Tag: board games

Hopefully panettone counts.

We actually managed to gather to play boardgames during the holidays! No Kelsey, but we had Brooks and Vivian (who is less imposing than I expected, but very cyberpunk) and delicious posole, and played Terraforming Mars and Poetry For Neanderthals and a new game called Inhuman Conditions about trying to figure out whether someone is a replicant. I am not a robot, or at least Professor Herman T Schnitzelweiner isn’t. It was fun!

Read: Peach Boy Riverside vol 9 (coolkyousinnjya, Johanne): Mikoto backstory.

Written: 135.

Pretty sure Thanksgiving food is not the route to longevity.

Everybody except Dave and I went back to San Jose today, because they have to prep the kids/be prepped for school on Monday. Dave and I stayed to play Martian Rails (I am so bad at Crayon Rail games) and Waterdeep with Undermountain (again), which meant we got to see Kate. I forgot how great Kate is, she pretends my jokes are funny! Went to bed around midnight again.

Read: VACATION

Written: VACATION

I did some of that! Also I bought nothing (possibly because I was far away from the computer I use for shopping, but it still counts).

Ate way too many waffles, admired Non’s racing game tracks (because it’s 2024 and kids can just construct 3D environments on their notepads), played Everdell with the tree replacement expansion and Settlers of Catan and Lords of Waterdeep (again) and Holiday Fluxx, ate too many leftovers, played SPANC again because Ayse didn’t get to play last time, managed to get to bed not long after midnight. I’m sensing some themes to this vacation.

Read: VACATION.

Written: VACATION.

Happy Thanksgiving!

There was a lot of cooking, which I was completely useless for, but I did some of the eating. So much Thanksgiving food! Also played Takenoko and went to bed at a sensible time.

Read: Beware of Chicken vol 4 (Casualfarmer): We finally get backstory on the major conflict of the setting, but also a lot of coziness.

Read: VACATION.

Written: VACATION.

Turtles deserve loving homes too!

I was inept so we didn’t get going until after 9, but it was still early enough to miss the vast majority of the traffic and make it to Roseville by noon. Yay friends! Yay toddler!

Played Lords of Waterdeep with Undermountain, and SPANC (which I got a new copy of after having lost my original copy on a train platform many years ago), ate the traditional Chinese food, visited the gaming store which had only corporate and vintage RPGs, went to bed by midnight.

Read: VACATION.

Written: VACATION.

I do not have a ginger cat of my own to appreciate right now, and if I did they would be at home, but I can still appreciate them in general!

Car people (Ayse and Ken and Jus and Nonny) departed today, but Dave and I stayed to play more board games. I was terrible at them all, but that’s okay. We played Thurn and Taxis, which has nothing to do with taxicabs but everything to do with postal routes in early Germany; Sagrada, which would have gone better if the dice hadn’t failed to fit a very important spot in my pattern; and Spirit Island, which is complicated but it’s satisfying to crush the white plastic colonizers. Somewhere in there we had grilled dinner, but really it was all about the board games.

Read: What If? (Randall Munroe): I didn’t read it in order, but I think I got every chapter, so I’m counting this as a reread.

Written: VACATION

We had bacon! And also waffles! And later in the day, the traditional Chinese takeout. In between, there was Everdell and swimming, and afterwards, those of us who were keen on astronomy went up to a remote airfield for a star party. Alas, my eyes are just not good enough, even with a 10″ telescope.

I was also not good enough at Everdell. I blame the large number of places to put a worker that I had to keep track of and could not easily read, some of which were hidden in other players’ tableaus. Obviously it’s something of a skill issue on my part, but I think it’s also a problem with the design.

Stayed up too late reading a copy What If? (by the xkcd guy) that was in the room where I was sleeping.

Written: VACATION

Dave and I took the train to Roseville, which involved dealing with zero traffic and got us there in good time for pizza, but did not involve any whale sharks whatsoever. People who went by car got there very late and kind of frazzled, although probably in better shape than when the kids were smaller.

