Only One More

Liz's family got together for a nice dinner. I got there early before people started showing up. Becky and Carl showed first and Becky was ready to play. She and I played Sushi Go!. She found it fun and cute and she killed me.
Carl joined in to play Ticket to Ride. We played the US version with the 1910 expansion. It was very tense for all of us. I was almost screwed, but just had enough trains to fix some of the damage Carl caused me. I blew them out of the water.
Ida was antsy to play Pairs and we got 2 or three plays of that in before we had to set up for dinner.
After the magnificent dinner, Becky, Carl and the kids had things to do. The rest of us played Bohnanza. It ended up being a tie between me and Sarah. She had one more card than me in her hand so she broke the tie. Very close.
The parents took a break and started to watch TV while we decided to play...

Kingsburg 2-5 players
A coworker of mine brought this into work a number of years ago. I got to play it a few times, but we never finished a whole game. I liked the way it played and how colorful it was. Once I got into building a collection, I knew this had to be added eventually.

In the game, you are building a kingdom. Everyone has their own set of colored dice. Everyone rolls and the player order proceeds from lowest to highest sum. Each player goes around placing their dice on advisers that they want the favor of. Favors include resources, defense, points, or knowledge. At the end of each season (round), you can use your resources to create a building on your building tree (is it a tree if all building sets follow a linear progression). The buildings give you bonuses in points, defense, dice, and/or resources. Play repeats like this until winter when the monster arrives. You can spend resources for extra defense, but most risk it. If you have enough defense to survive the attack, you gain a prize. If you don't, you suffer a penalty. After 5 years, with each year bringing a stronger monster during winter, the person with the most victory points wins.

I also have the expansion which contains 4 or 5 different modules. We never play with all of them, but usually 1 or 2. I got irritated at the insert and the fact that the cover of the box didn't completely close with the expansion, so I made my own. This insert is probably my absolute favorite. I put a lot of time and effort into it. It's beautiful.

We played with the destiny deck module. It changes a small rule every year. Not a huge change, but it keeps things fresh. We all started on what seemed like similar building tracks. Throughout the game Darrin and I seemed to have horrible rolls, but he was able to make better of the situation. Near the end, I assumed I was going to be Bettlebum with Liz soaring ahead of all of us. The last monster altered that a bit. Only Darrin and I were strong enough to defend. Liz and Sarah took large point penalties. Sarah dropped enough to take her to last. Liz still won, but Darrin wasn't far behind. We all had a great time. You can't go wrong with this game.

Tally: 60/152  Bonus: 14/50

Just Like a Trip to Reno

Liz and I went berry picking on Sauvie Island. We also stopped by St. John's and got a pretzel and some bratwurst. Darrin shot us a message for some game playing so we headed home, collected ourselves, and drove out to pick him up and play.

Tokaido 2-5 players

This is a very gorgeous game. You are all travelers taking the East Sea Road (Tokaido) through old Japan. On the trip, you can have encounters, visit temples, get souvenirs, or just take in the sites. Along the way you'll need to lend a hand in farm work to earn more money for the trip and rest at inns to get some much needed food. Once everyone reaches the last in, the winner is the player who had the richest journey. The main mechanic is that a traveler can go as far down the road as they want (without passing an inn), but doesn't get to go again until they are last in line. You might think to just go to every space, but there are limited spots on every location and sometimes you really need to get to certain places. It's a fantastically simple game with great artwork all over it.

I got the expansion as soon as I saw it in a game shop. Thank you Off The Charts Games. After I picked it up I felt like I needed to do the insert justice and pimp it out. I got metal coins and masu boxes and went crazy with white foamcore. I posted it on BBG and the designer of the game, Antoine Bauza, tweeted that it looked neat. I found that pretty cool.

We used the expansion for this play. Darrin's and my character started with plenty of coin and Liz's with a pittance. We all made the best of our trips occasionally annoying the other by taking a spot another player really wanted. Darrin made good use of the expansion (with the expansion you have a choice between two things at every location). I did my best to make every coin I had count. Liz was able to see a number of vistas and have a load of encounters. I had the most fruitful trip with Liz nipping at my tail. Darrin was happy to have passed 50 points.

