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| Sunday, October 24, 2004 10:48 AM |
| Games of Various Sorts |
 by Fëanor |
Now that the Eagles game has been over for a few hours, I have calmed down enough to be able to write, and to breathe normally and stuff. Seriously, I was pacing and cursing and shaking, and my stomach was churning. I think I may have nearly had a minor heart attack. They won, but little thanks to their struggling defense, and the ridiculous calls from the referees (roughing the passer my ass!!!). God bless David Akers.
Anyway, yesterday was a full sixteen hours of gaming debauchery, thanks to the participation of poppy, Sarcasmo, Peccable, Dave, Super Tarzan, and bloginator. I think it's fair to bring out this old chestnut: much fun was had by all. We even managed to play pretty much everything I'd wanted to play, though things didn't go exactly according to schedule.
I started the day by indoctrinating Sarcasmo into the world of Diceland, and she seemed to enjoy it. I sure did. Sometimes I forget how awesome Diceland is. It wasn't the game I was most interested in playing on game day, but once I got into it again, I remembered how clever and fun it really is. And today Diceland is the one game that I still want to play, and that's saying something, because we played games until we were sick of them, and then played some more.
We tried out one of my new Hero Quest expansions (Against the Ogre Horde), and found it to be frustratingly difficult, like most of the pre-made quests, despite the fact that I allowed the heroes to equip themselves with stuff from the armory for free, and gave them healing potions to start out with. I'm thinking the next time we play, I really might try to write my own quest. Or we should at least go back to the original quest book and back away from the harder expansions.
We played Betrayal at House on the Hill multiple times. Finally I got to win as the traitor, but it ended up as a rather bitter-sweet victory, since it involved me creeping around the house, blood-thirsty and invisible, stealing my friends' items and sneak-attacking them until they were all dead. I do like that game, though. It's got great ideas and great writing. It's fun and creepy.
We didn't get a chance to play Settlers of Catan with ALL of the expansions since, due to various unavoidable circumstances, a few of our players had to leave, but we did play it with Seafarers and Cities and Knights combined, and I have to say I'm pretty glad we didn't end up having five or six players on top of that. The game was already painfully long and difficult, and left us all angry and hateful. Which is not to say it wasn't also fun, in its own way! But I'm not sure I'd do it again any time soon. Cities and Knights is definitely the best expansion to the game, but I think maybe it's long and complex enough without Seafarers added in, as well.
Age of Mythology, the boardgame based on the popular Microsoft computer game, was another painfully long, embittering game. I still like it, but I think it has some fundamental flaws, mainly in the combat system. When two players begin a combat phase, all other players get cut out of the game and have to sit around waiting for an hour or so while the other two guys roll dice interminably. Plus, even with the added house rule that you score a hit on a five or a six, the combat is far too dependent upon chance.
Peccable, Sarcasmo, and Super Tarzan were nice enough to stop by a yard sale on the way to the house and pick up a little gift for us--an old movie-themed expansion to Trivial Pursuit! So, as one of our last games of the night, we decided to try it out. Unfortunately, the questions were mainly about older movies/characters/actors that we'd never heard of, and we were all really tired by this time, so we ended up putting those away and breaking out Star Wars Trivial Pursuit instead. At this point, poppy exited, and then there were three--bloginator, Super Tarzan, and myself. We had, while playing various games, also managed to watch all three of the original Star Wars movies on DVD (not to mention Commando and a good portion of Conan the Barbarian), so finishing the day with Star Wars Trivial Pursuit made its own kind of sense. However, Steve and I are complete Star Wars freaks, so we gave ourselves a handicap and let Super Tarzan have a turn after each of our turns. We also required that Steve or I, if we reached the center of the board with all the wedges, would have to correctly answer every question on one card in order to win. Despite these house rules, Steve quickly collected all the wedges and threatened to win. After a shaming early showing, I started to catch up. But we ended up declaring Steve the winner without finishing when we realized how late it was getting.
Here's what I learned at game day:- It is detrimental to your physical and mental health to play multiple really long strategy games in a row without taking a break of any kind, despite how fun it may sound. For future events of this sort, I think we'll take it a little easier and leave some games for next time.
- Commando is easily one of the greatest films ever made, if not the greatest.
- Sangria is really good.
- There were four TIE fighters--not five!--chasing the Millenium Falcon after it escaped from Hoth.
In conclusion, game day was a ton of fun and I look forward to having another one as soon as possible. Maybe this time with more Diceland? Hmm? Maybe?? :) |
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