Wilson!

Liz and I had a lot of time to chill to toady and a apparently we wanted to die, so I set up...

Robinson Crusoe: Adventures on thew Cursed Island 1-4 players
Do you like playing a game that will make you feel like whatever you do is useless and insists you are powerless against the power of nature? If you said yes or suspiciously said no, then this game is for you. This is a cooperative game were you all play survivors on an island. There are a number of different scenarios you can play, but in most cases you are trying to not die and accomplish one or two main goals. In most games it's a challenge to just stay alive. You each get two actions to either explore, build tools, hunt, gather resources, or help others. If you don't get help on an action, you risk failing the action or having other bad things occur. If you always help everyone, then you aren't doing enough to make the island livable. I've died most games. Liz and I have lived once and it was still close. Afterward we realized we were playing slightly wrong.

We played Scenario 1 called Castaway. The goal is to have lived long enough to create a large wood pile for a signal so that by the 11th or 12th week you can be rescued. We felt like we were starting out okay. As this game almost always does, things barreled out of control. We lost access to most of our food supply through tragedy. This left hunting as our only option which caused us a lot of wounds since we didn't have any weapons left. By the end of the 7th week we had filled a third of the wood pile and Liz had died from the cold.

Both of us are on the borderline of hating this game. Liz maybe more so. It gives no slack. I either want to hate the game for being too merciless or hate the game for making me feel like an idiot. There is still an inkling in me that says I can beat it. Much like my frustration with Pandemic: The Cure, I need to rule the game and not let it rule me. The rest of the day I spend toiling over my errors. I know that I'm probably using my determination tokens poorly. We also needed to build a hatchet sooner, and we forgot to make good use out of the bear fur. There is just so much to keep track of and having death looming doesn't help.

For dinner we went to HUB and got pizza. We played Ascension and Cribbage. I won Ascension with a buying strategy. Liz won cribbage with a come from behind sprint.

Tally: 171/185  Bonus: 43/50

War Is Hell

We had just the right amount of people show up for our lunch gaming for us to play...

The Grizzled 2-5 players
This is an interesting cooperative game that I saw a play through of. You all play as French soldiers during WWI. The goal is to make it through the war together. This is done by removing and playing all the trial cards on the "peace" pile before all the trial cards get removed from the monument pile. On players' turns, they can play cards from their hand (mostly all bad) or use what little the have to help the cause (remove played or unplayed cards). If the mission is failed (three cards with like symbols), the peace pile gets bigger. If the mission is survived. The peace pile... still gets bigger, but by less. At the end of a round, players show who they offered support to and if there is one majority, they can ease some of their burden. Players then start a new round by dealing more cards from the peace pile and making it through the war.

We had the full 5 player experience. It started out okay. Nothing too bad happened, but the hard knocks cards (cards that are played on your character and change the rules in bad ways) continued to pile up. We failed to have a majority of support in the first round, but improved as things went on. During the entire game we never failed a mission. We even got to the peace card, but it was hard to get rid of cards in our hands and the hard knocks kept coming. We eventually failed because at the end of a mission I had more than 3 hard knocks on me.

We all enjoyed the game. Well, maybe not Rob. He doesn't ever play games and was new to the group. He was trying to find a way to unwind from work. This may have added some stress. He definitely saw the value in the game, but I'm not sure he'd ever play again. One of my co-workers wanted to borrow the game which I would have gladly let them, but I still wanted to play the game since it was still new to me and I had a feeling I was going to play it later in the day.

And we did. After trivia, Spencer, Sarah, Liz and I jumped into the trenches. It was brutal. We failed at least two missions and 3 of the 4 speeches given were complete duds. As soon as we started making traction, the memorial card reared it's ugly face. Poor us.
Spencer had to leave after that and Sarah needed to relax so I dumped out Jungle Speed. We played 4 games of it in all and I won every one of them. I was definitely aided by the fact that Liz and Sarah were a bit inebriated. We still had massive amount of fun.

Tally: 170/185  Bonus: 43/50

Anything Sells If It Sounds Dirty

We gathered together at the parent's house to have dinner and play games. I got picked up by Sarah since Liz didn't get off work until 6. When we got there, Becky was ready to play a game and Sarah suggested Dutch Blitz. I started out horribly and Becky started out okay. After about 6 rounds I was able to shake off my bad luck and went quickly from -30 points to winning the game.
By this time, Thom was up and about and Carol had gotten back from the grocery store. Thom named the the next game to play.

