The pills I have to pop to mask the arm pain are still working. Which means I was able to get some gaming in.
This meant I was able to carry out the Three Sisters plan on Tuesday.
What hadn’t been taken into account was we were clashing with the open mike night at the social club.
Unlike the open mike night at my local back in Guildford when I lived there, which was poetry and comedy. This one was all people that had the impression they can carry a tune.
One particular crime against humanity and music was a cover of Bon Jovi’s Wanted Dead or Alive. Apparently the singer is a really nice guy. But I’d argue otherwise just based on this one song alone that he is a cruel sadistic git.
The other acts were not much of an improvement with their covers either.
With this audible assault going on we were still able to concentrate on our game of Three Sisters. Barely.
This game was an all in game using both the weather mini expansion plus the third mini rock garden pad.
I rarely use the apiary when I play Three Sisters. But this time I set my self the goal of focusing on progressing along its tracks.
It’s one of the things I love about this roll and write. There are so many ways to approach the game and focus on things.
I also managed to grow all the pumpkins! Plus complete a couple of perennials.
Considering Dave had been thrown in the deep end (literally) with this game his score was quite respectable.
We followed Three Sisters with a game of the roll and write I picked up second hand from this years UKGE, Roll Through the Ages Bronze Age.
This is a step down in complexity from Three Sisters. But still an enjoyable game especially when you roll three skulls and cause a plague giving your opponents minus three points.
I was pleasantly surprised when I won this one. Everyone else was building more than me whether it was cities, monuments, or making discoveries.
After the two roll and writes the “music” got too much for Dave forcing him to leave before he was driven mad and forced to get revenge. We had a three player game of Village Rail.
This was a new to me game. Which was very enjoyable.
You know in Small World if you want a faction not at the start of the market row you have to place a coin on each faction until you get to the one you want? This game uses the same mechanic to draft cards whether they are scoring cards or track cards.
Money is quite tight in this game, with your main source of income coming when you complete a line and earn money for the number of items matching the bonus card or whatever it’s called you decide to use for that track.
Otherwise you are drafting cards to place in your play area to try and maximise the points you score when you complete the a track or for the long game of end game scoring.
Somehow I managed to get a convincing win. Beginners luck.
After this victory we too made a dash for the door with our auditory pain tolerance levels having been reached.
Last night saw me play AuZstralia for the first time.
This is a Martin Wallace game. I have one or two of his games in my collection (London second edition, Wildlands, Hit Z Road, come to mind straight away).
Having played this now I can see what all the fuss was when it came out.
These days I find Cthulhu themed games boring or at best a lazy theme for a game. However it works here but then again it could easily be replaced with dragons for example with Cthulhu being replaced by Tiamat.
But it’s the mechanics I like about this game. I like how each action you can take has a time cost, and repeating an action already with a cube on means it costs you gold plus the time cost.
Like Tokaido, Glen More, Trekking Through History, Patchwork, etc the person at the back of the time track takes the next turn until they are no longer last. It then becomes the new last placed person to take a turn or turns.
A rather cool thing is the ancient ones don’t actually start doing their thing until all players pass them on the time track. Then they start waking up and causing havoc.
Our game ended when Cthulhu destroyed Marcin’s port. After the points were totted up Diego and I would have shared the victory if Cthulhu hadn’t scored one more point than us to grab the victory.
I blame Marcin for building too many farms for Cthulhu to reduce to desolate waste lands and thus giving the ancient one the points for victory.
But it is a fun competitive co-op. I like it a lot.
I’m glad the meds masked the pain enough for me to play some games this week with my friends. I needed these after missing last weeks gaming.