The small child who cannot be named is toddling now, but not entirely clear on the concept of numbers.

Started off the weekend of board games with Dominion, which went oddly because we had several special treasure cards from the Prosperity expansion but no extra actions.

Written: VACATION

Marith could not come because she doesn’t want to be sick and still have to go work in our third-world hellhole, but I fear no germs so I went to have New Year’s Eve sushi and games and movies and companionship. (There was also Korean fried chicken, but we had so ridiculously much sushi that we didn’t get to it.) There were hugs and chonky cats and eventually toasts and fireworks. Bizarrely, transit did not have after-midnight runs for partiers, so I had to beg a ride home from Ken, but that was the only flaw in an otherwise lovely evening.

Watched: Umbrella Academy 3.8: I guess that’s one thing to do while destroying the universe.

Watched: Mystery Science Theater 3000 4.21: Circus on Ice and Monster-a-Go-Go. That movie definitely earned its place in the “Worst Movies of All Time” bucket! Apparently it was built on the bones of an incomplete previous movie, but that doesn’t come close to explaining the awfulness.

Played: Innovation. I’m still terrible at this game but at least Jus didn’t beat me. (We tied for last.)

Played: Uno. Ken kept catching me out on calling uno, hmph.

Played: Poetry for Neanderthals. Another of the “try to get your teammate to say the word” games. The schtick for this one is that the prompter can only use words of one syllable, and if they mess up, a member of the team gets to hit them with an inflatable club. It’s surprisingly fun even when nobody gets clobbered! Ayse and I beat Ken and Jus, based mostly on one round where I immediately picked up everything she laid down.

Written: Holiday. Tomorrow for sure!

While I was on vacation, I saw a very cute baby who can stand up while holding onto things (which lets him get off the Baby Preserve), went on a three-mile hike with Ken and Dave, got help with Squaredle, ate a million unhealthy foods, saw many people I rarely see, and stayed up too late playing board games. I slept more than I wanted although not as much as my body wanted. It was a good vacation, but now, despite traffic, I am back. Marith did a great job taking care of Sage and Nightvale, because she is Best Lizard, but she was not in a position to feed them three gooshy meals a day, so they were glad to see me.

Played: Dominion. I did not win, although maybe I could have if the game had gone on longer.

Played: Ra. New to me, all about drawing tiles from the bag and bidding on them with numbers. As often happens, I seized the lead in the first epoch and then got no more points the rest of the game.

Played: Holiday Fluxx. Like all Fluxx variants, it is fundamentally Fluxx, and this is the rule of Fluxx.

Played: Puerto Rico. Moral depravity and I wasn’t even good at it! (Although neither was anybody else; it was a really close game and late at night.)

Played: Dungeon World. Jus wanted to play D&D, but nobody else volunteered and I wasn’t going to do that, so I compromised with an iron fist. An immolator, a rogue, a druid, and a wizard walk into a dungeon… and SET IT ON FIRE! Also there was some tussling with mooks and mutant frogs and traps, but by the time they got down to the heart of the dungeon, Jus had run out of gas. However, we stopped in a good place, and only had four players who are all likely to be up for gaming next visit, so I kept the character sheets and my terrible notes and maybe we’ll pick it up again.

Read: Perils & Princesses: You are fairy-tale princesses, going on D&D adventures. You have Resolve, Grace, Wit, a fairy godmother, a magic gift, one magic die per level(max four), and the contents of your inventory slots, because despite the fairy-tale theme, it’s a GLOG game. It has the usual D&D problems of “roll d20 to have nothing happen” and “everybody’s a bucket of hit points” but the system is simple and mostly player-facing. Also, because all lists and examples are numbered, it’s possible to create a character entirely randomly, which makes me want to try it for a con game.

