Yesterday started off in a more somber, reflective mood as I said good bye to a friend of the family. Jean was more than that. Growing up she was a second mum really. Certainly her youngest daughter and my oldest friend Ginette was like a sister. With my brother we were always getting into trouble together. Mainly (and Ginette remembers it this way too) caused by my brother. It’s a miracle we never ended up with any broken bones. I certainly learnt a lot more about Jean and what an amazing and interesting life she had before we were born. Plus I finally found out how old Ginette’s older sister Kay was. I knew she was older. Heck she used to babysit us. But not that much older. It’s older than I thought.
OMG!
Wow!
Last nights Friday evening gaming blew away our previous record attendance of 12 with the amazing number of 16 people turning up to play games.
It’s just simply astonishing.
It’s amazing to see so many people turn up to play board games.
There is one drawback of this new found success. I hardly get to game with Jonathan.
Whilst Jonathan was doing a teaching game of Railways of the World (Mexico map I believe). I was introducing three newish members to the world of Roll and Writes. and Flip and Writes.
Our first game was new to me and a learning game of Cartographers. Which falls into the flip and write genre.
I really liked playing this game (and yes Gavin these are games, unlike that jigsaw puzzle Barenpark).
The ambush card is genius. Each season (rounds really) you shuffle one ambush card into the explore deck. So if you don’t draw an ambush card in a season it’s possible to have multiple ambush cards in the explore deck and naturally at that point draw multiple ambush cards in a season.
When you draw an ambush card you pass your sheet to the player next to you (direction indicated on the card). This is where you get to throw a spanner in the works for the other player. But they also get to do the same to you. If the drawn ambush creature is not surrounded then each empty space is a negative point at the end of the round. So obviously you are going to try and draw the ambush creature shape in the most inconvenient place on their map.
Relic cards forcing you to draw the next shape drawn over a relic space on your map can be annoying.
I do like the changing end of season scoring, and that it’s a combo of two of the four cards, not all of them. The fact these are drawn randomly at the start adds a nice bit of variability and replay ability.
Ok I like this so much I will be getting the expansions for it. Which are map packs, more ambush cards, skills card and whatever the Heroes expansion adds.
My second and final game of the evening was teaching the amazing combotastic roll and write Three Sisters.
Compared to Cartographers and many others Three Sisters can be considered on the heavier side of things. Especially when things start comboing off. But it’s still such a fun game.
The preference from the new to this genre was they preferred Cartographers. But they really enjoyed them both. But plans were loosely put in place to play/try the even heavier Rome and Roll.
I think everyone had a fun evening game. I left with a game of Lords of Waterdeep on the go, and Liars Dice/Perudo starting up.