A return to my gaming group
The summer of fun is officially over. In Arizona, fall classes start in mid-August. This means family responsibilities, classes and other priorities take the place of board-gaming time. In other words, no more holiday-weekend binge sessions and gaming with my usual peeps 3-4 times a week. I seriously think it’s been over a month since I last played Battlestar Galactica. Also, I’m super bummed that one of my oldest gaming friends is moving out of town. He patiently taught me (and countless others) how to play BSG. More importantly, he taught me how to not get caught as a cylon. Alas.
So what’s a lady to do? I recently returned to my old main gaming group to see what new games and people are out there. I love, love gaming with my usual folks (and the fact that they live nearby), but unless one of us buys a new game, we don’t get much exposure to what else is out there. Granted, we get really, really good at the games we play, so that’s always pretty awesome. But it’s always nice to mix it up every now and again. My old gaming group, who meets at a substantial distance from my home, knows that I prefer the heavier games but I’m willing to learn and play a new game at least once. This has led to some pleasant surprises at recent meetups.
Codenames is one that I randomly got a chance to play. This game has been getting a lot of buzz from Gen Con. You’re all a bunch of spies, either for the red or blue team. Cards are dealt on the table, which has a codename on it. Each team has a Spy Master, and his or her task is to give one-word clues to their team so they can correctly pick which agents belong with them. Spy Masters can give a word that describes more than one card, but you have to be careful because that clue can pertain to one of your opponents’ codenames. Or even worse, you can accidentally pick the assassin, and the game ends immediately. Your team wins when you guess all the correct words. It’s a fun quick word-association party game.
Another game I played for the first time is Elfenland. So there’s a funny story about this. A few weeks ago on Instagram, boardgamesbr posted this quiz about meeples. I only knew four of the 10 meeples, but had been strangely fascinated by the giant boot!
So last week, when I arrived at my meetup and saw Elfenland on the table, I immediately squealed, “The game with the giant boot!” The game is from 1998, ancient by board-game standards, and is an early work of Alan R. Moon of Ticket to Ride fame.
The object of the game is to travel across the map (using the boot) and collect your pieces and then ending at your home city. It plays out over four rounds. In each round, you have cards in your hand that may or may not match symbols on tiles that are available to pick up. You are picking these tiles so that you can place them on the map on roads between cities. When it’s the movement phase, you place a card or two of the symbol that’s placed in the road so that your boot can move from city to city. The map is separated by various terrain and certain tiles require 1 or 2 cards depending on where it’s placed on the map. Your boot stops moving when you don’t have the cards to continue. Any tiles or cards not played stay with you until the next round. You have to learn to manage your cards and movement efficiently to collect all 20 pieces. At the end of the fourth round, you lose points based on how many pieces you didn’t pick up as well as how far you are from your home city (which is dealt randomly and secretly in the beginning.)
Lastly, I got a chance to play Kingsburg after not playing it for about two years. It’s a dice-rolling worker-placement game where you’re collecting resources to build buildings and score victory points. I like how each player gets their own set of dice. You can spend all your dice all on one spot and collect resources, or split them up on various other spots on the board. It’s a medium-heavy game that plays out about 90 minutes or so. There are four seasons in one year, and at the end of your year you fight a monster. This game continues through five years, and whoever has the most victory points wins the game.
Anyway, I’m hoping that once everybody’s schedule settles down a bit, I’ll be back to playing with my usual folks at our own weekly — and much closer — gathering.
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