Written: VACATION

It was a nice vacation. There was a baby, who is very cute and likes stealing glasses and saying “babababaabbbbaabababa”. There was air conditioning, so we did not die when it was 42C outside. There was the traditional Chinese food and grilled stuff and splashing in the pool. There was conversation. (Our hosts recently went to Japan and returned with tales.) There was a long stretch of sitting in cars, with a brief interruption to sit on folding chairs and watch fireworks at close range. (Nonny had a comment for each one, because he hasn’t seen a lot of fireworks.) There were board games. There were so many snacks. Eventually we got our act together and returned to San Jose.

Played: Everdell. We played this twice, so I have enough data to conclude that I am terrible at this game. I’d say the dual use of cards as discardable currency pushes it into Race for the Galaxy territory, but I’m sure that’s quite right. Mostly I’m just dumb. I’m sorry, cute forest creatures!

Played: Roll for the Galaxy. I came in second, which was also last.

Played: Pandemic. We also had the On The Brink expansion, but the extra roles didn’t save us. I came in last, along with all of humanity.

Played: Sagrada. I managed to get my tableau complete, but failed on all the victory conditions, so I came in last.

Watched: I totally thought I was going to do something useful when I got home, but instead I got chicken with too many bones and watched the start of a ridiculous anime called Estab Life. It’s the cyberpunk fantasy future, everybody has to live in their cultural burbclave, cute girl shadowrunners help them defect in pursuit of their unapproved dreams.

Written: FAIL. I had my laptop, and my current draft is in Dropbox, so I could have written, yet I did not. Pretty sure I can still make my overall goal, although this may not be my strongest week.

Played Etherfields with Ken and Dave, but not Ayse because she is sick. It has a lot of pieces, even in the tutorial, but so far is relatively comprehensible. There is a lot of it, too. Then I went to sushi with Ken and Jus, because she got a 4.0 GPA and deserves a celebration. Good work, Jus!

Read: The Agartha Loop second ed ch 1.8-1.35, 2.1-2.6 (RavensDagger): I didn’t diff the text, but it’s pretty similar to the first edition, except that it hasn’t caught up to the same point.

Read: Katalepsis ch 1.1-5, ch 2.1-6 (Hungry): Our main character has spent a decade believing she’s schizophrenic after imagining a twin sister and having a massive psychotic break, but as soon as she goes off to college, she meets a hot lady who tells her the monsters aren’t hallucinatory. Not explicitly Mythos, but lots of references. Extremely gay.

 Written: 114.

Today, I did one thing! I went over to play Monster Game with Nonny and family. Then I stayed for food and also the first episode and a half of Wednesday. It wasn’t great, but I enjoyed it and was sad when I had to leave to catch the bus, and finished watching the episode on my own when I got home. Then I did no more things.

When I got home, the water was out, no ETA for a fix.

Written: 386 kitten words.

I got up and went shopping even earlier, since I didn’t even have the excuse of needing to wait for the bookstore to open. I guess that was like being awake at a reasonable time? Anyway, I’ll claim I slept okay even though I felt lethargic later in the day.

Played: Zoomwarts, at long last. You’d think a game with only two players plus a GM who has no life would be easy to schedule, and yet… Bella and Rosamund and the lizards have found most of the students and conned a hapless psychopomp into helping them escape, but now two of the four are unconscious and a partially-overlapping two are trapped in a cave full of slugs and bubbles with an evil octopus who hates them.

Played: Among Us. I am still terrible at this game, and also after playing like ten rounds I have never been an imposter, but I will keep playing because it makes people happy.

Played: Uno Flip. What name should we give to the most greenish of the colors on the dark side of the cards? Ayse maintains it’s teal, but it doesn’t seem blue enough to be teal to me.

Read: The Maid I Hired Recently is Mysterious vol 3 (Wakame Konbu): Still has no socially redeeming value, but the bystander who ships the two leads has finally suggested a name to give to their feelings.

Written: 505 kitten words, resolving the Existential Dreads and bringing me to 3414/3000 for the week so far.

I woke up on the first try again, and this time I got up right away! What is going on?!

