What I Played Today: March 15

Sentinels of the Multiverse, City of Horror, Grimoire Shuffle

The latest expansion to Sentinels of the Multiverse is out, and we sat down for a couple of games. We first tried to fight the Dreamer, who has this weird twist in which you do not want to hit the main villain, which makes cleaning up the minions extremely difficult, because you can't use the abilities that hit all villains without putting the Dreamer in danger. So...there are a ton of minions that we have to kill one at a time. It was not ideal, and after the environment dumped a couple of huge hitters on us, there was just no way we could survive.

So a second game after a villain that gave out jinxes, which...aren't that big of deal. The minion-less villains are always problematic, because they always go down really quickly, since there is nothing else to focus on. But I continue to like the new stuff, and wait patiently for the next expansion that I have apparently already paid for.

Then City of Horror with some people that hadn't played yet, a lot of bargaining, a lot of backbiting. There was a really fun power play in the second round, in which I decided to heel turn on the guy I was working with turn one because I thought it was getting too powerful where he was, so I flipped to get a vote I normally wouldn't have, only for him to steal it with an action card and kill me instead. Things got a bit bitter in the late game though, when the decision I made of who dies in a given area apparently didn't go over well. But...I got one last trickster moment, when I somehow quicktalked a guy into losing two points to make sure no one died, even though it was really more advantageous for him to just vote for my character to die. I felt pretty slick about that.

Also tried to get people to play and like Grimoire Shuffle, and they didn't! Oh man did they really not like it. I don't know what the problem was. I still like the game, damn it!

What I Played Today: August 3

We Didn't Playtest This At All, D-Day Dice, Grimoire Shuffle, Kingsburg, The Resistance

Game night was super packed with Magic players tonight. We had to convince someone to set out a table for us. To start, a couple of dumb games of We Didn't Playtest This At All, which has an unnecessarily long name for such a dumb game. Then after a group went off to play Core Worlds, I showed off the games I brought, D-Day Dice, which was...okay, and Grimoire Shuffle, a game currently in playtest that I made a print-and-play of. It's a neat racing game where people work in teams to get through a maze. The team leader chooses a "book" of moving options for their partner, while the other team chooses a book for the leader. It's an interesting dynamic, and it was a hit at the table.

I played Kingsburg, which I hadn't before, because there were dice involved and I hate dice. But it's actually pretty fun, especially since I invested in the buildings that let me change the dice as much as possible. I ended up able to roll an extra dice for the rest of the game, which helped me win because I could take the queen space often. It was almost unfair.

Also a couple of games of The Resistance, one that I lost as the spy because everything just went the wrong way, and the second game I flubbed by putting in the wrong card in the mission, and we had to just stop the game and everyone went home. I felt like a jerk for breaking it, but everyone assured me they weren't mad. I hope.