Gaming Day

This past Saturday was a big all day board gaming day at our house that lasted from before noon until almost 2am. We had a great turnout and almost all of Team Foot Foot showed up. In all there were 8 of us, although not everyone could stay for the whole time. It's hard to get 10 guys with family's & jobs together on a regular basis, especially when some of them live in Grand Rapids, Washington D.C. or even New York. I hate waiting until the August retreat to see everyone though, so I've been trying to schedule these all day sessions every other month or so. I've been doing very little gaming with the guys while I've been in school anyway. I've been missing it.

My attorney showed up around 10am from D.C. and we played a 2-player game of Aquadukt, which I recently ordered off Tanga for about $8.00. Simon and I had played this one the day before and although it isn't a bad game, I'm glad I didn't pay more for it. After that my attorney and Simon and I played a 3-player game of Gulo Gulo. Simon is always glad to play one of "his" games with "the guys".

By that time it was noon and Paul, Steve and Larry showed up so we played a 5-player game of Fearsome Floors, which I'd never heard of before, although it was designed by the same guy who created Power Grid, which is one of my favorites. Fearsome Floors is a game that takes place on a large off-sized grid with a monster who makes predictable yet somewhat complicated moves. The players each control three characters who are trying to make it from one end of the map to the other without being nabbed by the monster. It's quite a fun game and I'm thinking of picking up a copy for myself because I think the kids would like it some day.

After this we were waiting for Jake and Mark to arrive so the 5 of us played a filler game of For Sale, which is one of the best 10-minute fillers around. The others still hadn't shown up by the end of that one so the 5 of us moved on to a fairly short game of Citadels before they got there. By the end of that time I think both Jake and Mark had arrived, which meant we now had 7 and had to split into two groups. Me, my attorney and Mark played Colosseum, while Steve, Paul, Jake and Larry played Cuba (I think. I've never played Cuba myself although the others did rave about it.) I do like Colosseum, but it doesn't work well as a 3-player game. It really needs at least 4 so that there's enough competition over resources. But, it is a fun game nonetheless.

After that my attorney, Mark, Larry and I played a 4 player game of Thebes, which is fun but suffers from too much randomness. After that I sat down with Mark, Steve and Eric to play a 4 player game of Power Grid with the new power plant expansion set. Initially I liked the new power plant expansions, but I'm not so sure now. They seem much more powerful than the original set. At the end of the game all four of us were powering 16-19 cities, which would have been unheard of in the original set. The original set is much tighter. Maybe I'll have to try it again though.

Finally, as we usually do lately, we finished the evening with a game of Zopp. There were 6 of us left shortly after midnight so we divided into two teams of 3 and battled it out. When I say "battle" what I really mean is that we occasionally shot the puck around the board, but mostly we discussed strategy and argued about how much of the puck was over the foul line. I was just glad that I scored a goal (maybe two, I don't recall). It is a much harder game than it looks and I should really practice more. Our team (me, Paul, Eric) finally won against Mark, Steve and my attorney when Paul made a stunning (and accidental) goal from one end of the board to the other. (At least it looked accidental to me... Paul may claim he did it on purpose.) Good times... good times...

All in all it was a great gaming day. I think I won a few games like Aquadukt, For Sale, Zopp, but Aquadukt was only a 2 player before the group arrived and Zopp was a team effort. That leaves me with For Sale as my only source of pride for the day... the 10 minute game.

Special congratulations to Mark, though! He was truly on fire. I think he won almost every game he touched. I seriously hope he gets that out of his system before the retreat in August! And, my thanks to everyone for coming over and having fun. I don't get to do this often enough with my current school schedule.

Next up, we're discussing a full day in May to play a single game of Advanced Civilization. Civ is one of my favorites, but it is an endurance game and can take over 9 hours to play. It was a brilliant game back in the early 90's, but it suffers now just because better (and shorter) games have been produced in the last 15 years. Still, I like to try to play it every few years. Back before we had kids Barb joined me for several consecutive years traveling down to the Origins game convention to play Civ with me and a bunch of strangers. It has been about 3 or 4 years since we've played it though, and I'm itching to try it again.