Today I tried to learn One Deck Dungeon along with Ken and Jus but failed on the first set of doors, ate a bunch more food that was really tasty even if not metabolically appropriate, went swimming in a chilly pool with many splooshy children, played Among Us for the first time and did absolutely terribly at it, stood at the back deck admiring the night sky and its relative lack of fireworks, and stayed up until midnight playing Dominion.

I had nothing to do with it, but the jigsaw puzzle that was started before the pandemic has finally been finished.

Written: VACATION.

There was an available mattress, which might be why I slept much better than usual for a vacation. Or maybe it’s the new brain pills, or having something other than capitalism to get up for. Anyway, I was surprisingly functional.

Important vacation activities today: Playing Tomb of Annihilation (same engine as Castle Raveloft/Temple of Elemental Evil) with Ken and Jus, watching kids swim, eating grilled foods, playing Super Smash Bros with everybody, playing Lords of Waterdeep until midnight. I did so badly at Waterdeep that even Jus, playing for the first time after an exciting day of vacationing, beat me. This is because I am dumb, but I like playing Waterdeep anyway.

After smashing a bro, Nonny went to play Splatoon with Josh and Ollie and some online friend of theirs, and apparently stomped all over the three adult videogamers. To the point where the one who wasn’t local got on voice chat with him and wanted to know if he’s really nine. I tend to think poorly of Nonny a lot of the time because I mostly see him when he’s wound up and sleep-deprived and nine, but he really is great at video games.

Written: VACATION.

Everyone is covid-free, so we went to Roseville (no longer held in Rosevilla, CA)! As usual, I rode up with Ken, and we talked about gaming, listened to folk-punk music and Old Gods of Appalachia, stopped for horrifyingly greasy Mexican food, and didn’t die from traffic. We got there before the other car by like one minute, because they didn’t stop for anything.

The Petterson family has very exciting news, which you are probably not cleared for or I would have already told you. But it is all good news!

Heard much about Al’s Ptolus campaign, which is about to hit episode 100 and sounds like it has been a blast the whole way. I wish I could run something like that, but I don’t know how to do it without putting in all that work, and I’m not sure I could put that much work in even if I wanted to. Also I would probably need more reliable and interested gamers.

Dave and I finally bailed from the dying Empires & Puzzles alliance and went to Marith’s much more active alliance.

Played: Codenames.

Read: The Holy Grail of Eris vol 1 (Hinase Momoyama, Kujira Tokiwa, Yu-nagi): She’s a sincere but wallflowery noble girl, she’s the ghost(?) of someone executed for getting dumped by the prince. Together, they fight aristocratic intrigue.

Written: VACATION.

Didn’t do much during the day, although at least my shopping expedition yesterday gave me the knowledge to warn other people that Trader Joe’s closes early on NYE so they should go shopping sooner rather than later.

In the evening I got dressed in normal-person clothes and transited over to Monkeycat Towers for a party. Earl and Cat are hiding from Omicron, and Marith has to start work at 03:00, so it was a pretty small party, but cozy and full of friends and feasting and kitties and geeking about Cursed Princess Club.

Eaten: Cheese fondue, roast duck (by Ken, who doesn’t even like duck, but does love Ayse), and chocolate fondue with cocoa cream cheese balls. None of it was healthy, but a bit of indulgence to see off 2021 is okay. Right?

Played: Laser tag, lightsaber thwacking, noncompetitive Dizios, and Roll for the Galaxy. Jus won RftG, crushing me like a space insect.

Words: FAIL. I could have been writing all day before the party, but instead I was lounging in bed and then reading CPC.

I was not much more useful today than yesterday, but it was an actual holiday, so that’s okay, I guess? Marith and I went over to Monkeycat Towers to help them eat Christmas food and play with presents. It was extremely nice despite Nonny being full of mucus.

Eaten: A very nice ham, many leeks, assorted other vegetables, coffee panettone.