Casino Yahtzee 2-4 players

While listening to a Dice Tower Podcast, I heard that of all the Yahtzees their favorite was Casino Yahtzee. I'm not a fan of Yahtzee. That's all Liz's bag. Showdown Yahtzee changed my mind towards Yahtzee variants though. I was willing to give this one a try if it came along, especially since I knew Liz would go nuts for it. I got it off eBay while I was on a big auction kick. This was also around the time I was looking for more games that Liz's mom would enjoy. The game is the least Yahtzee like game of all the Yahtzee games. There are five dice, but you might only choose to roll two of them... or one of them 5 times. It's your choice. What every you roll gets covered on your board. If you can cover a row before another player, you score the sum of the row. It's interesting, but I like Showdown better. Everyone else loves it. They really get a thrill from the sliding clean-up boards.

I really knew how to roll the dice. There was nary a turn I didn't score points. Darrin didn't just give the game to me for free though. He didn't score often, but went he did it was by leaps and bounds. Liz, on the other hand,was really good at rolling numbers she already had which is really bad in this game. I had fun, I'm assuming they did too, but who cares when you get to do the sliding cleany thingy.

Next, we started getting food ready and I began reading the rules for:

Outlaw Trail: The Western Game 2-8 players

This is an oldie in Liz's family collection. They've had it for a while, but it rarely sees the light of day. This was actually the first time Darrin had even seen it.We had to play it. It's a roll and move game. You each play outlaws in the Wild West. You are all headed to Mexico and plundering goods and starting fights along the way. If you can earn $40,000 by the time you reach the border, you win. If you only made between 20 and 40 thousand you become a bounty hunter (I'm not sure how that works thematically) and you start gunning down the other players. If you are even poorer, you start again with $5,000.

I'm not sure where Liz's parents picked this game up, but it apparently counts as beer/wine.

As with most games involving spaces that tell you what to do, it's utterly random. The rule book is lengthy for a game of it's kind, but still seems to be a bit vague in areas, but we made the best of it. Darrin was the first to make it to the border with more that $20,000. He became a bounty hunter and was hot on our trails. I was probably the worst outlaw ever. I rarely held a robbery and when I did I barely made more than $1,000. Liz didn't fair much better. She was eventually gunned down by Darrin and was out of the game. I nearly had the game. And by nearly, I mean I had a 2:9 chance. I bet my money before crossing the border and I lost it all. I started over, but Darrin caught up with me and shot me down. Darrin was so proud that he's thinking of starting a spin off blog where he just writes about the games he beats me in.

Steam Park 2-4 players
I got this game mainly to get the free shipping from Cool Stuff Inc, but also because I thought Liz would find it cute. She does.

You are running a theme park for robots, because robots like fun too. The game starts by each player furiously rolling their dice. You can roll as long as you like. Once you're happy with what you have, you quickly grab a turn order token. The faster you are in rolling and grabbing, the better of you'll be. If you're the last to be rolling, then you have 3 more rolls. In order, players use the dice they have to build coasters, build tents, add space, attract robots, fulfill goals, or get rid of dirt. Coaster can hold robots. Tents can bend rules for you. Robots and goals get you money. The building actions gain you dirt and dirt is bad. The more you have in the end, the more you are penalized, so you have to make sure to take care of it. Each player uses all there dice as best as they can before the day ends. After six days, the richest player that didn't drown in dirt is the winner.

Liz needed a game break so it was just me and Darrin. I went with a goal focused strategy and Darrin went with  a.. I'm not really sure, but whatever it was wasn't a terrible idea. I grabbed a lot of tents and he started with a lot of roller coasters. By the end, I was clean of dirt, but rolling in money. Darrin lost nearly half of his money. Such a filthy park.
I think it's an okay game. I'm not sure how it could be better or what is missing. It feels like there isn't enough to do or maybe not enough time to really get things rolling. Maybe the dirt doesn't seem like it's that much of a problem. I guess what I'm saying is the game just feels a little too light.

