Entry 10; Christmas Eve
It’s Christmas Eve babe, and our games house, my old man said to me, let’s play another one!” See what I did there? Good wasn’t it?! *takes a bow*
Christmas Eve I had a half day at work and MJ was off, which meant we had some prime gaming time available. We are both stressed out about the challenge. We had played so many games over the past few weeks, and still had more to go. We were also trying desperately to think of ways to make our pandemic Christmas great and still feel connected to our families. I had never cooked Christmas Dinner, that was happening. We were doing stockings, there was so much to be done! We had only played 57 so had 20 more to go. Including some absolute monsters (Spirit Island, I am looking squarely at you) and quite a few we were going to have to either learn from scratch or at least skim read the rules for. Note to all readers, if you are going to do this, try not to also have to learn new games during it. It doubles the stress!
After an existential crisis, we did settle down to get a load of games out of the way. That makes it sound like we didn’t enjoy them. We did, except for Dalek Dice which was as bad as we thought it could be. This came in a mystery box, and it is a dice chucking push your luck game in a teeny package. The game isn’t bad, but the theme doesn’t do anything for me, and we have Age of War which is in my mind a much better game. Anyone want to adopt a Doctor Who dice game? Hit me up!
Our Christmas Eve games that we played; Dalek Dice, Hanamikoji, Glasgow, Villagers, Cat Cafe, Architects of the West Kingdom, and Fox in the Forest Duet.
We have been playing almost all the games as just us two anyway, but a few of these games are two-player specific. These are games that MJ and I tend to not be able to share with anyone, so they are kind of the secret games for just us. Mostly because when we play games with others it is usually us plus more people, so a two-player is not going to fit the bill. We have introduced our siblings to Jaipur which is probably the only exception to this rule. So we played Glasgow which is a cool little tableau builder by Lookout Games. You collect resources and convert these into buildings which you place in a joint central tableau. The game ends when the 4x5 grid is filled. I like the way the turn order works where the person at the back gets to go. This is similar to Patchwork and Tokaido, and it really switches up the way you play. I think it is perfect for preventing runaway victories as well, it is always tight right until the end.
Cat Cafe is an often overlooked little roll and write which is surprisingly thinky. It is also FULL O’ CATS, I really do enjoy feline themed games and this one is great. You draft a die out of the pool and then you take that die and whatever dross has been left behind to draw a symbol on one of the gaps on the sheet. Each value on the dice can either be used as the level of the gap you want to draw in, or to select one of the six symbols. If you like a roll and write, and you’re a fan of puzzles then check out cat cafe!
Entry 11; Christmas Day
The day is finally here, and Old Saint Nick has been incredibly kind to us this year. Our newest passion has not been kept a secret, and board games are the only thing I have really spent money on this year. Since my instagram (@saggyhead) became a 50/50 of games and the usual food and cats, this passion has not gone unnoticed and as such we were lucky to receive lots of new games or fun-boxes as they are affectionately known in our house.
We were far too full of our immensely huge Christmas feast to learn any new games or indeed play anything particularly taxing. Instead we play the eternal game of My City. Which is absolutely excellent for an eternal game. I was skeptical initially about how good this was going to be. I absolutely loved the legacy game. If you haven’t played this then it absolutely must go to the top of your wishlist. The game builds but with each episode being only about half an hour to play, this is not the commitment or time sink that perhaps other bigger legacy games. I’m sad that the legacy journey is over, but I’m glad that the eternal game has enough legs to stay in our collection as a nice easy filler game. It also helps having been taught the game over the last few months as we know the rules really well.
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