What I Played Today: January 16

One Night Werewolf, Zombie Dice, Pig, Poker

It was my sister's birthday, and we went out to a pretty nice restaurant and had some very good meats. I had a seafood dish with the best risotto I've ever tasted. I barely mind that the meal took over two hours for some reason.

After that we came home and shared games with each other. I taught One Night Werewolf to them, which they actually quite enjoyed and really got into, so that's cool. A couple of the games did come down to "Oh, we are all villains, so we win," or "Oh, we are all villagers and have completely screwed each other in a way that nobody wins," but that's just a problem with the three-person rule set. The game is best with five, frankly. Got to have at least five.

Then a round of Zombie Dice, because Zombie Dice is mindless enough. At this point my sister wants to show me a game she plays a lot, Pig, which is a push-your-luck game as well but also more specifically cruel in not allowing you to score points. You play to exactly 10,000, but you have to get 1000 points in one roll in order to actually start playing the game, which seems needlessly cruel. One person spent until the second to last round just...not scoring. It was definitely a bar game, but that's fine.

Then we had to teach Poker to someone, so we played for quarters, and I managed to steal six dollars from my sister. Well, it was money she wasn't using anyway.

What I Played Today: February 13

Zombie Dice, Guillotine, Tzolk'in: The Mayan Calendar

Some game store hommieing, played a fast and loose game of Zombie Dice. This game is always fast and loose. It is almost impossible to care while you are playing it.

Guillotine is a really easy game where you play a card, and then you take a card, and whoever has the most points wins. There's a bit of a take that element, and you are almost guaranteed not to get the card you want, but hey, it's pretty fun for a gruesome theme. Definitely filler-y.

Then the main event: Tzolk'in: The Mayan Calendar. It's a worker placement game that uses time as a resource, and it does so with this super sweet set of gears. There are five individual gears that are all attached to a central gear. You place your workers on little slots on each gear. After each round, you turn the central gear and the workers move up to the next space in line. For your turn, instead of placing guys, you can remove guys to take the action of the space you are currently on. It is so damn neat, I just like playing it because the decisions are simple (kinda) and the feel of spinning the wheel each turn is really cool.

I won because I saw right away that the best strategy would be to please the gods, since the other methods of getting points (the jungle wheel and buying monuments) are expensive, while pleasing the gods is less reliable, but only takes time. I botched a couple of rules early on, (you aren't required to beg for more money, for example) but eventually we figured it out. I like it! The game just looks great and plays well enough.

What I Played Today: October 5

Saboteur, Coloretto, Space Hulk: Death Angel, Zombie Dice, Apples to Apples

Spent some time at the game shop tonight, playing a lot of quick, light games, and also Death Angel. Started with a rousing game of Zombie Dice while waiting for people to get their act together so we could play some games. I lost. Then I put Death Angel on the table and tried to explain the game as much as it needed to be explained, which my fellow players thought wasn’t quite enough. So, it was touch and go for a bit, and with one team getting tagged out early in room 2 (which is just unfortunate, luckily we were in a game shop so there were other things going on), we struggled in vain but eventually fell in the last room. Too bad, it seemed to leave a bit of a bad taste in the player’s mouth.

Then we got out Coloretto, which I had heard about but hadn’t actually played, and it’s not bad. It’s a light game where you do one of two things on your turn, draw a card and add it to a stack, or take a stack. Each card is one of seven colors, or wild, or just free points. When the deck finally runs out, you score three colors based on a Fibonacci scale, and the rest of the cards you have are worth negative points. It’s a bit clever, and the strategy required in larger games is a bit tense. We played a couple of games, and I think I won one, but I definitely felt like I was losing throughout.

The there was a game and a half of Saboteur, and against all the odds in the world, I was the saboteur every single round. Worse yet, I also lost every single round. I don’t know if we were playing it wrong last time but man was it all too easy for the good dwarves to dig their way to the gold. There just seemed to be a lot more straight and narrow cards…I doubt this is true, but maybe the decks were actually different? Naw, couldn’t be.