Fact or Crap 3-8 players
Crap. It's a fact that this game is crap. I got it as a present, I think. It's a trivia game where you make quick bets on whether information is true or false. Everyone starts with 8 tokens. The youngest player reads 3 T/F questions. After each, player's secretly play cards with their answer. If correct, the player gains a token. If wrong, they lose a token. If you were first to answer, that doubles the reward or penalty. Once a card is finished, the player to left reads the next card. Occasionally the reader draws a Rush Hour card. They pick one person to answer 5 T/F questions. If correct, they get a token. If wrong, the reader gets a token. Once the tokens run out, the game ends and the player with the most tokens wins.

I have never wanted to slap Becky more than when I played this game. She made it very obvious she hated the game. When she read questions, she made it obvious what the answer was and tended to give the answer before Thom was able to play an answer. She also tried her best to hide tokens from the box. Everyone else played like a normal human being. Once the game finally ended, I was one token shy of tying Sarah for the win.

I am completely with Becky on this. They game is horrible and I'll most likely never play it again. A lot of the questions are pretty absurd. I think there was only one question that I wasn't completely guessing on.

After dinner, we played a 5-player game of Paperback. It went on a little long, but everyone enjoyed it. I won, but I was only 2 or 3 points ahead of Liz and Sarah.
We finished up by teaching the parents Dutch Blitz. I sat out to keep score and make sure they were following the rules. Carol nearly won, but lost her touch in the final round allowing Liz to take the glory.

Tally: 169/185  Bonus: 43/50

Happy Space Beads

Liz and I love our lazy Saturdays. Once awake, I got straight to setting up 504 for game 567. Halfway through the game I had the realization that the money tokens we were using had different values on the flip sides, so there may have been a few rounds where Liz got a wrong (usually larger) income. We both felt soured by this and we just cleaned it up and Liz suggested a heavier game.
I set up Agricola as Liz made breakfast for herself. I started out strong with a great agriculture bias. Mid-game, Liz really found her gears with her occupation cards and gave me a run for my money. In the end my saving grace was that I had a larger stone house than she did.
Shortly after that game, the mail arrived and with it, the next game we would play...

The Game of Real Life 2-6 players
This is a game that is mostly available in Oregon. The guy that sells them lives in Eugene. I had seen him at Saturday Evening Market a few times. Liz and I got a taste of the game while visiting Emily and Drew. They had borrowed it from a friend. Liz liked it a lot. I'm not sure what inspired me to order the game years later, but I did. It's a roll and move game that is a parody of The Game of Life. Your sex, status, and health are random. Spots you land on vary from the bad, like drive-by shootings, war, and midlife crises to the good, like first loves, spirituality, and trips. There are also crap shoots like sex and drugs which could be really good, but also could be really bad. Happiest player in the end wins.

I started as Malik: A middle class boy with good health. Liz started as Bitsy and soon died in a drive-by. She started again as some other female only to be killed in another drive-by. Lastly she started as Barry: A rich boy with poor health. She made it through the drive by this time (Rich are exempt from them). I got a middle management job, married rich, got disabled, divorced, went into space, lost my fortune, reunited with my high school sweetheart, and wasted away in a crappy retirement home. Liz became a disowned bum, had lots of sex, moved to Canada to avoid the draft, had a near Donner party experience, got a motorcycle in a mid-life crisis and died of influenza.

This is a really interesting play on Life. They best part of the game is you actually write a little diary as you play so that once you are done you can recap the life you lived, or have a nice little party favor.

We needed to get going, so we worked out, got cleaned up, got dressed, and headed out the door. We got food and Red Robin and played The Duke. It lasted a while, but I eventually trapped Liz. We have very little time to do anything but get Liz some new jeans. I dropped her off at home and headed to my game group.
One guy got a bug or something so we didn't play Descent. We started with one of Brian's.

Galaxy Trucker 2-4 players
Everyone plays as space truckers hauling what they can in their scrap pile they call a ship past meteor field, pirates, and God knows what else. The game is played over 3 rounds. Each round has two phases. The first phase has all players frantically flipping over tiles to build a ship from spare parts (lasers, engines, cargo holds, shields, batteries, etc.). Once complete (and connections are verified) it's on to phase two. Cards are then revealed one by one. Some are good, like planets with cargo. Others are debatable, like pirates and smuggler (if you don't have enough lasers or have too much cargo) that will make your life hell. Some are just bad, like meteor fields. If you can make it through the deck without having your ship lose all it's parts and crew, you can sell your cargo. Each new round allows for bigger ships, but also a larger deck of cards to navigate. Richest player wins.

We had a false start because Josh and I both misunderstood a building rule. After that, it was unsmooth sailing. Overall, Bryan did very well,  I did moderately okay, and Josh did poorly and barely passable.