Tally: 59/152  Bonus: 14/50

The Old and the New

I didn't have karaoke to worry about today, so I invited Sarah over to play games with us. Darrin was busy in his mid work/sleep schedule. After picking up a new fan and cleaning up a bit, Sarah showed up. We played one we use to play before all the other games got in the way:

Settlers of Catan, The 3-6 players
The standard game of the new generation. It's the game one sees in news articles and I think, "Where have you been if this is news worthy? I mean, this game came out in 1995." When people know you're not playing Monopoly or Risk they jump to this next. It's the game that most people would call their gateway game. And it is a great gateway game. You roll dice to gain resources and make trades with the other players to get what you need to build settlements, cities, and roads. It doesn't come out as often as it used to, but I wouldn't say we've played it to death as some others might do. I've only ever played the main game, but I did get the 5-6 player expansion.

This was a very close game. It was pretty slow at first with no one able to make a move for a while other than building roads. Each of us was able to build another settlement. Then things get intense. I grabbed longest road and was able to set up a trade route on the coast. Sarah had massive ore production with a 2:1 trade route on it. This allowed her to grab development cards nearly every turn. Liz was also able to set up a trade route and was sneaking up on me for longest road. The longest road race went on for a while, causing both of us to waste resources and ignore Sarah who had, by now, built the largest army. I was eventually able to get just the right resources and not have them frittered away by a robber allowing me to make a settlement getting me 10 points for the win.

I wanted to mention a few other things about this game on the grander scale. They have recently changed it's name to just Catan for the 5th print run. I think this is stupid since most people call it Settlers, but I guess they have their reasons. Also, there was a short film made called The Lords of Catan about a couple who gets really into this game. It looks great, It isn't available to own yet, but it should be coming near the end of this year. I've pre-order it.

We played a quick game of Blueprints before going and getting food. Sarah was winning after the first round. We all paid close attention to what dice people we grabbing after that. I was able to nab the top spot ever round (once in a three-way tie) getting me gold every round. Since I was able to finally earn bonus point I secured the lead and won.

Keyflower 2-6 players

This is the one game I owned before this started that I had never played before. Or at least the only one I wanted to play. I got it for Xmas and just hadn't found the right time to get it on the table and teach it. In this game, meeples count as money and workers. They are used to bid on hexagonal tiles that are added to your town and also used to gain resources from the said tiles. Each color of meeple is its own currency, meaning you can only be outbid by the same color of meeple. If you use them for gaining resources, then others can only get resource from there too if they have the same color meeple as you started with it. After 4 seasons of bidding, the person to earn the most points wins. It seemed like a very diverse bidding game and I was willing to make room for it in my closet.

We started out real slow. As slow as it gets. I read the rules. It hurts me to saw that. I hate reading the rule book aloud. I'm usually prepared and know most everything about the game. Again, I had never played the game and the last time I read the rules was Christmas. I eventually trudged my way through the rules. The girls got their brains scrabbled a bit listening to it. I thanked them many times along the way for putting up with it and I have to admit that they did their damnedest to say focused and not throw in the towel.

Once we got started, we all felt pretty comfortable on how the rules worked, but none of us had any semblance of a strategy. We all knew for a first play that was fine, so we didn't really complain about it. As the season went by, our towns and populations grew. Our towns took on characters. Liz had the resort town where you could drink, smoke, sleep, and take a boat ride. Sarah had the blue collar town full of hard working blacksmiths and the likes. I had the high society town with jewelers, sculptors, and a cathedral. By the end, we were all having a lot of fun and knew what we needed to do. We each had our own worry about what we might miss out on from another players move. It was tense, a good tense. When the points got counted I was on top again. I'm very much looking forward to playing this again.

Tally: 56/152  Bonus: 13/50

Four Squares A Day

After work, Liz was in the mood for a messy burger. This could only mean Stanich's. I picked out a game that could handle a little mess.

Quarto! 2 players
Imagine an advanced form of Tic-Tac-Toe. The first thing I would come up with is some 3D variant. Not much of a stretch of the imagination. Quarto is Tic-Tac-Toe figuratively taken to the 4th dimension, but still, in a more literal sense, in 2 dimensions. Although, depending on your definition of dimension, it could be argued that it is in four dimensions.

