We had a decent group over for the post-Twelfth Night Game Day (Our Motto: “Eat Leftovers While You Play — Please!”). Bruce stayed over from the party, and Mary and Stan, and Jackie (with Kaylee), and Randy all came over, too. Katherine participated part of the time (the rest, keeping Kaylee entertained, bless ‘er).
It was a good opportunity to pull out some games received over the holidays. The playlist included:
- Password – Margie and Bruce totally demolished Katherine and me.
- Infunitum (NEW) – A game I got Margie at Christmas, it’s sort of like Scattergories but with a lot less rigor. Based on a selected category (“Star Wars characters,” “Female movie heroes,” “Places you live in other than a house”), everyone spends a minute writing as many answers that fit as they can. Scoring is for unique answers within the group — but the rules are a bit vague as to what constitutes “unique”. Probably best played after a beer or three, we had fun but tended to overanalyze. I won this one.
- Trans America (NEW) – A railroad building game, it’s got a lot of the plusses and aspects of such games while being pretty fast-playing. Luck (of the initial draw) plays a role, but figuring out when best to join up with someone else’s line (which can help you link to your cities … but also helps them link to theirs) is one of the key strategic decisions. Good game. I expect we’ll be playing it regularly. Mary won this one, vs. Bruce and me.
- Settlers of Catan – Jackie wangled the rest of the group into this, playing the basic rules. Stan won, as I recall.
- Unspeakable Words (NEWish) – We played this at Dave-a-palooza, too. It’s a fun game of building unique words out of your hand — but also having to gamble against the score you get on a D20 to avoid losing a “Sanity Point.” The Cthulhuesque trappings are only that; the game could be rebranded in any number of ways. Diverting and fairly quick to play, but nothing to go out of your way to buy. I barely won with a bit of my sanity left.
- Castle Panic (NEW) – A co-op game that is less varied in its contests than Shadows Over Camelot (the gold — or lead — standard for such things), but which really does require seriously cooperative play to find of monsters charging in from the forests around the castle walls. Katherine, Randy, Stan, Mary and I played two games of this, losing the first one badly, barely winning the second. I think we’ll be playing it again.
Good times. My only regret is that, after the Party Saturday and Game Day Sunday … tomorrow is (sigh) Monday.
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Fix:
“but which really does require seriously cooperative play to find of monsters”
to
“but which really does require seriously cooperative play to *fend* of monsters ”
Yeah, the Catan game was fun. I was greatly helped out by K being distracted by the Wii so that I was able to exploit more than half the board that Jackie, Randy and I were not already fighting over already.
It was a close one though, Jackie was at 8 points and Randy had 7.
Castle Panic was a fun one, so thank you to Mary for buying it for me, and that we won the second game solely by the skin of our teeth made it very satisfying.
In which case it would be “to fend off monsters.” 😛
Yeah, I’d barely call it a victory that the last troll essentially killed himself bringing down the next-to-last tower on his head.
Yeah….
Hit the \post\ button without fixing the \off\….but, you know, once you hit post it’s all kinda there and everything.
An edit button! My kingdom for an edit button!
There are some add-ons that allow editing of one’s own comments, but I’ve always been a bit gunshy about installing them, for a variety of reasons. I’ll put it back in the mental hopper, though.