What I Played Today: March 6

Speedrunners, One Night Werewolf, The Last Banquet, Avalon

There was a game night! I went and ate some pizza and had fun. Speedrunners was being played pretty much throughout the evening. The game is fine. You run. Although now that the game is more popular, there are user-made levels you can choose from, and guess what, they are all terrible. Just universally not very good. And of course the most popular one involves a dick joke, because gamers are the worst.

A couple of games of One Night Werewolf, one of which I lost because a revealer saw me and I happened to be a werewolf, and one in which I THOUGHT someone was definitely a werewolf, only to find out that the robber just kinda lied their way out of the whole mess. I did manage to find the Tanner pretty easily though.

Then I finally got to try The Last Banquet, which everyone except me ended up liking! The Last Banquet is a large party game where everyone splits up into two teams and tries to position their assassin next to the king using any number of powers that move people around. For what it is, the game is fine, a fun party game with a lot of movement and some goofy roleplaying. As a game, there is not enough substance. There's very little that the king can do to prevent getting killed, every person can take at most one or two actions, and everyone seemed to take a long time figuring out which one of two actions they were going to do. It also is a pain to play at a real table, since there is so much motion. I think it's best suited to be played with a circle of chairs, so that motion through the middle is easily handled. But, for people who don't play a lot of games, this is a really good bet, I think. If you happen to run icebreakers for a company, consider The Last Banquet.

Then a fretfully stupid 5-player game of Avalon. I figured out what the badguy pairing HAD to be to make sense, but for some reason didn't act on it in the final turn, because I got confused, so the spies won. As they always do in a five player game. Never play Avalon with five players.

What I Played Today: September 25

Felix: The Cat in the Hat, Avalon, 7 Wonders

Tried Felix: The Cat in the Hat again, and...I'm pretty sure I hate it now? Like, it's fairly poorly balanced, because once you win a round, you are out of the game for a good three rounds or so trying to build up your income, and if you wasted all that money on a crap round? Man, screw this game. I might just throw it away!

Then a couple of games of Avalon. I know I tend to sound evil no matter what I'm doing, which isn't...helpful. It only gives me credence when I am evil, because that's just how I sound, so I can lean on that as my style. But...first game I lost as a good guy because they found Merlin, and second round it was 9 people with too many penalties for evil, so we lost handily because we couldn't get a dude on the team, and there was no way to know who Merlin was.

And then a game of 7 Wonders, which is a great game! Especially with the expansions. Man, 7 Wonders you guys. It just hits that space really easily. After you get past all the iconography. So many fucking symbols, man.

What I Played Today: September 13

EVE Online, Avalon

I played quite a bit of EVE Online, I finally bought that cool Level 2 spaceship I wanted, and then I got worried that I was going to get blown up, because that's how shit works in EVE Online, but nope! I have it, and now I need to fit it with a cloaking system so that I can finally get around and do stuff.

I went to a party today, and we played a game of drunk Avalon. Drunk Avalon is great because it doesn't matter! I was a bad guy, and we won because I knew who Merlin was. Haha, take that Merlin.

What I Played Today: July 10

Avalon, Fish Cook, The Resistance

Someone wanted to play Avalon, so we played several games of Avalon, in which Merlin was caught almost every time. You kind of need a Percevil, I think.

Also played Fish Cook, which is a cute game about buying ingredients and making recipes. Pretty simple, I liked it, good to see Cheapass publishing stuff again. Then I played "something else." It left absolutely no impression on me, because I cannot remember AT ALL.

Then at the bar, we played a game of The Resistance, because the guy who refuses to play the game let us, and it was pretty tense. I got taken for a ride by the new guy, who spent most of the game appearing not to have a clue, and one of the rebels made some spurious arguments that made me think he was a spy, so the rebellion lost...

What I Played Today: March 13

City of Horror, Pixel Tactics, Avalon

New backstabby game, oh boy. This one you play a group of survivors who are trying to survive a few hours from the zombie horde, which are zombie hordeing. Each building has a special ability and a limited capacity as well as a threshold for zombies, and if there are too many zombies, everyone there needs to vote to see who dies, basically throwing them to the zombies. All the survivors have a special ability, and each player has a hand of action cards to do special stuff, and of course everything is tradable, so there's a lot of brokering for favors and such.