You start with an empty 4×4 board. The 16 pieces lay off to the side, each one slightly unique from any other piece. Each piece has one of each of the four characteristics: circle or square, tall or short, hollow or filled, and black or white. No one piece is exactly the same. At the start of a turn, one player selects a piece. The other player places that piece anywhere they want on the board. If after placing the piece they have made 4 pieces in a row (horz, vert, or diag) that each have one common characteristic, they win. Well... they win if the notice it and say "Quarto!" If they don't and pass the turn, the other player can call and steal the win. Of course if they both miss it, then no one can call the missed quarto.
I think this game is so elegant. That fact that the other player picks your piece is genius. It has you thinking in layers. "I can make this three in a row here, but I have to make sure never to hand him a short piece." It's not just about blocking, but about knowing when the population of pieces is coming to that critical point of having no good choices to had the other player. Plus it's usually a pretty quick game.

After busting this one out. The waitress had to ask about it. She had a face of interest and slight confusion. On we played. Our first game was a draw. Liz was under the impression she could only hand me white pieces for some reason. She realized the mistake mid-game. Even so, she played well enough to not cause a quarto. We played another game and started fresh. I quickly scored my quarto with 4 square pieces. We had one more go and Liz turned the tables on me. I was so focused on not handing her a black piece, that I didn't notice I couldn't hand her a short piece. As we left, the waitress asked for the score. She was puzzled that we didn't play a 4th game to determine a champion. I didn't really consider it. We don't often play the meta-game.

Tally: 54/152  Bonus: 13/50

Japanese Mexican Food

We went out for trivia again. We lost by a lot. Afterward, Sarah stuck around for a game of...

Sushi Go! 2-5 players

This is one of the cutest games I own. It reminds me of the talking fruits and veggies in the Muppets. It's a game about eating Sushi obviously. It's a simplified 7 Wonders. This card drafting game takes place over 3 rounds. Each kind of sushi you add to your plate scores differently. The way they score is printed on each cards. Usually it's based off of sets, combinations, or majorities. After tallying scores for 3 rounds, highest score is the winner.

This is the first game I've gotten to play with the Soy Sauce promo. The game was pretty back and forth. Liz started in the lead. I jumped ahead in the next round with Sarah close behind. I was able to keep the cards on my side for the last round. Liz and Sarah tied for last. This a really good small game. It's quick and pretty understandable. The bartender even got a kick out of how cute it was.

Tally: 53/152  Bonus: 13/50

Fire(Hop)works

I spent most of Memorial Day being a lazy as possible. All TV and video games, until Liz got home. We headed out to HUB (Hopworks Urban Brewery). Liz suggested we bring...

Hanabi 2-5 players

This card game is just backwards and I mean that literally. It's a cooperative game where you know what everyone else has in their hands, but you have no clue what is in your hands. You are attempting to put on an amazing fireworks display. The success of the display is dependent on the cards you play. The basic deck has 5 colors of fireworks each with the numbers 1 through 5 (more of the smaller numbers and only one 5). During your turn, you usually have three options: give a player one piece of information about their cards, play a card, or discard a card. There are 8 "communication tokens" at the start of the game. If you take the communication action you remove a token. If there aren't any tokens, you can't take that action. When you do communicate you can tell one player about one characteristic of their cards. You can tell them about the value or color, but you must be complete with the information. For example, if the other player has a red 2 and 3 and a blue 2 and 4 and you really want them to play the red 2 you're a bit screwed. You either have to tell them about both reds or both 2's. This means it'll probably take two turns or you have to hope the player is good at guessing. When playing cards, each color must start with 1 and work up to 5, no repeats. If a card doesn't fit in the series yet, you discard it and suffer a strike against you. The team only is allowed 3 strikes. If you choose to discard a card instead of playing it, then you get one of those precious "communication tokens" back. Once the strikes knock you out or you run out of cards to draw, the game ends. You add up the highest card of each color and compare it to the legend in the instructions.

We started out pretty good. We screwed our yellow fireworks early only getting only the 1 out. We finished the red, white, and green fireworks. We ended the game early since we knew we had discarded all the cards that would let us continue. We had a score of 20 which is pretty good out of 25. The manual describes it as "excellent, crowd pleasing". One point away from amazing.