I liked it more than I thought I would. I was kind of hoping to see more ships fall apart than I did, but Bryan always had a seriously solid ship with a laser on every surface. I would still gladly play again.

Next up...

Trajan 2-4 players

I watched a game of this and liked the mancala mechanic. I'm always willing to add a game to the pile if it has something new to show me. It takes place during Roman times. You are... um... doing stuff. The theme is pretty loose. You are basically taking different actions to build up points. You can construct, get bonuses, get favors, move armies, jump in politics, and ship goods. All the actions are good and better to take at different times during the game. It's not hugely important in an explanation. It's how all the gears move that are important. Everyone has a player board with a tiny kind of mancala board. It has 6 dishes and starts with 2 "beads" in each dish. On your turn, you draw the "beads" from one dish and drop one each in the dishes (clockwise) until you run out. Each dish represents and action (the ones I mentioned). The one you land in is the one you take. So you have to do a little planing as the game goes on to get to take actions you want. The game doesn't just stop there. Each "bead" has a color. If you can get the right two colors in the last bowl with a trajan tile, you get a bonus (it could get you a number of things from points to free dudes on the board). So now not only are you worried about the number of beads in each dish, but also which color you want to drop off in which dish. If you thought I was done, then you're wrong. The number of beads you move also advances the game timer. The more beads you move, the more it moves. After a "quarter-year" of game time each player needs to have met the "demands" of the people or suffer point penalties. It's a crazy awesome thing.

A lot of people call this game (and most Stephen Feld games) a point salad, meaning you get points from everything you do. It may be true, but I don't care. This mancala thing is so weird and awesome at the same time. Sure you can get point from pretty much everything, but knowing how to make the most out of your points is where it's at. Also, if you aren't great at the game, at least you can feel like you're accomplishing something.
Bryan and Josh caught on to the game pretty quick. Bryan had a good lead for most of the game, but I was able to earn a crap load of end game bonuses to get me into the lead. Josh was pretty far behind mostly because he kept suffering penalties for not meeting the people's needs.

Tally: 168/185  Bonus: 43/50

Wood You Or Woodn't You

Liz and I were having a very lazy day. So lazy in fact, that we forgot to eat lunch. We made it to Saquatch and we played ..and then, we held hands as we ate. We quickly lost the first game, but we actually won on the second game. Yippie!
As we got the check, we invited Sarah and Becky to come over for some games. In the end, no one could make it. Liz was still ready to get to business so I got out...

Jericho 1-8 players
This is a Jenga variant that I'm clueless to how it got in my collection. I don't believe that is officially license by the company that makes Jenga. From the title, I continue to think that after you remove a piece, you would have to read a bible verse written on the block, but it has nothing to do with that. Everything is the same except that there are fewer blocks and 5 of them have marbles hidden in them. You must catch the marbles before they hit the table or you have to take another turn right after you finish that one.

The entire game, neither one of us ever had to worry about a marble. And our game wasn't short. I think we got about 18 blocks in before it fell on Liz.

This is about as good as Jenga. I think the blocks in Jenga are sanded better or have a coating on them, because this version seemed to have a lot of very stuck pieces. It could have just been the way it got stacked, but the original is still a little better.

We followed this game up with...

Don't Tip The Waiter! 1-2 players

Another wooden stacking game. Liz got this free from work. Players stack dishes on a waiter's trays until the dishes topple or the waiter tips over. There are two variants. Players take turns adding one piece of their choosing. The player that topples loses. The other variant has a player add pieces alone and scores points for the dishes they add. The player to score the most on their try wins.

We played both variants. I won all of them. It's not a great game. The individual game is a bit better, but not by much. It's a cute looking game, but only worth it if it's free.

We had time for one more game before we needed to start making grilled cheese and tomato soup. Liz was eager and curious to play...

504 2-4 players
I got this one for Xmas. It's called 504 because it contains 504 different games. The box contains parts for 9 different modules. Each game uses 3 of the modules. The first module represents the the goal of the game. The second represents the income. The third adds flavor. This means 9 × 8 × 7 = 504 games. Each of the modules represents a different standard game type: Pick Up & Deliver, Race, Privileges, Military, Exploration, Roads, Majorities, Production, and Shares.

We played game 123 or The World of Traveling Pioneers with a Bias to Individualism. Points were earned by delivering goods to cities. Money was earned by being the first to build settlements in places. On a turn, we were also given the chance to purchase special rule bending powers. The game played pretty quickly. It started slow at first, but the game ramped up very fast. It was a pretty close game. I won by about 5 or 6 points. Had we purchased different privileges, it could have easily ended differently.