We played the first few turns as a coop, in which everyone was helping keep everyone else alive to garner favors and such. And then, in the third turn, there was a lot of damage to the water tower, which can collapse and kill everyone, and a threat on the table that it might need to collapse if a certain character didn't get where he needed to go. The people on the water tower wanted to bail, and there was so negotiation on how to get them off and into safe places. Now, I knew where my character wanted to go, and I could get there easily, so I kinda just didn't feel like telling the table where I was going. So, we flip our moves, one player prioritizes getting his guy off the water tower instead of the suggested move which would have prevented the water tower from collapsing, and there are a number of deaths, except for my people, who were doing fine. Then the last turn I have everything I need in my hand to both keep my people alive as well as return them to their unused higher-point value side. So...while everyone has dead folk or exhausted people, I am sitting very pretty and win easily. And now people will never trust me again.

Then a quick game of Pixel Tactics. I like the changes made, I like the interesting decisions you have to make, but I wasn't paying attention and set up the game so that my leader got murdered. That one leader who gets three actions a wave instead of two is bullshit.

And a couple of games of Avalon, both won by evil, because the Merlin was too obvious in the first one, and I was not being very good at understanding someone's logic. I think I'm going to stop bringing this to bars, as my game usually collapses when I got a drink in my hand. Please, it's just too loud. Too many mistakes made.

What I Played Today: February 6

Netrunner, Noir, Blades of Legend, Nanuk, Avalon

I played a game of Netrunner with my awful criminal deck. This deck is not good! For one thing, it's too expensive, and my icebreakers are garbage. The corporation was able to hide all his good stuff behind this one server that was just way too difficult to crack, and my last ditch run to get back there just...didn't work. I don't know, I need to start over, try again. Might just skip that tournament, because I am not ready.

Then I got to crack that Minigame Library. We played a game of Noir, which is a deduction game. There's a 5x5 grid of characters, one player is an killer, who can murder people, and the other is a sleuth, trying to find the killer and not get killed. The player can slide a row or column as well, it's just a matter of trying to figure out where the other person is. The killer won each time, because while the killer can change identities if he gets in a pinch, the sleuth cannot, so if he is found out, he is pretty screwed. But fun! I want to try some of the other modes.

Also Blades of Legend, which is weird hidden role game. There are two teams, each lead by a master, and everyone else is a wielder, who have special swords. Everyone is trying to break the seals in front of the master, either their own, so they have a more powerful weapon, or the seals that belong to the master, to defeat the master. It was slow going at first, because nobody really understood what they needed to do. But once we started understand, the teams became extremely obvious, and it was just a matter of burning things down. The weapons didn't really get used, which was kinda sad. But people ended up liking it regardless, so I have a chance to get it to the table again.

Nanuk is a push-your-luck game where people get eaten by a bear! I did pretty well, able to call when the hunt would go well or not, and some poor player guessed wrong every single time and did not collect any cards. But there was a tie for first, and it was not me.

We had a game of Avalon at a bar that went well until some poor knight put in the wrong card and we had to crash it. It was funny that the new player didn't quite understand how things worked, and didn't put herself on the mission as a leader because she thought she couldn't, and when she was on a mission, she immediately threw down her card and shouted "Success!" Of course, she was the only spy on the mission and it was the last mission for good, so I don't know WHY she threw down a pass. But yeah, at least we stopped the game immediately when a mistake was made, because getting to the end when the game is broken is frustrating.

What I Played Today: January 9

Love Letter, Red Dragon Inn, Sentinels of the Multiverse, Avalon

Love Letter is a cute little game, mostly luck-based, but with some deduction and so forth, and I like it. The game ended up going to the same two people constantly, which was weird, but I dig it. Short and fun. I wish it wasn't sold out absolutely everywhere.

Red Dragon Inn is a game about drinking. It is always ridiculous, but I ended up winning. Hurray.

A five player game of Sentinels of the Multiverse, against Grand Warlord Voss, and we managed to win somehow, despite our spike damage player seemed to be screwing around and almost wasted his finishing move on a minion with one hit point. (No what are you doing.) We thought we were doomed when a card would have dumped a metric ton on minions onto the field, but we managed to survive the experience, and then we won. As Visionary, I was, of course, useless.

Then we went to a bar and played a good many games of Avalon, and I was the absolute worst. Every time I was either Percival or Morgana, so I had some inside knowledge of who Merlin might be, and every single time I was dead wrong. Man I am stupid. I managed to lose every game. Just me. Everyone else at least won one, but me, I sucked completely. Our last game I thought one of our players was trying to double-bluff us (I may have had a drink), when really the person who was obviously Merlin was actually Merlin. Why didn't I just try to kill that person?