Tally: 52/152  Bonus: 13/50

Stacks of Cards

I spent most of the beginning of the day playing the Adventures of Link on 3DS. Later on, I got my stuff, packed up and biked over to Becky & Carl's for games.
We started with their favorite (and only) worker placement game Stone Age. It was a pretty tight game. Carl won, followed closely by Steve, then me, and Becky was off in the back. Once everyone started showing up, we broke out their new copy of 7 Wonders. I must have gotten and played just the right cards, because I came out with the win, much to Becky's frustration. Science rarely does me wrong.
We took a break to eat and then made a walk through the local cemetery. Carl had a few things to do and the girls were happy to talk so Darrin busted out...

Machi Koro 2-4 players
I got this game as a present for Sarah. It just seemed like a game that was cute enough and interesting enough, but not crazy complicated. She does like it, but Darrin and Liz are powerhouses at this game.

During play, everyone starts with 3 coins, the same 2 buildings, and 4 special buildings that need to be built. There is also an array of other buildings available to buy. On a player's turn, they roll a die. What they roll determines if any players make money. You see, every building has a number or range of numbers listed on top of it. If a player rolls a number that matches a card you own you... might get money. The cards also have a color designation. Blue means you get the money no matter who rolls the die. Green means you only get money of you were the one rolling the die. Red means you get the money from the player who rolled the die. Purple means the roller gets money or property from another player(s). After players receive the money owed, you can buy any one building you can afford. You can buy duplicates to increase payment for that rolled number. You can also buy the special buildings. The special buildings make you no money, but allow you to bend the rules (rolling 2 dice, making more money per card, getting extra turns, and rerolling) Once a player builds all four of their special buildings they win.

I said Darrin tends to dominate and this game was no different. He tends to go with the same strategy, and I did my best to detour it, but I wasn't fast enough and he rolled too well. It was a pretty quick game. Kind of sad really.

Everyone was ready to game again, but all the games we had that allowed for 7 players didn't interest one player or another. We broke off into two groups. The girls played Diamonds and we played...

Dominion 2-8 players
This was my first major buy in the world of tabletop gaming. I saw a few plays online and was sold. I had found a discount through Google Offers for games at Cloud Cap. I got the Big Box which includes the base set and two of the smaller expansions. Not much later, I got two of the larger expansions. This is when my box hit critical mass. I had hodge-podged a system for keeping them organized in the big box. I have had 2 other expansions on my BGG wishlist since as long as I've had a wishlist, but I keep them at the "Don't buy this" level because I wouldn't know how to store the whole collection. I've seen storage boxes, but I wouldn't know where I'd store that box in my place.
It's the standard in deck building games. You all start with a 10 card deck of mostly crappy cards. You draw 5 cards and play them. Play any actions you have (you start with no action cards), then buy a card from the center pool with coins you played and then discard the cards from your hand and any you purchased. The cards you buy can give you more coins, actions, buys, cards, points, and/or other abilities. Of course, you have to wait for them you show up in your hand to use them. You play until 3 piles of cards empty or until the province cards (6 victory points) empties. The most victory points wins. The key to the game is creating a deck that is efficient and effective. You want to be able to grab big points, but points are only good in the end and are dead cards during play. This means you need to not only build a good deck, you also need to know when to start gobbling up points. Since each game plays with 10 "kingdom card" sets and the base game comes with 25, this leads to a lot of replayability.

We used Carl's base set and set up our kingdom cards using a shuffle app on my phone. I was able to tell from the cards that the key to winning was being able to clean my deck out and making a few big buys. Everyone got bogged down by curse cards (-1 VP) and spent most of their money on cheap cards. I started getting rid of the bad cards early and was able to make some of the only VP card purchases. The game ended with 3 piles emptying. I won with 6 VP. Most everyone else have a negative total.

We played another game with 6 players right after. We swapped a few of the piles for some from the Intrigue expansion. I went with a similar strategy, but forgot that with 6 people the curses come even faster. I probably shouldn't have started buying VP cards as early as I did. This clogged up my deck and also gave everyone else the impression that I was the player to beat. I did end with positive points, but Darrin came out on top being the only player to get a province. Sarah was a close 2nd.

