House Tour

Al's Cave





My Boudoir

Wacklepudding Cards

Downloaded the English translation of the Wacklepudding cards. Formated them to fit on lables just slightly longer than standard playing cards. Sliced off the extra with the papercutter (Z had to help me find that). Stuck them on an old deck of cards. They came out all kinds of awesome. Or well, at least useable.

Games with Francie

The school year has begun, it is getting dark earlier, and the rainy weather is at hand. We are getting back into our little gaming routine. Tonight we went over to Francie's and played Settlers while the girls played dolls. Francie now has the hang of the game. Al and I both made some risky choices that didn't work out for us. Francie played a solid, conservative game and won.

Francie likes to play a game to death; until she knows every strategy; until she doesn't even have to think about her moves. Then she likes to play it some more and beat everyone. Then she is ready to move onto something new.

Me on the other hand, I like the challenge of the new. I like variety. I have a half dozen games in my cupboard that I really want to play, but haven't had the time for; yet despite this, I hear the sirens' call of new games. I keep going over my wish list and loading and reloading my cart at Thoughthammer. We won't be placing an order until November for our holiday gifts, but I can't help myself.

Here's what's in the cart now:

Last Night on Earth: The Zombie Game
For me. I know no one will play this with me except Al. Will LNoE be my new Buffy?


Warrior Knights: Crown and Glory Expansion
A gift for Al. He loves his Warrior Knights. He carries it to Game Club nearly every week, but no one will play with him. Poor Al.


Memoir '44: Winter/Desert Board Map
Also for Al. He keeps picking this up at the game store, and then putting it back down again. Think he wants it? Yeah, I think so.


Ticket to Ride: Switzerland (Swiss Map Expansion)
A gift for Francie. She plays a lot of two player with S. This will make her happy.

Settlers of Canaan

A gift for the Temple. They have a small collection of games. Most of them are standard mainstream games. I think this would be a good addition.

Cities & Knights of Catan, The

Because by December, Francie will finally be ready for this.

Game Group Sat

Drove the 40 minutes to spend the day playing a big, long, complicated multiplayer game... but the game never happened. Instead, I spent all day playing short games waiting for the real game to start. But by the time everyone was there, and not playing another game, it was too late. So instead of spending 6 hours playing one really good game, I spent 6 hours playing crap.

The low point of the day was Manitou, a buffalo hunting themed card game. BLEGH!

The highlight of the day was watching the kids play Ca$h 'n Gun$ and All Wound Up. Wind up zombies and foam guns are fun.

No games this weekend

I didn't play any games this weekend. We talked about playing, but just never did. Some weekends are like that.

I did:

Put together my Lego Harry Potter Hogwarts Castle. I was greedy and didn't let anyone help me.


Go mountain biking.

Put our Warrior Knight counters into 1/2 cup Gladware containers. They fit perfectly in the box.

Read "World War Z."

Watch Dr. Who.

Bored now. Need to go find Al and make him play with me.

Yspahan

Francie played Yspahan last night at game night. She has found her new true love and wants me to add it to our game order. Crap. She's going to make me play with her and it is going to suck isn't it. She also guilted me into promising to play Torres with her soon. I guess it only fair, since I made her play Warrior Knights and Struggle of Empires.

Also in the news - Francie finally plays Settlers of Catan.

A couple of years ago I introduced Francie to Settlers of Catan. She played it once, declared that she hated it and refused to play again. I told her that the only reason that she hated it was that we have the Mayfair first edition with the less than intuitive textured color swatches on the cards. A few months ago Francie picked up an unpunched more recent edition for $2 at a yard sale. I've been trying to convince her that she should try playing it, since the resources on both the board and cards are more clearly illustrated. But would she listen to me...noooooo. Last night Francie announced that S had finally twisted her arm into playing it and that they really liked it. Duh. She confessed that I was indeed correct and it was my ugly edition that had put her off. Yay. So now we have an light family game that we can play together. I was really getting tired of the same old same old. Plus, now that we have enough people who like to play, I can finally justify getting the expansions.

Age of Empires III

First, I am checking, and ... yes I am posting this to the correct blog.

Played Age of Empires III: The Age of Discovery tonight. Boy was this one big sucking disappointment, and I came into it with low expectations. The only thing this game is good for is cannibalizing it for bits to use in Struggle of Empires.

Struggle of Empires

We played two wars of Struggle of Empires tonight. We weren't able to play the entire game because we got a late start. This guy Scott was repairing Harry the Lego Hippo when he got swarmed by bees. We invited Scott in and gave him some beer and pie, and let him sit a while. We tried to get Scott to play Settlers with us, but he decided it was getting late, and he needed to get home and take care of his bee stings. So we didn't get started playing until about 9 pm. Francie said that we have to start gaming earlier, because she starts falling asleep at about 10:30 pm. I told her that Scott vs the bees wasn't exactly part of the original plan for the evening *cough cough*

Struggle of Empires

I spent this evening teaching myself Struggle of Empires. Francie stopped by and saw the game laid out on the table. I told her it was like Nexus Ops with action points like Railroad Tycoon, and an 18th century theme instead of a Sci-Fi theme, but it scores like Mission: Red Planet. She said that she's in and is coming over tomorrow to learn how to play.

More Mordred

Finally a picture of the new edition. The large cylinders are wonking ugly, but I like the board and the little evil dudes.

Arkham Horror?

Yesterday we were playing games at a friend's house. I mentioned something about "Arkham Horror."

One of the kids overhears me and pipes up, "We learned that in Hebrew School."

Looks of confusion and disbelief are exchanged among the adults.

The child continues, "You know, so we can do it at Bar Mitzvahs."

The child then proves it by getting up and demonstrating a few steps of the Arkham Hora.