A Nice Game to Live In

We were trying to take our mind off the heat, so Liz suggested we play a game. See also suggested one I had been waiting for a nice pretty floor to play on.

Carcassonne 2-6 players

This is the behemoth. The game I gave the most expansions to. I have all of the major ones, except the two really gimmicky ones. I started with the 10-year anniversary box which is shaped like a big meeple. It's very cute an all, but horrible for actual storage, both in the box and on the shelf. I made my own box out of framing cardboard and some paper. I replaced most of the acrylic meeples from the 10-year version with mini-meeples I got from Meeple Source. This helped keep the all wood aesthetic, allowed for a phantom meeple to be used, and it saved space inside the box which was becoming a concern. If I have to add anything else, I'm screwed. I think I'll just keep my ears plugged on anymore Carcassonne news. It's a lovely game and simple to teach. You draw a tile and place it anywhere on the edges of the already placed tiles so that the features connect. You can use any of your meeples to claim a feature on the tile you placed. When the feature is finished, you score points for it and get your meeple back. The expansions add more tiles, meeple types, and mechanics

This game we played with the main set, Inn & Cathedrals, The Ferries, and The Goldminers. It was a normal game until about mid-way through; I was able to snipe a large town from Liz and pretty much had her lapped on the scoring track for the rest of the game. She got pissy at me for the rest of the game. She even began name calling like "meanie" and "Carl". I stand by what I did. If I didn't it would have been the other way around.

This is a fabulous gateway game and everyone should play it at least once. You don't really need to go crazy like I did. Just get what you like.

Tally: 84/164  Bonus: 22/50

Short & Sweet

At our biweekly work gaming session we had time to play 2 different games. We started with one of Justin's.

Unspeakable Words 2-6 players
I had seen this game on Tabletop before. It's a push your luck game in the loosest way possible. You all have 7 cards with a letter and point value on each. On your turn, you can create any Scrabble friendly word with your cards. You score the total points indicated on the cards, but after playing them, you need to roll a 20-sided die. If you roll less than the point value you made, you lose some sanity (oh... did I mention it's Cthulhu themed). If you lose 3 sanity, your out of the game. If you get 100 points or are the last person standing, you win.

We played and Justin won. He never rolled below 14 for the entire game. This gave him free reign to score whatever he wanted. The rest of us went crazy in pretty close succession.

I'd rather never play this game again. The whole time I was just hoping other people would get screwed. You can only have two mindsets. Go all in, or hold back. I'm okay with games that hinge on a die roll, but it's a little different when it determines whether or not you stay in the game.

The Resistance: Coup 2-10 players

I got sucked into the hype on this game. It's a little like Love Letter in that you start with a deck of very few cards and each card has special abilities. But that's pretty much where the similarities end. You all start with 2 cards which are kept secret from the others players. These cards give you powers like getting money, getting lots of money, stopping people from getting lots of money, assassinating a player, preventing an assassination, or swapping out your cards. The twist is you don't have to have the corresponding card to take an action. You can bluff. If you get called on the bluff you're screwed and have to trash one of you're two cards. If you call someone for bluffing and they weren't, then you trash one of your cards. If you trash your second card, you're out. This leads to interesting situations. For example, someone claims that they have the assassin and wants to take out one of your cards and you don't have the right card to stop it. Do you A) Call them on it hoping they are bluffing about having an assassin, B) Bluff and say you have a Contessa for protection, C) Take the hit, or D) Sit and think for about 5 seconds about whether to go with option option A or B and then realize you've been thinking too long and reluctantly take option C. It seems good, but every game I've played so far has blown chunks. That is probably my fault though. It's a horrible game for just 2 people and most of the games I've played were with 2. Also, I think I suck at bluffing or at least I do when I don't have a few seconds to prepare.

This time was different. Everyone seemed to pick up on the concepts quick and everyone had a good time. We even played a second game and added a fifth player. I didn't win either game, but I was close on the first one. I definitely enjoyed this much more than previous times. I'm certainly going to try to shoehorn this one into the regular group.

After work Liz and I headed out for dinner at some nearby food carts. I brought along...

