Friday saw another non-Star Wars Saga edition session as Rob was unable to make it. It’s rather irritating to see a long-standing group fall apart because suddenly a number of people find that Real Life(tm) is catching up with them. No idea where Mat is; Dave is working, Daniel is studying, Rob has a family, and so it’s just Adam, Sarah and me. Well, Sarah and me, because Adam really doesn’t like board games.

We managed to get in a game of Carcassonne: the Castle, and two games of BattleLore. That last is one I want to like more than I do. I’m a huge fan of Memoir ’44, but I haven’t been able to play that much BL yet. It’s a lot more fiddly to set up, and because I haven’t played much, I haven’t actually used the Lore rules at all. If the lack of Rob & Adam keeps up, I might actually get to play through all the basic scenarios with Sarah.

The Friday night session of our Savage Tide D&D 3.5e campaign went a lot better. I killed Craig’s catfolk for one thing. I also managed to have a bit of roleplaying and some combat; the balance is really important for that game. The roleplaying allows Peggy and Bradford to shine, the combat allows Craig to participate. Even if I do kill his catfolk. The problems with the cleric are really becoming manifest, though. Poor Rich spends too much of his time just healing the other players. The group is remarkably non-Charismatic, though. Unfortunately, the two roleplayers are playing low-Charisma characters… and although they do a lot of great banter, they’re hopeless with dealing with the NPCs.

The session ended with the group being shipwrecked on the Isle of Dread, with only three or four NPC survivors. Good old “Avner the noble cad” was one of them – Peggy’s Vee (for Veracity) and him have been circling each other for the past two sessions, and it’s been great entertainment. Here’s hoping it keeps up as they try to make their way across the Isle.

Craig died in the final act, just before the shipwreck. Don’t know who his next character might be. An Olman native to the isle, some adventurer whose been doing it tough, or another shipwreck survivor? Craig – what will it be?

Saturday saw the first Boardgame Day for a while at my place. It was a small affair, as I didn’t want to overburden my father with people and the cooking. He’s away in a short while to Italy, so we’ll have a bigger one here in a month’s time.

Josh and Rich arrived first – Josh is a friend of Rich’s who I met at Rich’s recent 21st birthday party. He’s also a Doctor Who fan, so I welcomed him with an old 1980 Games Workshop game – it played pretty well, too. Here’s the full list of what we played that afternoon and evening:

• Doctor Who- The Game of Time and Space (Merric, Rich, Josh)
• Carcassonne
• The Settlers of Catan
• Ra (Merric, Rich, Josh & Randy)
• Imperial
• Lord of the Rings
• Bohnanza

All links lead to my boardgamegeek reports of the sessions.

After everyone left, I settled down to watch the episode of Doctor Who that had screened earlier in the evening – Blink. It is the third story penned by Steven Moffat. I’ve just learnt that his second season episode: The Girl in the Fireplace won the Hugo Award this year. (His first season story, The Empty Child/The Doctor Dances won the Hugo for 2006!) And Blink? It’s another winner. I loved it – enough that after seeing it for the first time, I rewound the tape and watched it again. So what if I got to bed at 2am?

Sunday saw me pottering around in a daze. Watched Blink again, and played a solo game of ASL SK#2 – I’m up to S11, and I’m finally beginning to play around with ordnance. Not really great ordnance – the small mortar and bazooka only – but it’s interesting to use.

Monday, I played a couple of games of solo Runebound, using the Terrors of the Tomb expansion – it adds 30 new challenges to the decks, mostly undead themed. First game was with Ronan of the Wild, the second with Mordrog. Won both games, so I guess I’ll have to set the difficulty a bit higher.

Back at work today, where I find a bunch of teachers need their reports adjusted. Such is my life – gaming one day, school reports the next!