A Descent into Dullness

Sunday was the roommate's birthday and so we both took some time off so we could try and do a game of <i>Twillight Imperium</i> with expansion rules.  I think we had politics, racial tech and a some others.  This was only my second time playing, this time as the mercantile desert lion people.  It was six person game with the others playing Space Ghosts (Marcus), Super Scholars (Chris), Angry Fire Demons (Josh), Humans (Kevin) and Wandering Stardocks (Brendan).  After 12 hours we called the game, with Josh managing to add 3 points in the final scoring to finish at 6 or 7 points.  I'd done well early until my neighbors (Chris/Brendan) choose to break our trade agreements so they could engage in unprovoked attacks on me.  Though I did spend most of the last couple hours just sniping at them with ground-based multi-hex laser defenses out of spite.  Pew pew pew jerks!

Only managed two games over six hours, but both were large-ish games.  A seven person game of Citadels.  Which Frazer won, just beating me by 3 points, by being the first to complete a full city of seven districts.

And then it was the new edition of Betrayal at the House on the Hill with the Widow's Walk expansion.  Some of the exploits and flaws from the original edition look to be fixed.  Like you can no longer camp in a trait boosting room to maximize it.  So we had a full six players and eventually activated the Haunt at 5 omens, the Vial in the Servant's Quarters.  By me as the Boy.  The Haunt scenario was a new one, "I, Mutant" where I was a mad scientist sending out assistants to capture the escape "monkeys" aka the other Investigators.  My assistants all had mutant powers and so did the Investigators.  It came down to the wire, with me filling the Research Lab with net traps and capturing all but one of the "monkeys".  Who had smashed all but one point on the lab.  Marcus even managed to fall to a trap after rolling SEVEN dice to resist and getting ALL blanks.  But Alyce, as the final Investigator standing, managed to disable all the remaining net traps and allow the next three players to stand back up.  The next two didn't manage any smashing, leaving it all down to Josh's priest.  And by cashing in everything, he managed to smash the last bit of the lab and get everyone out of the mansion.  Though without a cure for their new mutated state.

The roommate gifted me with a membership to this year's con again so I took the weekend off to attend.  Saturday got to try out En Garde, a fencing simulation card game.  Fun, though I can see how in a big multi-player game it can turn into a Pile on Player X situation.  Then after that I took part in Brendan's Twillight Imperium game.  Six player game and we managed something like 4 or 5 rounds from noon to 8PM (with a lunch break when I went home to feed the cat).  I ended up "winning" by being ahead by 2 victory points when we called it.

Sunday I was in a Call of Cthulhu rpg, "Proof of Life".  Small town politics in the 1920s over whether to allow in a lumber company.  Which leads to murder, brains in jars and a final confrontation with flying alien funguses.  Though my pre-gen character ducked out of the climax with the mi-go to run off and file her story of small town madness (with pictures!) and win herself a Pullitzer.  Which apparantly was established in 1917 and so is totally what happened.

ETA: On Sunday I (The Roommate) was supposed to play OGRE, but that got cancelled, so I had a game of Heroes Incorporated, a really fun strategy Heroes ggame which I lost by a hair, and Blood Rage, a Vikings in Ragnarok boardgame with a draft system, which I got absolutely trashed in. Heroes Inc. is out of print, so good luck finding it, and Blood Rage is a Kickstarter game that sells for around $75-$100.

Spent Saturday night having a board game night to take advantage of the birthday vacation time.  Started off with some Champions of the Multivers where our team of not-Superman, not-Thor, not-Hulk, not-Aqualad and not-Dr. Strange defeated not-Darkseid on the Mars Base.  Which was no easy task.  Then a game of Smarty Party that I managed to win.  And finished the night with a six-person game of Shadows Over Camelot.  Sadly, there all was lost to the traitourous King Arthur who managed to swarm the field with catapults...

Roommate managed to get a few people together for an impromptu board game night Monday.  Which meant I got to try out Dungeon (ok if a bit too simplistic and lacking in a real sense of competition) and Elder Sign, the smaller, slightly less complicated version of Arkham Horror (Enjoyable co-op game, though I still maintain it needs traitor rules)...

The roommate picked up Commands & Colors: Napoleonics and had us play tonight, using the first scenario. Historically this was a British victory. But thanks to my slaughtering his Portuguese support troops with my Bayonet Charge command cards, victory instead belonged to the Republican forces...

Only a half-dozen or so people showed up for this week. But I played some Power Grid, Lost Cities and finished with a Warhammer based game, Chaos of the Old Country or something. The last is a four-person game where each person runs one of the Warhammer chaos gods, spreading death, destruction and doom. I had the one in charge of pestilence and stuff. I do wish I had Friday nights off normally...

Brendan and Noah came by last night for my birthday. We ended up playing board games, ordering pizza and watching Wizard of Speed & Time. I completely botched up some early purchases in St.Petersburg and did terrible at that. Noah got lucky with a combo of cheap blue product producing planets and a blue market and cleaned up at Race for the Galaxy. Then we had a tight three way game where you're trying to gain control of the crowds of Rome. I can't recall the exact name. Municipalum or something I think. I ended up winning that one though...

Also my cat turns out to be a junkie for corn chips. Brendan let him sniff one and he kept trying to get more the rest of the night. Silly cat...

So the Scottsdale hotel asked me back to the same shifts as before. So this will likely be the last free weekend for a while. Got to play two of my games that I'd been wanting to try again, Betrayal at the House on the Hill (which we won, even if I was a frog) and Vegas Showdown (which the ex-roommate surged ahead at the end to beat me at). Also got to play the updated version of Formula De, Formula D (which I lost very, very badly). And while I lost at Acquire I did much better than I normally do at that kind of game...

Ended up staying out until almost 6 AM playing the Game of Thrones card game. Sadly despite a nice mid-game lead, Noah turned it around with his Lannisters to rocket to victory...

Before that played some Pandemic (where we lost Europe and the game), Shadows Over Camelot (where Brendan's traitor got Camelot smashed with catapults) and an amusing trivia game called Smarty Pants...