Tally: 51/152  Bonus: 13/50

Best Two Out Of Three

We had some errands to run on the west side of town which meant we were doing lunch at Café Yumm!. Liz really loves that place. And for entertainment we brought...

The Duke 2 players
This is an abstract game loosely similar to chess. You play on a 6×6 grid. Each players starts with 3 pieces on the board: one duke and two footman. On your turn, you can take an action with a piece or draw a new piece out of your bag to add to the board and place next to your duke. Each piece has a different collection of actions it can take. This is why the pieces are tiles; the actions they can take are illustrated on the tile. Actions range from moving, sliding, jumping, striking, and commanding. If this were the whole game it would be pretty good, but there is still more. After you take an action with a piece, you must flip the tile over. On the flip side is a different set of actions the piece can take. This makes the game intense. The goal is to get the other player's duke.

I tend to make a lot of mistakes while playing this game. I don't break the rules. I just make stupid moves. At least 3 or 4 times during a game I will make a move and then immediately realized I've just trapped my own duke. I try to hide my nervousness and hope the other player doesn't catch my mistake. Most of the time I get lucky. Other times I don't.

We started the first game and I won in about 5 moves. We started a new game and Liz won in about 5 moves. We started a third game and we really made sure to pay attention. I almost had it in 5 moves again, but Liz caught wind of the danger she was in and changed her plan. Liz was on the run for the first half of the game. I'd put her in check and she'd move. She'd add a piece to the board and I'd take it. Soon she was able to get me in check. I was smart enough not to trap myself this time. I scared her duke again and she moved it off into the back corner. I now had a plan. I got my troops in just the right places, poised to strike. Only one thing could mess it up and that was if she was able to add a piece that would foil my plan. I though she pulled a piece that would. The piece allowed her to essentially teleport her duke. I went with the plan anyway and things went as expected. She then teleported her Duke and realized anywhere she was allowed to place it was a place I could attack. Thank goodness for my extra footman. We both had a jolly good time with it.

We both like the game better than chess for the same general reason, but for opposite reasons. Liz likes that the moves are on the tiles, because she has a hard time visualizing the move in chess. It's all one big mess in chess to her. The Duke just tells it like it is. I like the game because of the moves on the tiles as well, but not because it make it easier than chess, but because it makes it harder than chess. Each piece in chess has one movement rule, expect the pawn and the king/rook. In The Duke, every piece has a number of actions it can take and another different set after it takes one. You not only have to plan for what you see, but what you don't see. The Duke may tell it like it is, but it doesn't tell you the whole story. You have to do some snooping.

Tally: 50/152  Bonus: 12/50

A Drowning At The Docks

As per usual, it was a game lunch at work. I forgot to bring any games, but Bryan brought a few and the quickest one seemed to be...

Citadels 2-8 players

This is the game that got me back into the tabletop hobby. That is, this is the game that reminded me to get into the tabletop hobby now that I had a regular paycheck. A co-worker brought it (the same one who brought it in this time) and a number of us played it during the lunch periods. It's a great game. It's biggest plus is that it can suit a gaming group of 2 to 8 and plays just as well with any number. It doesn't hit the table as often since I have so many other games to play, but it's a great go to in a pinch. In a game, there are 8 characters, each with different powers. Everyone picks one character (in 2 or 3 player games everyone picks two) secretly and passes the rest to the left. You use your characters powers to get more gold or districts or even you kill and rob other characters. You can't target any player since you have to name the character not the player when you put out the hit. The game ends when someone builds 8 districts and most points from districts wins.

We had a four player game going and two of them were new to it. Everyone had a good go, except Carol. She was assassinated twice, had her hand swapped, and was very nearly robbed. We probably spent too much time setting up and explaining the game because we had to end early. Most of us had built 5 districts. I won, but I was running out of steam and I'm pretty sure Jason (Justin? dammit it's one of those!) would have won. Pretty soon we have to play games everyone's played so we can get to the meat fast.

After work Liz and I headed to the Hawthorne Hophouse for food and more games.