What I Played Today: December 14

Core Worlds, Avalon, Two Rooms and a Boom, Lemonade Stand

We had to go to a different game store this week, because our usual store was setting up table or something, I don't know. Once we all got together, everyone played Core Worlds, because Core Worlds. I was at the non-expansion table, and it was pretty good. I didn't win. That's all.

Played a game of Avalon, it was a five-player game. Five-player games always end badly for the Resistance. The spies always managed to pull it off, and they pegged our Merlin as well, so it wouldn't have mattered.

Then I forced them to play a game I read about on the Internet, Two Rooms and a Boom. It involves two even teams, with each having a special member. One team wants both of these members to end up in the same room at the end, the other doesn't. Every round, a player switches rooms. I thought it was interesting, although it eventually devolved into chaos at one point, as I wasn't regulating it as well as I should have, and we ended up with half the group hating the game. Well...whoops.

Then a game of Lemonade Stand at a bar, which is always a mess. The pizzas arrived during the last round, we had to play around pizza. PIZZA.

What I Played Today: December 1

Whatsit, Avalon, Loaded Questions

Party night, a night for party games. First Whatsit, which is a silly Milton Bradley game where you try to come up with phrases based on what's written on a card, etc. You know, like those dumb brain teasers. Anyway, we played, and it happened.

Then some games of Avalon, the first one a good victory for good, and the second game went to evil because of moderator error. I had accidentally put in one too many evil cards. And...the five people who would have known there were too many bad guys didn't say anything. So...we lost, because the good guys were under the assumption there were only three minions. I have even started going out of my way during set-up to make sure the teams are right. But somehow this wackiness happens. I don't know.

Then a game of Loaded Questions, which is its own little weird thing. Basically someone reads a question, everyone writes down an answer, then the question asker has to guess who answers what. It soon devolves into crazy town, with everyone writing insane answers to enjoy the inanity of people reading them out loud. I may have had to read a phrase several times, and it may have been recorded.

What I Played Today: November 16

Chaos in the Old World, Skull and Roses, Avalon

I got to play a game of Chaos, as the magic dude, because I'm always the magic dude. This game was weird and terrible for Khorne because he couldn't do all the murder he wanted because the event cards just shut battles down at certain locations, and he had some crappy rolls. The rat managed to win because nobody had any interest in killing the rats, so they sat around and joined the ruining party and got all the points that way. Good for them.

Then played a couple of games of Avalon, which people were really liking, which is good, because I like Avalon. The plot cards from Resistance require way too much explanation, so this adds some cunning elements that are easy to understand. Good! The first game went well with six, in which I managed to trick some the bad guys into thinking I was Merlin, even though I wasn't. And then a game with 10, which was an unmitigated disaster. You see, I was a bad guy in that game. I completely forgot to open my eyes. Just...completely forgot what my card was. I was playing for the good guys the entire time. Also, another spy didn't open their either, so only two of the four spies were actually playing for the right team, and Merlin only knew two spies. And for some reason, NOBODY SAID ANYTHING, so we played all the way to round 5, in which, despite the fact that it makes absolutely no sense, the spies won. Good job, spies. Sorry for being awful.

Then a game with some more roles, and that was even better! I like more roles!

Also played Skull and Roses, which is fun and not really worth mentioning.

What I Played Today: October 16

Avalon, Risk Legacy, Dance Central 3, Rift, Super Mario 3D Land, Pushmo

Got to try out Avalon, the Resistance sequel? that adds a bunch of roles, and I like it because roles are awesome. Good lost because of a couple of failed early missions, and while we did manage to get four known goods, we just didn't have the wiggle room to get more info later on. And Merlin was a non-starter, so there's that. Although, I ended up being super-trusted somehow, which was weird.

Then a game of Risk Legacy, that I hadn't played in five games, and apparently things had gotten nuclear. I was pretty much a non-entity, just kinda hanging in North America, slowly building up my hand, but the zombies snuck a victory before I could release my game winning, packet-opening maneuver. That sucks.

Then Dance Central 3! I love how goddamn stupid this story is. "Yeah, Dr. Tan is building dance robots and taking over the world with time travel? Don't think too much about it, just get out there and dance to 'I Will Survive.'" Although medium is a lot harder than I remember it being. Either that or I am a fat asshole.

I logged into Rift and did some Instant Adventures, which took me to a starting zone and deleveled me to 14. For a second there, I thought it was doing the Guild Wars 2 trick, but it turns out I could have bumped my level back up if I really wanted to. I don't know...the expansion comes out in a month. Maybe that'll be worth it?

Then I dicked around on my 3DS while watching Homeland. Finally beat that one level in Pushmo that had been giving me problems. Don't know how, but I did it.