Dominoes 2-10 players
My parents had a large set of dominoes that we'd play occasionally when I was in high school and college. Of all the styles of dominoes to play, we only every played Chicken Foot. In this variant, the starting double tile has 6 branches coming off of it and every other double has three branches emanating from it. Each double will end up looking like a chicken foot, ala the name of the game. We play with an additional rule and I'm not sure when we started this rule. When you play a double meaning you start a new chicken foot, you must squeal out loud, "Chicken Foooooooooot!" It's almost as if you are trying to call the chickens home.

This time we did not play Chicken Foot, but I played a version that I had seen played at work. They didn't know the name of it, so lets call it Fives. You play with only the dominoes with 0-6 (although there is nothing truly preventing higher).  All players begin with 7 dominoes. A player starts the round with any domino. Same placement rules apply, but only the first double played in a round has branches. Players score points if the total of the ends of every branch is divisible by 5. So if you add a bone and the ends are a 1, 4, and double 5, that would score you 1+4+5+5=15 points. The first player to go out scores bones (individually rounded down to the nearest multiple of 5) not played by the other players. After a number of rounds (we went with 7 to make it quick), the highest score wins.

Liz played quite well. We were neck-and-neck for most of the game, but in the last two rounds she dominated. I enjoyed it. It called for some interesting choices and seeing scoring opportunities. Now if only there was a way to add a squeaking mechanic to the game.

Tally: 83/164  Bonus: 22/50

Spell "Banana"

We had Liz's parents over to see the house and play some games. Well, they saw the house, but we went out to eat. Once we got back we started in on the games. We began with...

Huggermugger 2-4 players or teams
On one of our regular game nights, when we had regular game nights, we went out to the nearby Gladstone Pizza to eat and play games.  We brought our own games, but they have a small game collection to select from. Most are trivia games and one of them caught Liz's eye. It was Huggermugger. After we played the game we brought, Liz wanted to play this. Unfortunately, the game was missing the instructions. I was glad because it didn't look like a game I'd enjoy. Later on, Liz added the game to here Amazon Xmas wishlist and someone got it for her. After I read the instructions, I realized I was correct in my initial assumption. It a word nerd trivia game. You roll a die and go around the board answering question about words and letters. If you can land in one of the 6 numbers spaces and answer a question right then you get to look at the corresponding letter of the mystery word. At anytime after looking at a letter you can guess the mystery word. If you're right, you win. Wrong and you're eliminated. The game comes with 90 different mystery words, meaning that by the time you play all 90 words you'll have forgotten the first word because it's been a decade since you've played the first game.

I began the game, but didn't make much progress. Once Liz had her turn, she was able to get half the letters. My next turn got me 2 of the letters. Thom and Carol were able to grab a few as well. By the end, Liz and I just needed the first letter. She was able to get there on her turn and win the game.

I don't hate this game, but I am at a large disadvantage. Liz does a lot of crosswords and is an amazing speller so she pretty much has this game on lock. She loves this game, but since I'm not crazy for it she doesn't try to force it.

Afterwards, we played Casino Yahtzee. In fact, we played 2 games. I won the first game with Thom 1 point behind me. Liz won the second game with Carol only a few points behind her.

Tally: 81/163  Bonus: 21/50

New Game For A New House

We moved into a house! As I have been quoting Gilmore Girls all the time, "I'm in ESCROW." We had some time to chill and eat a home cooked meal a few days after the move, so Liz had me grab a game from my new wall of games.

Dungeon Roll 1-4 players
Liz signed me up for Game Box Monthly for my birthday. They send you small indie games you don't own, every month. I had received this on the day we moved. I'd seen it in stores and was intrigued, but not enough to buy.

It's a dice rolling push your luck game. Each player takes their turn going into the dungeon. The players starts by rolling their 6 white dice that represents their adventuring party. Some of the party is better at dealing with certain monsters than others. Another player rolls the dungeon dice for you. The dungeon dice make up the monsters and items you'll encounter.  They roll a number of dice equal to the level of the dungeon you've reached this turn. You only have the six 6 white dice for the whole run, so you need to use them wisely. After defeating all monsters on the level and possibly dealing with a dragon, you have the choice to delve deeper or head back to the tavern and end your turn. If you leave, you earn XP for the level you got to. If you keep going, you risk losing the XP bonus. Each player gets 3 dungeon runs before the points are totaled. That is the main idea of the game. There are also special player abilities and treasures that add to the diversity and decision making.

