Crokinole Has Its Day

Finally received the crokinole board from Mayday games last week after a long long wait. Preordered many months ago for $99 to include shipping I thought, and still think, it was a great deal. Yes it has some sort of rings on it you can view if you look in just the right angle. Yes the lines are on top of the finish for whatever reason but again, for $99 it is a steal. I believe now the cost has jumped to $148 and I am not sure that includes the shipping. At that price if the above issues were not fixed you would have reason to complain. I find none of the issues I bring up a factor in game play just an issue with the perfectionist in me.

 As you can see none of the items I mentioned can be seen at all. What you can see is my unfortunate wife taking a beating (she is green) after a round. In her defense we are on our last glass of wine from a bottle we drank much too fast. The wine was to die for btw, our first try of it and loved it. Parallele 45 I believe the name of the wine to be and I would recommend it to all. Tonight we try again our flicking strength and accuracy. In-laws Dave and Julie are expected soon for a nice homey spaghetti dinner and game. With all the practice Lisa got last evening I hope to have her on my team, and we'll be feeding the other two lots of wine...

Well now...played the best of 3 games with Jules and Dave and they narrowly won. Lisa and I kicked butt on the first game but such a nice comeback from them in the end. Julie showed the most improvement and that made all the difference on the world.  Great game and like Dave said, "great laughs!"

In Court

Finally got around to this game which I won in an auction on BGG. Very interesting mechanics and a lot of fun. Took Lisa a game to get things under control and on game 2 she pulled out a strong victory. There is a lot of different strategy possibilities with this one and with the plan being to play a few games of this in a row you can really mess up your opponent.

Game one play on your opponent many alliances and the tear them apart with conspiracies. Game two go with the killer instinct and attack all you can. Game three do a combination of the two. Only two games under my belt there is more to the game than what I have mentioned and I look forward to learning them as much as Lisa does. 

Ta Yu - Lisa Redeems Herself

After not playing this game for a few years it was overdue to make an appearance. In game #01 Lisa took a whooping. The score below was 72 to 18 with me able to thwart her efforts to score on the east west sides.

How quickly she learns. She wanted another rematch on Sunday morning and had her revenge.

My score 10 to her 18. She didn't improve on her score in game #02 but she certainly play more defensively. No way this game will sit in the closet for as long as it has between plays. A nice way to start a lazy Sunday, and a victory for her on Mother's day.

Soon To Hit The Table

Won these games in a lottery. Having played CM for a few weeks now I am glad to own my own copy. With Medici having an Italian theme and compared to Scopa (a familiar game Noni and I played often) I think we have a winner for Lisa and I to play, or maybe this is my chance to introduce my Mother to something new.

Twilight Struggle

With the weight of the free world on my shoulders I ventured to fight communism where it stood strongest...my dining room. Having owned the game for months now, and yet to play, the rare opportunity to sit down and have a 2 player gaming session was a treat. And 3 games at that! The first 2 games went rather quickly with card play deciding the victor. Game one didn't exit the early war stage with a communist victory.

Game 2 showed that carefully selected headlines can win a game with the US dropping the Defcon to 2 and USSR choosing to host the Olympics, which in effect lowered the Defcon to 1 starting a nuclear war thus ending the game for a US victory.

With 2 games finishing rather quickly and us barely getting into the mid war phase on only one game we chose a tie breaker. With that last game going about 3 hours we saw the full force of what is Twilight Struggle. Stress and sweat were abundant as the game wore on. USSR pulled out a victory in the end but we did make it to the late war stage. I was handed a set of cards which did nothing but give USSR Europe and there was little I could do to prevent it try as I might.

Looking back we have realized a few rules were played wrong mainly the scoring and a few select ways we played the cards. Next game should prove more enjoyable and stressful as we now comprehend the game more. Going into the game I mentioned it would take about 3 games under our belt to fully enjoy this game getting past it's learning curve. I can't wait till game #04!

Washington's War

So nice to be back to the reenacting world after a two year absence. And what better way then to break out Washington's War.

The above photo was submitted to BGG and noticed by the game developers and made into this:

I see many games under candlelight with grog in hand.

Summoner Wars

Challenged Lisa to a game tonight. Being the first game for both of us neither was certain of what to expect. Lisa took the Orcs and I the Elfs, we set up and the battle began. Lisa came out with quite the attack. She

built Ice Walls deep in her territory to protect her Summoner and then proceeded to attack me with all she had. Each race gets 3 Champions and hers came up early, it was all I could do to protect my Summoner, in fact she had my Summoner half dead a bit too early for my taste. And the Orcs Fury ability. . ouch but really not as bad as the Freeze she threw on me. Somehow I was able to survive and mount a comeback. With her down to just Common cards to play it was my turn to start pulling Champions and pulling I did. With 3 Elf Champions on the board it was clean up time and the outcome was painfully obvious to both her and I.

Her final verdict...she didn't the game. Going into this game I already predicted what her feelings would be. The game is very tactical and she has never had a hankering for these types of games. I, however, loved it! Actually a lot of thinking can go into this game as you set up your moves and the luck of the dice is just enough to keep you on your toes and possibly going to plan B, assuming you thought that far ahead. Can't wait to try out the other Summoners as well as playing 4 player. Now to make a better board to compliment this great game.