This isn't a very deep game, but I really like the diversity of it. This wouldn't ever be anyone's favorite game. I don't think it was ever intended to be. It is a really cool experiment for sure. I'm looking forward to playing game 567 or The World of Combative Explorers with Connections.

Tally: 166/183  Bonus: 42/50

The Standard

With my parents in town, we had Liz's parents over to watch the Vikings Seahawks playoff game. Thom and Carol also brought over Ida and Jack. A little past halftime, Ida got tired of playing Mario Kart and wanted to play a board game. She picked out...

Monopoly: The Simpsons 2-6 players
At one point in time I had this, Scooby-Doo Monopoly, and 2 regular monopolies. I cleared everything out, but kept this one to match my Simpsons version of Clue. I'm not a big fan of this game. I tend to win, but that's not the weird part. It's that I seem to piss everyone else off and turn all the other players against me when doing so. I've seen players dump their entire fortune on other players just so someone has a chance at taking me down. I don't get it really. It's not like I'm spitting on them as they go broke in my lovely hotels. With all the junk rules everyone throws into this game, it's largely luck based. I've never actually played with the written rules. In fact, I've never read the rules. Well this time, it's different. None of this crap at free parking and I instigated the auctions on lots that aren't purchased. Let's see if this game can be fun or at the very least interesting.

Ida was a little put off by playing with the actual rules but she went with it after sticking her tongue out at me. About mid way through the game, I was able to strike a quick deal with Liz to trade a light blue property she just got for a green one I had. Without much thinking she took it. I then had the first monopoly of the game. By the time all the properties were claimed, I had at least one of every thing except the rails and the dark purples. I purchased a purple from Ida to clinch the only monopoly on the board. After a number of rounds with not too few people landing on my monopoly I started negotiations with Liz. She got the monopolies in purple and green and I got monopoly in magenta. Liz having little money meant she could only afford to put houses on the cheap purple ones. I quickly went to hotels on my gain. Soon enough I bankrupted Liz and claimed all she had. A short while after that Ida fell too. I think Ida took the defeat a little better than Liz.

I have to say that I do prefer the real rules to the usual house rules. It moves the game along at least. The auctions also allow for a bit more strategy. It's still one of my lower ranked games though.

Much later in the day, after they Vikings lost and we went to a Winterhawks game, Liz, my dad and I played a rematch of Cribbage. I was able to keep pretty close to my dad this time, but he still beat me. Liz actually got skunked. We finished out the day by getting mom in on a game of Qwirkle. It went well. I was going mad with points by the end. Mo scored a few Qwirkles, but my dad scored none.

Tally: 163/183  Bonus: 42/50

Belated

My parents are in town to see the house and to celebrate our own Xmas. After exchanging presents in the morning we headed out into the world to get food. We stopped a 2 places that where still closed and decided to just go to the Clubhouse. We brought along the game my parents got me, ...

Dutch Blitz 2-4 players

My parents happened to see this and they knew I wouldn't already have it, so they got it. It plays a little like a mix of Solitaire and Speed. Each player starts with their own individual colored back deck. Each deck contains 40 cards labeled in 4 colors and numbered 1-10 in each color. The blue and red cards are labeled with boys and the green and yellow cards are labeled with girls. Each player shuffles their deck, then places 3 face up cards down, and then 10 stacked face up cards next to them. The stack of 10 is called the Blitz pile. The remaining cards make up the wood pile. The game now mostly plays like Solitaire. Each player can move up any 1s to the public center area. After, they can also move up any consecutive same colored cards to the public area. They can place any consecutive descending cards on the 3 cards first played as long as they alternate boy girl. If players get stuck, they can draw three cards from the wood pile to use. The Blitz pile is always open to use from and is never added to. Once a player has no cards left in the Blitz pile, the round ends with them yelling "Blitz!" and everyone stops. Every player earns a point for every card they played in the public area and loses 2 points for every card in their Blitz pile. Rounds continue until someone gets 75 points. Highest score wins.

We actually played wrong first. We were adding the wood cards to the Blitz pile when stuck. This didn't go anywhere. I check the rules and fixed the error. It was much more intense when played correctly. Throughout the entire game only Mo or I every Blitzed. I tended to fair much worse when I didn't Blitz which meant my mom won.
I'm usually not a fan of speed games. I hate the game Speed. This one works for me, but I don't think I wouldn't every play this with just 2 players. Liz is certain that Sarah will gobble this game up.

Later in the day Liz, my dad, and I played a game of Cribbage. My dad handley beat us. His strategy? Clean Living.

Tally: 162/183  Bonus: 42/50