After we finished our food, Liz was ready to learn. She picked up on the ins-and-outs and got a real kick out of it. She had a bad first delve and didn't make it back, but her next two weren't so bad. I did pretty good, but never made it past the 5th level. I won, yet it would have been tight had Liz made it out alive on the first run.
I like it. I would have loved it as a kid. I'm sure I'll play this as a solo game when I get bored at home one of these days.

Tally: 80/163  Bonus: 21/50

Not Boxed In

I had a bunch of things packed at home, but I had left out two games to hopefully be played at "Rancho Thomaso" later in the day. I got a lot of grumbling about what games I should have brought, but we still played my games anyway.
We started with...

The Simpsons: Loser Takes All! 2-6 players
I think I got this as an Xmas present years ago. I had actually played it once before then with Emily and the gang. I remember them distracting me while on the phone to cheat an answer out of me. I have to assume I'm smarter than that now.

It's a spin and move game. You are all on a 9×9 grid of spaces and start with 20 bucks, 10 junk food tokens, and 5 face up character cards. You spin the spinner and do what it says. When you move, you can move horizontally or vertically, but no backtracking. Wherever you land, you do what it says on that space. Most of the commands tell you to lose or gain money or junk food. The others have have you answer a question card. You write down an answer to a personal question like "Am I double-jointed?". Then you pick a player to guess your answer. If they get it right, they flip over one of their character cards. If not, you get to. The game ends when one player has all of their characters flipped. According to the name, the player who has the least wins. Bills and tokens are worth 1 point each, characters are 3 points each, and if you are on the bottom row that adds another 5 points.

We had a 6-player game going. It started out a bit slow and dragged in parts, but I still enjoyed the question cards. I now know that Ida has tried to cut her hair, that Thomas has never had a birthday party in a McDonald's, that Darrin owns 4 remotes, and that Carol has ridden in an ambulance. I was the first to get rid of my character cards, but Carol was the real loser and by that I mean the winner.

We followed up with food and then cooled down with a game of...

Wit's End 2+ players

I'm not sure why Liz wanted this game. I believe she just saw it on Amazon and thought it sounded cool. It's a bit like Trivial Pursuit. You answer questions on history, the arts, or other trivial things. There are 4 categories that are pretty unique: Teaser, Odd 1 Out, Sequence, and Wild Card. Teaser has you solve a short riddle usually involving word play. Odd 1 Out has you select which of 4 things isn't like the others. Sequence has you order 3 item by a given rule. And Wild Card either has you answer 2 True/False questions or fill in 2 out of 3 blanks. Like Trivial, you roll and move on a board. Unlike it, there are places that move you in a level. Once you get to the center and answer one more question of your choice, you win. There are also random question bonuses that will cause a player to move up or down a level.

We played two games. One with teams and another as individuals. Darrin and Liz one the first game. None of us were surprised. In the second game, Thomas took the win. This made him happy since earlier in the day he was complaining that he never wins any of the games I bring. His winning words were "Log This!"

Carol was insistent we get a game of Golf in. Darrin and I weren't keen on that, so we opted out and instead did scoring and commentary. As our alter-egos Bob and Chet, we made the game much more lively. Thomas nearly won, but had a bungle of a final hole and lost it to Liz.

Tally: 79/162  Bonus: 21/50

We Built This City

Liz was out camping and I was home packing and getting other paperwork finalized, but I was invited to play some games with Becky. I had a few ideas of what to bring and my first thought was...

Firenze 2-4 players
I just thought this game looked pretty. So many colored tower pieces and a cute board, might I add. I saw a video on it's gameplay and loved how it all worked.  You are in Florence, Italy during the time when they were big on making towers. You all start with a number of white tower pieces (the crappy ones). On your turn you spend your pieces to gain a card in the line. This card can help you or harm you depending on the text. The card also has a number of additional tower pieces on it. You are then allowed to start building towers on your mat. It's free to add one or two pieces, but more than that will cause you to burn a few extra pieces. You can then claim points for your towers if you are done with any. The taller they are and the rarer the color used, the more points it's worth. At the end of your turn, if you failed to add to any tower in production, it is destroyed. Once a player has built a certain number of towers (based on number of players) then there is one last round. There are also a few bonus points awarded for certain cards gained and the person who build the most towers of each color.

