What I Played Today: April 27

Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World, Cards Against Humanity, Ascension, Spaceteam, Artemis, Trivial Pursuit

Hanging out with some old as chums today, got to play some cool games. Played a few moments of Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World, which was a weird game to pull out, but hey, I still like it. Apparently it's easier now, I should finish that game...

Then a very long game of Cards Against Humanity! We laughed at awful things! There was a terrible Trayvon Martin reference! There was a quick game of Spaceteam in there while someone went to the bathroom! I like Spaceteam!

Then a few of us played Artemis, which turns out is surprisingly fun once you figure out what the fuck you are doing. There was probably a full hour of trying to get it set up and trying to figure out what on earth we were doing, but we eventually managed to fly through space without too much trouble. I got to play the captain as well as Communications, which is nice, so I got to tell people "Hey, go over there and shoot that spaceship." Pretty fun. We completed one mission successfully, then tried another and ended up dying when the program crashed. The program is very crashy on the iOS versions, but now that I know how to play, I want to do it again.

Then played a new Ascension, which is pretty neat! It has a new resource to gain, which allows you to get benefits if you have enough of it on a given turn, and the majority of the time, it doesn't choke up your deck. The way you get the treasure needed to gain the new resource is a bit slapdash, but it really makes the game a bit more interesting.

And then an endless game of Trivial Pursuit, using the original Genus set. Guess what doesn't exist anymore! That's right, Western Germany.

What I Played Today: Driving Week

Cards Against Humanity, Le Havre, Dominion, Roulette

I've driven more in the past week than I usually work during an average week. It was balls. But here is what I managed to play when I wasn't in a goddamn car!

My first stop was in Los Angeles, where I played a couple games of Cards Against Humanity. I like the addition of a random card when there are a small number of players, adds a bit of variety, although makes it super easy to figure out when someone else said something horrible. Also, they don't handle Pick 2's very well. I got dealt a card that was a full sentence (YOU MUST CONSTRUCT ADDITIONAL PYLONS), which was funny, but also didn't fit any of the prompts at all, so it sat in my hand forever. I finally offloaded it somehow, but didn't win, so...I don't know...

Also played the new Hinterlands from Dominion while it was there. It was...alright, I think the random cards we got weren't the best set. There was something a little off about them, they made it easy to take a really long turn, but hard to get a lot of big money, since there was the constant threat of someone Robin Hooding your gold away from you. Plus, half the time Robin Hood didn't do anything useful, and he did something not useful constantly...eh.

I went to Las Vegas and I feel bad about it! I played some roulette (noted for completeness), which I kinda like a lot, it's an interesting game of chance, where it's really to your advantage to play the whole field. For some reason, at the fancy no-dealer table I was at, they showed to the stats of what numbers have been hot lately, what hasn't been, and I looked at that and thought, "Well, that's useless." Because the odds of it landing on a given number of every single time was 1 in 38. It was literally there to confuse you into making bad decisions.

Got sidetracked in St. George because my car is a jerk, while there, played Le Havre on my cellphone. It's a cute little adaptation, good to have the option to play whenever I want, although it is probably a lot better on a iPad, when you can actually see everything that is going on. I lost by quite a bit because I did not prioritize building buildings, so I couldn't get my wealth up. Shrug.

And then I drove forever. Didn't get a lot of chance to play, not even when I spent a day in Idaho. I did unbox my copy of Eclipse, but that is a story for another time...

What I Played Today: June 23

Cards Against Humanity, Risk Legacy

I got to play Cards Against Humanity, and it is a terrible game. Not in terms of quality, but in terms of the insane things that will happen during it. Let's just say that the Pope was involved, and he shouldn't have been.

I also got to play Risk Legacy again, and there will be spoilers, which will be after the jump. It was a simple three-player, in which we all took up positions on our section of the planet and expanded north, so eventually we were all squatting on two continents a piece. I was engaged in skirmishes across the Alaskan border to make sure the Austrailian-based player rarely had full control of Asia, while the African-European player just slowly built up her forces so that her territory was pretty much impenetrable. Eventually, after several rounds of me and Australia wearing ourselves out with our dumb Siberia war (a war I was losing as I kept losing control of Canada), we noticed that the Africa could just win right now if she wanted to, as she could easily roll into my home base, throw down four cards for a star and end the game immediately. Of course, we talked her out of doing this because I was extremely close to be able to deploy 30 soldiers to the board at the beginning of my turn, which would have opened one of the envelopes, and I totally wanted to see what was in there. So we convinced her to...hold off on her victory so we could see what was going to happen.

So, a couple of weird turns, in which my homebase changes hands among my opponents multiple times and I've got maybe the East Coast and Greenland, when I throw down my 10 coins to get an extra 30 troops and...