What I Played Today: May 2

Blood Bound, Alhambra

I managed to get some people interested in playing Blood Bound! That usually doesn't happen! We played a few games, a learning game and a couple of real games. It was fun, lots of back and forth, I don't think I was the leader once, so that's nice. There was this great moment when the game was close, and one my teammates had a clear choice of who to stab, but for some reason our leader was having a hard time convincing him. That's because the person to his left was the harlequin, who appears to be on the other team, and my teammate was just drunk enough not to realize he was being lied to. So, while our leader argued for a full minute, the harlequin leaned over, whispered "Stab him," and my teammate did! We lost, but it was such a good loss that I'm okay with it.

Also got a chance to play Alhambra for the first time, finally. I didn't much care for it! My problem is the game set up a single cycle of gameplay at the beginning and then did not vary it at all for the entire hour-and-a-half-long game time. There's a market of buildings, each of which costs one of four different currencies, and on your turn you can either collect more money, or purchase a building (or rearrange your area, but that's rarely a priority). You get points for having the most buildings of a type, and for laying your tiles so you have a long consecutive wall. There are three scoring rounds that come at random, the first two being kinda pointless! I now know why there are so many expansions, because this game needs a little bit of variety. Still, a decent entry level game, if a bit damn long.

What I Played Today: November 1

Bottle Imp, Get Bit, Bloodbound, King of Tokyo, The Resistance, Compounded

There's a new game play area in town, and I went to the grand opening. It was crowded! And they now serve food and beer there, so that'll ruin someone's game one night. But I'm cool with having more space, so that's good!

Anyway, after we finally found a table after they opened up the convention space (Yeah, they have CONVENTION SPACE now), I wanted to play a game immediately, so I suggested Bottle Imp, a trick-taking game with a twist. The twist is...don't hang on to the one card. You will lose. Guess what I hung onto? But it's interesting enough, I liked it, I would play it for a good fifteen minutes.

Then a couple of games of Get Bit, which is a pointless litle game! You play a card and hope that nobody played the same card, then change position in a line based on what you played, and then the last person in line loses a limb. Lose four limbs and you are out. Dumb fast game.

And then a couple of games of Bloodbound, which I still kind of like, and these couple of games went really well, if for the wrong reasons. The first game was a learning game and moved quickly, but the second game involved both harlequins, who didn't seem to understand what team they were on exactly, so the harlequin of the opposite team was working with me, which the harlequin of my team was gunning for me. Which was HILARIOUS. It could have been disastrous if only one of them made that mistake, but the fact that both of them did was just great.

And then a game of King of Tokyo that I sleptwalked through to win. Boring dice games. And then a game of Resistance in which we managed to put three of the four spies on one mission because we were being Idiots. Someone did something weird, and instead of assuming that they just did something weird, we assumed they were spies, and that was stupid. And of course the "leader" thought I was a spy, because I come off spy-ish ALL THE TIME! It's how I talk!

Then a game that was kind of about science, but was more just a blind draw and resource matching game. It just has science stuff all around it. But hey, it was competent, and I won, so that's cool.

What I Played Today: October 18

The Stanley Parable, Bloodbound

I played a lot of Stanley Parable today, and it's pretty good! Lots of funny things, lots of little mysteries, lots of things to try, although...not quite as much as I had hoped, but hey, still pretty good! Go play it dummies! The confusion ending and the game ending were both really fun, and...and at one point I saw somebody. Spoilers.

Also played a couple of games of Bloodbound, the first game ended pretty anti-climatically when my team's Harlequin just found the other team's Elder and told our Assassin to stab him, and the second game was this big to-do where my team just got hit too much to survive, but there was a lot of fun back and forth. Although I'm kind of seeing the strings reveal too much...there seems to be too much info out there at some point that deception isn't fun or easy. It's the same problem I had with Panic Station...if I can't lie a lot, then why am I here?

What I Played Today: October 16

Bloodbound, Senji

There's a new hidden roles game in town and it's called Bloodbound! This game is different because there are two equal team and you're only really sure about your role and maybe the team of the person on your right. Then it's a matter of figuring out who is on whose team and sorting out the leader of each team (the leader being the player with the lowest number) and stabbing the leader of the other team. If you do, your team wins! Otherwise, the other team wins. There is also occasionally a third team that is trying to target the leader of the winning team and can fake It's a pretty good game, with just enough uncertainty, some cool abilities, and a lot of chance for lying. I just need to figure out the best way to do it.

We played two games, the first one went well, although I called the shots and managed to lose the game when I targeted a player who was pretending to be the leader when he was just some scrub. The second game I was the leader and was being ignored for most of the game, and it eventually came down to the entire other team gunning for my head and failing, only for me to secure the win...and it turns out the third team had me pegged and won instead. Curses!

Then an...area-control game? I'm not sure if that's what it actually is...I didn't enjoy it. Each turn you can trade cards from your hand that only do bad things for you whenever someone else uses them? And then you can fight people, but you don't get points for control territories, but rather from fighting big fights? And there's also a deck of cards that you can get points from but not reliably? I don't know, I think I hate it. Boo Senji.