Becky had never played before, but it's a quick learn. I started out with a huge lead, but Becky made some large jumps and had overtaken me. I knew it was going to be close and Becky had control of the game end. I was putting all my hopes into getting 1 more purple piece, but I just couldn't nab it. She won by about 9 points.

I really like this game. It's a shame I don't play it more. There is so much to keep track of. Will I have the color I need to add to the towers I have going? Do I have enough extra pieces to spend to not have to grab the hazard cards? Will I be able to build that 6 high yellow tower before Becky? Should I scrap this stupid white tower now and focus on the sexy purple towers that seem to be all the rage? It's a lot to keep track of, yet not overwhelming. The game has that perfect level of stress and fun that I love in a game.

We followed up with Blueprints, which Becky had also never played. We were only able to get through 2 of 3 rounds before I had to leave to work karaoke. We had a tie score, but I called it my win since Becky had accidentally cheated by building a 2 on top of a 4 die. For shame.

Tally: 77/162  Bonus: 21/50

Icon Do It If I Try

I brought a smaller game to work lunch than last time. This made it less of a hassle to bike with.

Concept 4-12 players

I love charades. I'm not a huge fan of the game, but I love using the charades mechanic in real life situations. I'll be out with Liz and I'll want to remind her that we have a new episode of Ultimate Survival Alaska to watch, so I start making weird motions with my hands. Liz will roll her eyes and yell at me a lot, but eventually she figure out what the crap I'm going on about. I love it. She hates it.
I had heard about Concept when it was a nominee for the Spiel De Jahres and knew I needed it when I watched it played on Gamenight!. It's charades confined to a board. You use colored tokens (look familiar?) on a board filled with symbols for everything from gender to geometric shapes. Big tokens represent the big ideas and the small cubes will add context to the matching color theme. It's not too hard when you are doing nouns or verbs, but get much harder when you need to convey the phrase "get up on the wrong side of the bed" for example. The person giving clues can use the tokens however they want to on the board, but can only ever say yes if they talk at all. If you aren't getting anywhere, you can bring in a friend to help. There is a point system but we never bother. This makes it more of a group activity than a game.

We all had at least one go at giving clues. Most of us had two goes. I started us out to get the ball rolling and they took to it fast. Most people picked medium or easy concepts for their first and on the second attempt, they took it up a notch. Everyone was successful eventually. The last one required a tag in. It's sometimes good to get an outside perspective. The biggest hurdle of this game is knowing all your options for clues. As we played, I made sure to point out certain icons if it seemed like the answers were leaning a certain way. It was a really great and relaxing game to play for a lunch.

Tally: 76/162  Bonus: 21/50

Don't Question Me

Once Liz got home, we planned on going to Gladstone Pizza just across the way. We brought along...

Trivial Pursuit 2+ players

Sometimes you just want to go to a restaurant with you friends and just plow through a series of trivia questions. This happened a ways back when Emily and Chuck were in town. We had to purchase Trivial Pursuit first. We wanted to get a newer version so we stopped buy Target. They had none. We then went to Toys R' Us and they only had a gimmicky version of the game. We called a few places too, but no luck. We ate our food questionless. My parents came to visit a few months later and remedied the problem by giving us the new Master Edition as a present. We played while drinking wine, eating cheese, and listening to some folk band at a winery outside of town. Good times. I eventually stopped into a Goodwill and added the cards from Genus 5 to the box. We rarely pull this out since bar trivia has become so popular lately. Some better than others. It is still nice to have when you want to go at you own pace and have your choice of foods.

For our game, we made it player's choice on each question as to what deck got read from. Most of the categories were the same, but a few were different which allowed for a squeak of strategic play. I had a giant lead which was quickly lost. I just couldn't pass the history category when I needed to. We only played to a complete pie since we didn't want to overstay our welcome.

Tally: 75/162  Bonus: 21/50

I Own This Town

Liz's dad was home alone this Saturday, so he invited people over for food and games. We planned on doing just that. We stopped off for lunch and played Zombie Fluxx before getting there. It was a dull play for me since I never picked up a goal card.
When we got there, Tom was in the middle of a show and Liz and Becky got busy making food. I got busy taking a nap. After waking, eating and cleaning up, we were good to game. Tom wanted to play...