Merchants 2-4 players
I was on the search for small games that could be played in bars and restaurants. I did a Google search on that and found an article mentioning this game. I had never seen it in any game shop so I ordered it from the Board Game Geek Market. In the game, you own a shipping company.You each start with two ships each with one of six goods (corn, fish, indigo, fur, lumber, and cotton). You also each start with a hand of 4 goods cards. Six more goods from the deck are placed out in an array. On your turn you can do two things. Your first action can either be swapping the goods on your boats, passing, or buying a special card. There are four special cards that make you more powerful (i.e. more boats, money, actions, or goods). Your second action can either be drawing two more goods cards or playing goods on the array to earn money. When you play goods, you can play as many as you like and cover whichever cards you want in the array. You and all the other players earn income based on what goods you have on your ships and how many cards there are in the array that match the goods you played. The game ends when the goods deck runs out and the richest player wins. The box shown is actually the box that comes in the box. It's a little weird. It should also be noted that I had to paint the fish cubes to be a lighter blue so they didn't match the indigo cubes so closely.

It has been a long while since we played this. Our game was pretty neck and neck, but near the end my bonuses from the special cards started kicking in and I was able to jump in the lead.

We both like it. It's a good game, but there is something about it that keeps it from being a great game. You do have to think out your options and it plays quick and casually, but the special cards are limited which makes the beginning of the game a mad dash to get something good before it's gone and the second half a game about planning your goods well. If the game were any longer it would probably drag, so it's nice they made it short and sweet. I just wish the special cards gave you more strategy than Gimmie Gimmie Gimmie!

Gloom 2-5 players
Yup. This is a gloomy card game. You are a family of 5 that has a number of calamitous things happen to them. You play cards that effect the moral value of your or other players family members. The cards usually make them more depressed, injured, or dead. As soon as one persons entire family is dead, the game ends. The family with the lowest moral value on all it's dead members wins the game. Morbid, huh? The most interesting thing about this game is that all the cards are clear. So when you play a card on a family member, you might cover up certain values, but leave other values visible from cards lower in the stack. It's utterly unique and makes choices tough when you want to get rid of a positive value on your dog, but the only card you have that will cover it will cause you to lose that extra card bonus you have. There is flavor text on each card that can be ignored, but I find the game is a bit more "lively" if you continue the saga of each members depressing tale as you play the cards.

This is not the box this game comes in either. It actually comes in a small tuck box, but I needed something better that would hold my two expansions and not be as annoying to use when cleaning up and putting the game way. I like what I made.

Liz isn't gangbusters for this one so it doesn't pop out too often. It can be hard to read the cards in low light and she says she doesn't quite grasp the strategies. After this game, I thinks she's warmed up to it. She was playing really well and started out with some great plays. She did a great job at ruining her family's lives while improving mine. I was able to catch a second wind and made a run at killing off my family. Liz only killed three members, but they were worth a lot. I had two good ones and the rest were nothing very notable. I won, but it was pretty close. If she warmed up enough, I might be able to actually use an expansion sometime.

Tally: 49/152  Bonus: 12/50

Your Horoscope for Today

We went to Last Call Trivia at the Original Taco House. Liz's sister runs it and we got there early so she joined in on a game to kill time before the "fun" began. We played Bohnanza. Well, we played a half game because trivia had to start. Sarah and I tied.
After trivia, we played a game we keep in the car.

Aquarius 2-5 players
This is a neat little card game about trying to place cards in an array such that you link up 7 symbols of the same element that is on your goal card. It's better with more players since there are cards that let you swap goals and you figure out pretty quick what other players are going for in a two-player game. We tinkered with the deck a bit to get it more playable with two.

In our game, I started with fire. Eventually we figured out that Liz has rainbows and was close to winning. Sarah was able to delay for a bit, but then Liz swapped goals with me and we were both done for. It was a pretty short game.

I wouldn't say I like this game. I don't hate it. It's just never a game that I think to play. I'm willing to play it, but I'm always ready to drop it for another game. It's part of the reason why I leave it in the car. I won't miss it if I'm not near my car, but it will pass the time if I didn't plan ahead and bring a game with me.

