in A War of Whispers.  I also got copies of both the original VivaJava: The Coffee Game (very popular with everyone) and the simpler dice version.  I got to try the intriguing but weird Tesla vs. Edison: War of Currents and finally try Race for the Galaxy, which really is just “Terra Mystica in Space”. Other misc games with my local gaming group were of Saboteur,  Diamant, Power Grid (with the newer power plant cards), Space Base (still not into it) and likely others I’m forgetting and didn’t take pictures of.  Looks like we’ll be getting together virtually for awhile, with online tabletop game simulations and video chat.

Switching to virtual play and videoconferencing during the pandemic

I also finally got my newer rendition of Merchant of Venus to the table with Darlene – I used to play the original version a lot with Clay, Patty, Dave and Kathie back in the 90’s.  This second edition includes “classic” versions of the board, rules and components to play essentially the original game but also an updated version with some new mechanics and changes to gameplay that I really like.  Oh and Darlene and I tried the “Legendary Asia” map for Ticket to Ride for the first time.

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Colorado Ski Week

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This year, Jon, Bill, Kat, Jim, Stan and I hit up Beaver Creek and Vail in Colorado for our annual week of skiing and board gaming. We started off the week with the remnants of a heavy snow storm (as in heavy, wet snow) for a rough first day full of new and old moguls.  It was also pretty cold with highs in the teens.   As the following day promised to be much colder, we all sheltered indoors for a day of gaming including Sushi Go Party, Chinatown, Bang!, King of New York, Instinct, Cheaty Mages, For Sale, and the card game version of Shadows over Camelot.  The following days turned warmer and even sunny and blue skies at times so we were happy to venture out and explore the slopes again.

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New Years Day Gaming

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We gathered fifteen gamers for a full day of gaming this New Years Day!

I joined Greg and Erin and GregToo! as we drank and caroused until just Erin was left standing at the Red Dragon Inn, and then Dan and Luno joined with us to just barely vanquish evil in a desperate game of Shadows Over Camelot.  Troy, Roland and Nacho fought over the solar system in The Expanse; Darlene, Lynette, Jacobi, Molly and John worked to defeat the monsters in Horrified and then later collected birds and bird eggs in Wingspan.  Nacho, Troy and Roland then competed to build up their cities in Machi Koro.  Nacho, John, and Dan joined me for more endeavors in the industrial eras of Brass: Birmingham while Darlene, Greg and Luno explored the worlds of Above and Below and Roland, Jacobi, Molly and Lynette weaved histories of civilizations in Tapestry.  After dark Roland, Greg, Luno, Lynette and Elizabeth gathered gems in Century: Golem Edition and then we all finished off the night in a six-way, cobblestone-filled bike race of Flamme Rouge.

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