Lords of Vegas 2-4 players
I had just gotten this game from Sarah and Darrin for my birthday. In fact, I had almost purchased it on Amazon before heading over to see them. Thank goodness they texted me to meet up with them soon enough.

The game is set in the early days of Vegas. Everyone starts out with 2 random lots on the board and no money. On a player's turn, a card is drawn from the deck. On this card, it will tell you 2 things. It will tell you what new property you get and what casinos will pay out. After claiming this lot everyone gets paid: 1 million for each lot owned and then payouts for casinos matching the color on the card. I'll get back to that. After getting paid, you can use what money you have to build a casino on a lot you own, sprawl onto a lot no one owns, remodel a casino you own to a different color, reorganize a casino you aren't the boss of, or gamble at someone else's casino. This explanation seems to be falling apart so I might end it short. It works better when you explain while playing, which is what I did. There are two things I want to add. When you get to buy a casino, you add a die of you color with the board indicated pip value and a border color of your choice. If another player builds a casino of that same color next to yours, it becomes one casino. The larger pipped die is the boss of the casino. Now back to the card from the deck. I said "...then payouts for casinos matching the color on the card". Each player still gets paid for the parts they own. They are paid based on the pip value. But also, the boss of each casino of that color gets points based on the size of the casino. I would stop there, but there is one more thing that makes this game unique. The scoring track is not a normal track. Eventually the track makes 2 point jumps and eventually 3 point jumps and so on. The reason for this is to force the players to make bigger casinos. Once you reach the 2 point barrier you can't score for your 1 point casinos. If you score a 5 point casino, you move 2 spaces since you can pass two 2 point barriers (the extra 1 point gets lost).

Now, to our game. Tom actually started out in the lead. He had a lot of 1 point casinos. Each of us slowly gained some ground on him. I was able to nab a 3 point casino and quickly caught up. Eventually, Tom got waylaid by the 2 point barrier which wasn't a problem for me. I took a commanding lead before things got ugly (i.e. things got fun). A lot of fighting for casino control and sprawling and the occasional gambling ensued. In the end, I was just past the 4 point barrier and the other were just passing the 3-point barrier. We all had a blast. I feel like I'll be needing the expansion soon to allow for 2 more players.

We followed up with Formula D. We went with a 2 lap race this time. In the beginning, Liz was trailing all of us. Near the final turn of the lap, she pulled way ahead. Tom got a flat and fell behind. Becky revved up and caught up with Liz after the pit stop. I shot out a little later and went into high gear to get in their faces. Tom was lagging by a lot. I took a risk mid lap that caused me to blow up on the turn. This left it wide open for the sisters. Tom got bold as well to have a fighting chance and blew up on the turn after my rotting carcass. Becky had a few unlucky rolls on the last turn and Liz drove home to victory. I'm so pumped for a 3 lap race.

Tally: 74/162  Bonus: 21/50

Who Needs Food Anyway

Becky and Carl were free to play today and they swung by to pick me up. After they got lunch and we headed back, we got right to gaming.
Ida had us start out with Pairs. and we followed that up with a 3 player game of Cribbage. Ida won cribbage. I then broke out Pandemic: The Cure. We played two games and Ida was in both. The first was disastrous. The second was nearly our first win. One of theses days.
We took a little break, but then came back to the table and played Caverna. I took a non-adventuring strategy and Carl went heavy on adventuring. Becky went a little of both. I still won, but Carl wasn't far behind me.
Liz showed up near the end of that game, but was pretty tired so she just took it easy and just observed most of the games. Carl picked out...

Mille Bornes 2-6 players
My parents had this game when I was a kid. I just liked imagining how cool it would be to have a card with puncture proof tires and a tanker following me. I found the art pretty neat too. I eventually got my own copy as a present in college.

It's a card racing game, with little in the way of choices. You have to play a "Go!" card first. Once you're on the move you can add kilometers. The first to 700 km wins the round. Not only can you play miles, but also hazards on the other players: accident, out of gas, flat tire, stop, and speed limit. There are fixes for all of these and once fixed another "Go!" must be played. Even better than a fix is a safety card which can prevent other player from ever playing certain hazards on you. In fact, if you play it right after the corresponding hazard is played on you, you get to yell "coup-fourré" and stop the hazard as well as score a few extra points. You play a number of games and the first to 5000 or more wins. You can play as partners in games of 4 or 6. I like it better with partners, but it's ok with 2.