Tally: 46/152  Bonus: 12/50

Goin' Solo

I needed to pass some time alone so I played some solo games.

Roll For It! Express 1 player

This is a tiny solo game I got for free during Tabletop Day 2014. It's based of the game Roll for It! In the game, you roll 6 six dice Yahtzee style. You try to fill up the card on four point levels (4, 6, 8, and 12)  If you add too many dice to one level you take negative points and if you don't fill every level by the third roll you take negative points for the remaining pips.

It's a very stupid game. There is very little point to it. That's mainly because it's a solo game. I did eventually get the full 30 points. I didn't feel very excited about winning. I do like the tiny dice.

Down and Out 1+ players

A.K.A. Shut the Box. This is a crappy version of Can't Stop when I think about it. You roll two die and knock off a sum of numbers equal to the sum of the dice. You try to knock out all the numbers. I only have it because my parents had a version that I loved as a kid. I liked it because it was a solo game and I didn't always have other people to play with. I got a version sometime later. It doesn't hold up to my childhood memories. With more players it's just a bunch of solo games back to back.

I eventually did knock out all the numbers on this one too. I was even less excited. I do like the stylized numbers. It's not as action pack as the box implies.

Tally: 45/152  Bonus: 12/50

Just Keep Playing

Liz and I started the day with breakfast at Off the Waffle. While we waited for our treats we played...

Zombie Fluxx 2-6 players

This takes the same Fluxx formula and adds a crap load more creepers. All the creepers are zombies of some sort. It's easy to get rid of them usually, but a little pointless when they just keep coming. How thematic. It's harder to play this in a restaurant since the creepers fill the table space real quick. It's good and maybe a little better than the original.

We were able to play 3 games. We each won one. We also each lost two. This means there is a goal that can cause both players to lose. I kind of enjoyed that loss.

After breakfast, we chilled at home, but I later went to the parents house to play games. Liz had Red Dress to go to.

We started with Ticket to Ride. We played on the Legendary Asia version. There was a lot of commotion on the right side of the map. This blocked a lot of paths for people. It forced me to give up on a ticket. Darrin won with Becky close behind.
After Ticket we took a short break to get dinner cooking: tater tot casserole. We then began a game of...

Can't Stop 2-8 players

I got this game because I was sick of playing Golf (card game) with Liz's mom. I did some research to find a happy medium type game. Something that is entertaining and doesn't require a lot of thinking, but also a game where you feel like you have a choice over your destiny. A push your luck game seemed great and of all the ones I had heard about, this one came up the most. You roll 4 dice and pair them up to make numbers between 2 and 12. You can only move up 3 of the tracks at a time so if you can't make a pair of one of the tracks you're on, you lose all the progress you've made that turn. Shortly after a few plays, I got the Rollin' Down The Highway expansion and we never play without it. I also got the extra cones for more color choices and to allow for more than 4 players. And with all that new stuff added to the box that can meant only one thing: new insert.

We all did pretty good, except Becky. The one round she got on the board, she was bumped off by Sarah and then me. I was able to build up a number of back-ups and was primed to win on my next turn. This made Sarah push for the win on her turn since she knew it was probably her last. It was her last because she won.

We still had a bit more time before dinner was good to go. We played Mascarade. It was a delightful game. It was difficult to remember any cards people had, making it a laugh riot most of the time. I was smiling so much my cheeks hurt. I won again because people left me alone enough.
We then took a break to eat. Darrin left after grub to get more sleep. Becky, on the other hand, was dying to play...

Caverna 1-7 players

The "sequel" to Agricola. This may actually be my favorite worker placement game. It does away with the cards from Agricola and replaces it with rooms that anyone can get. It also and removes the stress of food since nearly everything can be traded for food without building an oven. It's all the things I love about Agricola without all the things I find so-so. I'd play it more if it didn't take so much time to play. It's no Battle Star Galactica, but it'll take a chuck of your time.

And did I ever get to play it. We ended up playing two games. We each took different strategies in the second game compared to the first. We also all improved our scores in the second game compared to the first. I won both games. Such a good game.  In fact, I'm good for a third game.

Tally: 43/152  Bonus: 12/50