My addiction

When I first applied for and was accepted to grad school I was required to send in a couple hundred dollar deposit to "hold" my spot in the school of social work. That was three years ago. Then I started school about two years ago, took out a ton of student loans and recently finished up all the classes and whatnot. But, for some reason the school never applied my deposit to any of my classes. A few weeks ago I called them about the negative balance on my account so they just sent us a check back for the deposit amount.

So, what do you do when you get a couple of hundred dollars you weren't expecting to get? I asked my lovely bride who said: "I don't care, spend it on whatever you want."

What else was there for me to do? I Promptly ordered another dozen board games for me and Simon. This time I picked out six games that were mostly kid oriented and six that were for me and the Foot Foot gang. They arrived last week.

In all I got: Amazonas, Babel, Caribbean, Castle Keep, Chateau Roquefort, Hare & Tortoise, Jambo, Mykerinos, Elfenland, O Zoo Le Mio, The Thief of Baghdad and Vikings.

So far they seem to be a fine batch o' games, but we've still only scratched the surface of all the games we've bought lately. Of this batch Simon and I played Chateau Roquefort and Hare & Tortoise a couple of days ago. And, the other night the Foot Foot gang had a gaming night and I played Vikings with Paul and Larry. Everything else is still shrink wrapped.

So far, Chateau Roquefort is about the coolest family game I've seen in a long time. The physical game itself is a bit of an engineering marvel. It is difficult to describe, but the game is played on 3 layers of thick cardstock representing the roof, and two layers of floor of a castle. Each player controls 4 mice who roam the castle in search of cheese. But the players can move the floor tiles underneath themselves or their opponents. This may either move a prized piece of cheese closer to your mice... or it might move a hole in the floor underneath an opponent causing one of their mice to fall into the "dungeon" and out of game. It is really quite clever.

Hare & Tortoise is a great game that Paul introduced me to some years back. Simon and I enjoyed playing it the other night and he does understand the rules, but still has a hard time choosing an optimum move out of all possible options. I consistently had to point out several good options for him to choose from when it was his turn. He did end up winning, but I wasn't entirely doing my best.

I'm also very pleased with Vikings, although it will be a long time before the kids can get into that one. In it each player controls a band of Viking explorers trying to find new islands in the north Atlantic. The game uses a number of familiar mechanics like an auction phase and tile placement, but it combines them in a very unique way that feels completely original. In the end of our game I tied with Larry on the scoring track, but he beat me on tie-breakers because he had ONE more gold coin than I did. Yeesh!

So, in the end I have a TON of new games to play and I can't wait to get them all to the table. I still have a big wishlist of still more that I want to buy though.

I can stop any time I want to. I just don't want to.