Ut oh, out of order already. I played Paladins of the West Kingdom before I played Honga. Ah well, you weren't there; you wouldn't even know if I hadn't said something. I promised you a picture of the wizard yesterday....here he is. There's always a lot of cosplay, although the cosplayers who vape sort of ruin the effect.
The Edible Gummies Kickstarter gave us these samples in the vendor area. These are the spicy ones. I ate them this morning. I did not like them. I had to drink some very strong coffee to wash them away. Apparently they are hopping habanero and jalapeno jump start. Perhaps you should have to eat them if you lose a challenge in Spicy [the card game of spice eating competitive lying large cats]. They are donating a bunch of gummies to the Children's Miracle Network with a focus on teenagers. That's pretty nice.
If you want to back them there are five days left in their kickstarter. Looks like they made their goal: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/critters-0/edible-gummy-tabletop-minis
E playing Paladins of the West Kingdom. It was fun, but I didn't feel like I got to focus on any one thing or, even if I did, I wouldn't have gotten very far in that thing. I had a little bit of wall, a little bit of this, a little bit of that. The mechanic to have to get rid of espionage/intrigue is interesting, but not enough to make up for the fact that I was a little bored. Might have helped if I hadn't just played Hadrian's Wall. There are some strong similarities and I liked Hadrian's Wall better.
Here are several pictures of E playing their houses and meeples and such. It'll give you an idea of how much moving things around there is for not much traction. I know there are people who think it's the best. Eh. I'm happy for them. It's a 69 [rank] on boardgamegeek which puts it in some rarefied territory.
I should make an animated GIF out of E's photos.
I really like this one. Can't tell if they're excited or trying to make a particularly tough decision.
If it was a tough decision, crisis resolved.
I wasn't signed up for a late game, but managed to grab the last ticket for Wingspan a full sixty seconds before it started. The digital signup is a great system compared to the paper tickets they used to use. I had one problem with an event that recorded as paid but didn't show up and they resolved it at the IT desk in about five minutes.
Klund, E, and Karsen already were signed up. That's Mike facilitating. He facilitated quite a few of our games [this year and prior years]. Great guy. Very friendly, very patient, although he misplaced the goal cards and had to send a runner for backups.
Here he is doing that patient explaining of why I have a hand full of birds.
This game is a few years old now, but I'd never played it despite an interest. I'm glad on got in on the session. It may have been E's favorite of the weekend. Straightforward, cards reinforce and play off each other, there are a few strategies you pick up quickly, the art is beautiful, and it moves fast from player to player even in later stages. I found myself comparing it to the gameplay for Paladins, and I definitely appreciated Wingspan more.
My birds. I focused on the woodlands and egg collection, although at this point in the game that's not obvious. Later I had the first two rows filled and most of the third row. But my birds were not particularly high valued / point birds.
A spirited discussion about ornithology.
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Karsen wins this one if I remember right. Klund had a voracious owl who busily ate a whole stack of other birds [which became points], but didn't win any of the round goals or have as many eggs so he trailed in the end. You can tell it's getting late on a weeknight in this photo with all the cleared out tables.
I must have these photos backwards, because the goal isn't to remove the birds and the eggs. Well...in some cases it is...but not as an overall strategy.
It was about ten p.m. by the time we were done with Wingspan, but we weren't done for the night. At the AirBnB we started a three player game of Power Grid, US side of the map. E wasn't having it and wandered off to find some sleep. In retrospect, this was a good idea on E's part. We played until 1:30 a.m. and I don't think I fell asleep until closer to 2:15 or later. The difference between two and three player Power Grid is one of magnitudes. So much more fun and a ton of interaction on the later bidding to secure the right power plants, the right resources, and to correct anyone who can't count their money [cough, Karsen].
In case it's not obvious from this photo, I managed to power all seventeen of my cities and then some despite Klund trying to buy up all the blocking property.
I snapped a picture of my sleep profile the next morning. Amusingly, that 62 resting heart rate is also WAY, WAY over what it usually is. I generally sit right about 50, often less. Side effect of all the bicycling. I'm going to guess gaming situations spiked me here and there. Fun to realize the competition gets me a little wound up on the inside, even if not [as much] on the outside.
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