We played two games and we each won one. Carl was a little peeved that we didn't get to draw from the discard pile. He didn't see the point if you couldn't do that. I know what he means, but that would make it just as weird, but in a different way.

He then popped out a game I had heard of but never played...

Chronology 2-8 players

This is very similar to the Timeline games, but each player has their own timeline to work on.
It works like this. Each play starts with a card in front of them. All the cards have an event that is described and the year it happened. Another player draws a card and reads the event to you. You need to decide where in your timeline that event happened. If you can determine where it fits, you add it to your timeline. If not you don't get it added. Players trade off on reading to each other. This starts off easy since there are fewer places for an event to be placed, but once you have 8 events in your timeline, it gets difficult to know where a new one goes when the years get really close together. The first to ten cards wins.

I did quite well. I only missed one card. Carl missed at least three or four. Normally I win games like this by getting lucky with cards, but I had a number of close calls. I was just tuned into the spirits of the past I guess.

Right after that Carl pulled out Backgammon. We played two games and he won both. I nearly had him the second game, but he was able to get just the right roll at the end to knock me off. Arghh!
After finally eating we were set to play one more game. I was dying to try out...

Formula D 2-10 players
This is one of the games I got from Liz this year as a birthday present. She knew I had eyed it a few times and she was able to get it used from Cloud Cap Games. Since it was used, it was missing the advanced rules. I was able to get some summarized replacements from The Esoteric Order of Gamers.

It's a roll and move game with a twist. You have a gear box that you can shift up or down during your turn. This allows you to roll better dice with higher or lower numbers. This may seem silly since you'd obviously want to roll as high as you could every turn. That is true, but as in real races, you need to slow down for the turns. The track as hard turns indicated in red and you need to stop a certain number of times in that red area before you tear out of it. If you don't, you'll add wear to your vehicle or possible spin out completely. There are other things that can cause wear to your car, like driving too close to another player, driving really fast in 5th or 6th gear, or skipping gears when down shifting. The game is all about balancing and gambling with dice and the wear you have left. You can play with a number of options added like special racers or weather conditions. The giant board even has a second track on the flip side. They really packed a lot into this game. Before even playing a game I'm tempted to get expansions. I did get extra dice.

Liz filled in for Becky in the start while she helped the kids to bed. I started out in a good lead with Carl on my tail. I took a lot of wear to my gearbox, Carl took a lot to his body and tires. Liz/Becky took a good number of hits to the brakes. Carl had the lead for most of the mid race, but in the end Becky was able to use a good roll and a nitro boost to cross the finish line before the rest of us.

I'm excited to play this with more players. So was everyone else. As we were leaving Carl was looking up used copied prices and possible expansions. Love it!

Tally: 73/158  Bonus: 21/50

My Day

It's my birthday! We started out the day with games. Duh! I picked out...

Istanbul 2-5 players
Liz got this for me as a birthday present last year. It was on my wishlist with many other games. She picked this one because it was newer and it would add a game starting with the letter "I" to my library. Now I just have "O" and "U" left.

In the game, you are in the markets of Istanbul. You go around town having your assistants get goods and trade for money, improvements, and gems. The first person to 5 gems (6 in a two player game) wins. You play on a 4×4 modular board, each tile a location in the market, each with different things to gain from them. The key to the game is optimization.  You only start with 4 assistants and you must have an assistant with you to take the location action (you are quite hoity-toity). When you go to a location, you drop off an assistant, but if there is already an assistant there you pick the assistant up. This turns the game in to a bit of a puzzle with you trying to make paths that overlap and prevent you from wasting time going to places you have no use for. The game is made even more complex through the other players. If you land on a location with another player, you owe them money. So it's not just about taking the right path; It's also about taking the right path at the right time. It's a good brain burner and doesn't take too long to play.

I randomly set up the board and we had at it. I trampled Liz in this one. By the time I got my 6 gems, she only had 3. Although, we agreed to call it 3.5 gems since, had she taken a better move the turn before, she would have had 4 gems. I really enjoy this game. It's got that little bit of tension and randomness combined with optimization. It's a winner all around.

