I’d like to point out that this was all Randy’s fault. If he hadn’t called me asking for a day of gaming on Saturday, we wouldn’t have had two days of gaming. I refuse to accept blame on account of being a gaming addict: Randy should have known better than to ask, knowing I’d say yes…
Saturday:
Watched Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End before I got to Randy’s: not bad, not great. The ending and fate of the characters were perfect, but I’m not sure about the bulk of the film. I think I need to see it again. 🙂
At Randy’s we had two big new games to play: Twilight Struggle and Tide of Iron. We’d intersperse these with shorter games…
Twilight Struggle – Randy won by a mile during final scoring. We need to learn Russian, people! Very interesting game, where I gifted Randy with a lot of points due to various factors.
Balloon Cup – one of my favourite short games, Randy won 3 trophies to 2. Very close and unusual game.
Tide of Iron – a big World War 2 game from FFG. It’s very, very interesting, although I find the components fiddly (especially the soldiers). The gameplay was brilliant, though. Randy won by holding me off – it’s very, very difficult for the Germans to win when they’re played by an inexperienced player. Needs a better first scenario!
Goa – a fun Eurogame and possibly Randy’s favourite game – he was absolutely delighted when I chose it to play. He also won, but I’m doing better at it.
Lord of the Rings: The Confrontation – I managed to win this as Sauron, but it really was very, very close. The wargs did for Frodo in the end.
San Juan – I had a dream run of cards, which does not describe Randy’s game. 🙂
Ok, it’s past midnight… time to go home.
Sunday
I finished Kate Elliot’s new book Spirit Gate in the morning – not bad, although I don’t like all the characters. Then, off to Randy’s again for the big game day.
Memoir ’44 – Whilst waiting for the others to arrive, we had a short game. Very odd scenario – lot of setting up, but very quick play, with Randy completely overrunning my forces. Craig arrived towards the end, so we moved to game of
Ra – Craig had never played this before. Why did he win it so convincingly? Meg arrived towards the end of the first epoch, and watched the rest. Rich arrived before the end of the game, and we had all gathered. Next up…
RoboRally – I reached the first gate first! Things went downhill from there, and Randy eventually took the game, just beating out Rich who had two turns of nothing despite being in the lead and hardly damaged. Meg had a forgettable game.
Ticket to Ride: Europe – I came so close! Randy won in the end, with a bunch of very complementary tickets.
Meg then departed, as she had things to prepare. We had dinner, and then went to the main event…
Twilight Imperium 3e – Would you believe there was only one attack in the entire game? (Randy vs. Craig). Rich won as his technocrats just got too many victory points from the objectives.
Alhambra – needing to play a simple game to finish, this is the one we chose; I also demonstrated how powerful building a good wall could be. 🙂
So, eventually I got home, sometime early on Monday morning. As you might expect, I spent a lot of Monday on bed – I love not needing to work on Mondays!
Click on the links for the session reports.
Cheers,
Merric