Then, as a mild sedative to end the night, we played some Apples to Apples, and the new player scored maybe eight greens, while everyone topped out at two max. He is a master of psychology, that one. There was a weird moment when the card to match was “Irritating,” and both the cards George W. Bush and Democrats hit the table. It was a bit uncomfortable because everyone at the table could count at least half the players as relative strangers, and everyone’s political alignment wasn’t exactly obvious. Luckily, the guesser took the high road and invalidated both of them. Still, a bit tense.

What I Played Today: July 3

Zombie Dice, Tobago, Forbidden Island

A couple of friends came over to try out my new table, and I must say guys, I like it. It’s not very big, but it’s suitable for any game not published by Fantasy Flight (and I have my coffee table for that), and it’s pretty solid. It’s good to have a space to do things.

We started with a couple of rounds of Zombie Dice, which it is unnecessary to comment on. We then played Tobago, which I keep sitting on the fence about. It’s a neat game, with cool mechanics and components, but I never want to play it more than once every couple of months. Just something about it.

We also made the poor choice of rushing through a game of Forbidden Island with someone who didn’t quite grasp what was happening. The other players knew what was going on and what we were supposed to do, so we barreled through the rules, “You do this, and then this, and we win,” and it didn’t turn out so great. It was the toughest game I played of the game in a while, but I really need to work on a methodology for explaining games, because this is an area that I fall down at many, many times, and I should really be better at it already.

What I Played Today: June 16

Zombie Dice, Mystery Express, Hey, That’s My Fish, Halo

Yeah, I’ve been slacking, I apologize, I’ve been doing stuff, and frankly I’ve got no excuse. So let’s talk about what I played today!

Got together with the dudes to play some games, playing a couple of quick rounds of Zombie Dice, and no real comment here, there were some crazy improbable rolls, but otherwise a good time.

Then, after over a year and a half sitting in the back of my car, I finally got a chance to play Hey, That’s My Fish, and found out that it’s actually a simple but deep area control game about penguins. There’s a small playing field with each hex providing a resource of 1 to 3, and whenever a penguin moves, he takes the space with him, so nobody can move past him. So, it becomes less about getting the hexes worth 3, and more about blocking off regions so that only your penguins can access them. Pretty good for what is disguised as a family game.

Also got a chance to play Mystery Express again, and I think it doesn’t play nearly as well with three players, because you keep seeing the same cards over and over. Each turn, I was able to narrow down one category, and a couple of missteps by my opponents made it easy for me to quickly determine what the M.O. was, or the motive, and I got lucky when counting the times, so I was the only one who caught it. The only thing that I couldn’t narrow down was the location, and that’s because the player to my left had all the location cards and couldn’t possibly look at them all. But I would like to try the game with more. It also went a lot faster than the first time, mainly because we had a good idea what we were doing this time around.

Also Halo, which I have gotten both better and worse at. I completely failed on the one level I usually do great at, the grenade joust, but I was on fire in the rocket level, being able to pull off some hits that I never was able to do before, some lucky, and some just plain skillful. I had a great shot where I was in a one-on-one close ground fight, and traced my opponent’s jumppath and shot at where his feet would be in a second, and down he went. I am inexplicably proud of that, for some reason.

What I Played Today: June 9

Zombie Dice, Lego Rock Band, Green Day Rock Band

I played a lot of Rock Band today, from games I haven’t played before; the recent Green Day Rock Band, and the silly Lego Rock Band. Green Day is more difficult than you think, and I failed a few songs just because I wasn’t expecting it, so I played it down on hard difficult instead of my usual expert. We also ran across a song that turned out to be 10 minutes long, which raises the next thing they need to tell us on the song select screen; just how damn long a given song is. It’s a very specialized game, but still pretty enjoyable.

Lego Rock Band is more fun, because the song select is more varied, obviously, and it’s just goofy enough to be pretty enjoyable. There are some great song choices in this game, like some David Bowie and Queen. I enjoyed it, and the general attitude of the game is just fun.

I also played some Zombie Dice, which is a quick “press your luck” dice game, in which you roll three dice a round, keeping any brains as points, and shotguns as penalties, and you may roll three more dice. If you get three shotguns, your turn ends and you get no points, but if you stop you score as many points as you have brains. The first to thirteen brains wins. It’s simple, but fun, and plays in about five minutes. That’s all I have to say about it.