Played: Othello, Gnomes at Night, Nerf target shooting, and something that involved running around yelling “there’s a ghost! get it!”.

Words: 388.

Today was much less cooking-oriented, so more time for board games! We played two games of 7 Wonders, one of the MHA card game, and one of Lords of Waterdeep. Many leftovers were eaten. Josh and Oli escaped out the back door without actually encountering any visitors, but we waved and yelled. There was another park visit, this time without Dave but with some parents. It was very pleasant, aside from social anxiety.

NaNoWriMo Words: VACATION.

Today was mostly food-orientated, but I was not involved in food preparation, so I helped Dave take the kids to a park, played Dominion with Empires, watched My Hero Academia 4-7 because Jus is now old enough to watch it, listened to Jus and Kate geek out about MHA fanfic, listened to Ayse and Kate geek out about Elfquest fanfic, and ate some more.

NaNoWriMo Words: VACATION.

Started the day with brunch at The Table with Ayse and Ken and Jus (who skipped school and is now an anime girl). It was good, I should go there more often! Then I traveled with Ken to Roseville (which hasn’t been in Roseville for several years now) and because we left before noon, the traffic was not terrible and we arrived in good time. Everyone else, who had to pack children and wait for Nonny to finish school and such, had to fight through holiday traffic and didn’t arrive until dinner time. (Marith was defeated by capitalism and could not go at all.)

We searched for the lost art of conversation and played Dominion with Nocturne (vampires and raiders and bats, oh my!) and also the My Hero Academia card game (a combination of Guillotine and Lords of Waterdeep but at least Mineta still sucks) and ate Chinese food until everyone was unconscious.

Josh and Oli didn’t arrive from Land of Plague until super-late, but their tests were negative so Ayse and Ken did not have to pack up the children and flee. Josh and Oli remained isolated in their room for the whole time they were in residence, though, which seems like a terrible way to spend Thanksgiving.

NaNoWriMo Words: VACATION.

Cleaners came extra-early today, but I still got to sleep in compared to yesterday, so whatever. It did mean I was up and about early enough to walk to grocery shopping and make Walkr happy.

Marith was dead from capitalism today, so I went to visit Ken and Ayse and Jus and Nonny by myself, with no Zoomwarts.

Played: Dominion (with Guilds), Super Mario Party River Survival Mode, Murder Mystery. Jus won at Dominion, which is probably Ken’s fault. I bet she’s genetic.

Eaten: Chicken, eggplant, shishito peppers, balsamic-drizzled tomatoes.

Watched: Yona of the Dawn 21-22: The big pirate battle!

Watched: Kaleido Star 6: The Jonathan episode!

Read: Dark Calling (Darren Shan): Now we know what’s going on, cosmically speaking, and why 8×8, but it’s not going to help any of the main characters. In fact, several of them have already not been helped.

Words: FAIL.

Back from Roseville vacation (no Roseville actually vacationed in). There were friends and food and Jus got to see Elyssa again and swimming and Josh is TWENTY how is that even possible?! and board games and swimming and pirate fireworks over the back fence and Kate’s hair is so short and I only blew up the toilet once and too much heat.

Played on vacation: Roll for the Galaxy (I still suck at it), Terraforming Mars (I… surprisingly came in second?), Codenames (Jus had the insights!).

Read on vacation: Lockdown Tales (Neal Asher): Short stories, Polity or post-Polity, mostly full of violence and depravity and robots and sometimes aliens.

Read on vacation: Drifter’s Folly (Glynn Stewart): Fourth in the series about humans trying to put galactic civilization back together after destroying the alien empire, following up on the great betrayal of book three.

Read today: Artifact Space (Miles Cameron): Space opera with a plucky teenager escaping rape-culture horror to fake her way onto a giant spaceship and save the day repeatedly despite alien economic intrigue and imposter syndrome.

Words on vacation: NONE.

Words today: FAIL. I did read through what I wrote on one project, and it’s pretty terrible, so maybe not writing is for the best.