Afterwards, Liz picked out Glen More. She spent the whole game making whiskey and I spent it getting chieftains and castles. The final score was something like 37-91. She may have lost, but she could drown her sorrows in whiskey.
We had time for one more game before we had Independence day parties to go to. I popped out Pandemic: The Cure. We continued to fail at this game. Ugh!
After parties I held my own small get together at Liz's parents. Ben joined Liz and I in another game of The Cure, but we didn't do much better. Liz had us play another game while she watched. We very nearly won that time. We were a few rolls away from the final cure.
By this time, Spencer and his friend April had arrived. I went through the list of games and April decided on...

Robo Rally 2-8 players
I am always looking for games that can fill and empty spot in my collection. Games that are really fun and none of my other games play anything like. This one was a great buy. I'm pretty sure I got it on tabletop day 2014 as a way to support my local game store.

In the game, you are a robot trying to reach a number of flags in a certain order. Each player is given 9 cards with commands like move forward 3 or turn left. You secretly use 5 of these cards to program you robot. After everyone is done programing, you let all the programs run and watch the fun begin. It all starts fine, but things turn bad fast. Robots push other robots making the rest of the program very wrong. You get pushed into a pit or drive into a laser field. You may have miss read a conveyor belt and get stuck zipping around doing nothing for a while. This whole thing is repeated, but if you took any damage, you get fewer cards or, if you took enough damage, fewer cards and some of the commands get locked into your program. It is the most fun with frustration you can have in a game. We normally play with a house rule that every bot gets a modification from the start to make it really interesting.

Since we had 3 new-comers to the game, we left off the house rule. We played on the course called, "Bloodbath Chess". Ben started with a fine lead and got to the first flag before rest of us had even gotten into the ring of death. I was slowly catching up and so was Liz. April got shot so much she was forced to power down. I took the lead and got to flag 3 while Ben was spinning in place. He soon pushed me into a pit. I returned the favor and pushed him into a pit on the next turn. Spencer apparently wanted to know what all the fuss was about so he drove himself into a pit. Afterwards, there was a lot of pushing and shooting in the middle of the course. Spencer took a lot of damage and Liz got pushed into a pit by me. I eventually made it to the last flag and claimed victory. Liz and Ben had made it to the 3rd and Spencer almost made it to the 2nd. April may not have made it to any flag, but she was the only player not to have died.

Afterwards we ate ice cream cake and cleaned up. The others took off and we went to a party of Liz's New Season friends and enjoyed some fireworks. All-in-all, a great day.

Tally: 71/158  Bonus: 20/50

Day Off

It's the day before the 4th, so I didn't have to work my day-job. It's also a Friday, meaning Liz didn't have to work either. Once we were finally out of bed, she had me open the other two presents she got me. I was able to guess them correctly. We played the easy one and left the other for when I would have time to sleeve it. This meant we played...

Pandemic: The Cure 2-5 players
This is the dice game version of Pandemic. I try to play the games in order for the blog so that makes sense to people, but it just didn't happen this time.

In the game, you are traveling to different continents to get rid of 4 unique infectious diseases. On a player's turn, they roll their character's custom dice. You can re-roll any die as may times as you'd like, but if you roll a bio-hazard symbol, it's locked. You use the symbols you have to travel, treat diseases, grab samples, or sometimes do special character actions. You can use aid dice from the CDC to buy aid from the event cards. You can also give other players samples, but the only requirement is, you need to be on the same continent. You can try for a cure at the end of your turn by rolling all the matching infection dice you collected as samples. If the sum of the dice is 13 or more, it's cured. This is why it's good to take a lot of samples. Once all 4 diseases have been cured, you win. Unfortunately, there is a lot working against you. After a player is completely done, they must add more infection dice to the globe. No continent can have more than 3 dice of one color. If you have to add more, you have an outbreak and it spreads to the neighboring continent. 8 outbreaks and you lose. Also, remember those bio-hazards I mentioned? They move the marker up the infection rate, meaning the more of them you roll, the faster the diseases come out. If you get to high on that track, you lose. Also, if you run out of dice to infect with, you lose.

We played 8 games in a row on the easiest setting. We lost every one of them. We never cured more than 2 diseases. I played one game solo (really me playing 2 players) and I almost won. I was a few samples away from curing the last disease. Obviously, we love the game. I mean, I played it 9 times. It really does hate us though. We will have our comeuppance soon.

Tally: 69/158  Bonus: 20/50