30in45 – We are on a roll…

hehe… get it? Gamers roll for everything? Well, I thought it was funny.

This week has been a great week for us, game wise. And in other ways too, but I’ll have to write another post about our goings on.

Thursday, March 10 – Thurn and Taxis

Results:
Adam (yellow): 28 <–Win
Jessica (red): 22

Session Review:
The point of this game is to establish postal routes across what is now the area of Germany, Austria, Sweden, and Poland. And it can be rather challenging when the city card you need just aren’t appearing. While I normally enjoy this game, I was had a REALLY frustrating game, but it was a very well played game for Adam.
He managed to get 3 of the territories nearly complete and they only needed 1 more house each to finish them. THEN he pulled out a route that allowed him to put a house on each of those cities!! And he got tons of points from that, which lead to some despair on my side. I knew I had lost at that point, so it was hard for her to finish out the game. I did, and I didn’t end up losing as badly as I thought I was going to, but it’s hard to going through a losing streak.

Saturday, March 12 – Arkham Horror with the Dunwich Horror Expansion

Results:
Investigators (Adam and Jessica): WIN!!
Adam: Bob Jenkins and Jim Culver
Jessica: Jenny Barnes and Kate Winthrop

Session Review:
This is one of our VERY favorite games to play. For a while, we avoided the Dunwich expansion, and now we wish we had played more with it. I think we had a bad experience playing with it using only 2 investigators instead of 4. Anyway, the point of Arkham Horror is for the investigators to go around Arkham gathering clues and fighting monsters that are being released into the city. We are trying to prevent the Great Old One who is stirring from waking up and coming to Arkham and taking over the world. We can win in 1 of 3 ways.

1. 1) Closing all the Gates (to other worlds) in Arkham so there are none on the board.
2. 2) Sealing the specified number of Gates
3. 3) Defeating the Great Old One once they have woken and come to Arkham

For this session, our Great Old One was Hastur, the Yellow King. The effect Hastur has on the game is he makes it harder to seal gates. It takes 8 clue tokens instead of the normal 5. AH!! So that pretty much rules out winning by sealing gates.

For us, the gates just kept coming and we kept getting delayed in places. ESPECIALLY poor Adam. His investigator Jim Culver got arrested in the Dunwich train station. Then he sent Bob Jenkins to trade some weapons and stuff in the police station. During his encounter at the police station, Bob accidentally got locked into a jail cell and delayed. TWICE in a row! The time he finally got out, he was forced to give up all his weapons!! Grrr… talk about a game changer.

We ended this game with Hastur appearing in Arkham and battling it out with us. Lucky for us, we were able to win the battle against the Yellow King. We did have to sacrifice 3 of the investigators, but we did save Arkham!

Monday, March 14 – Mansions of Madness

Results:
Adam (Keeper): WIN
Jessica (Investigators): not win…

Session Review:
In this scenario, one of Jessica’s characters, Jenny Barnes, had a uncle that had dabbled in the occult, but he was now supposedly dead. She inherited his “mansion” which was ultimately a hodge-podge mix of unfinished buildings scattered about the property.

What she didn’t know was that her uncle was still alive in the caves below the property, raising up dead zombies to retrieve tissue samples from his niece. He was performing a ritual to make himself immortal and needed the blood of his kin.

Jenny and her friend gathered clues from around the property that indicated something was afoot, but before she could discover her uncle after entering an underground passage, a horde of zombies forced them back to the surface. Before they could figure out their next move, the entire property started catching on fire from an untended campfire. They had no choice but to go back underground.

With great courage, Jenny ran through the zombies in an effort to get behind the final locked door. Right as she made it in, she saw uncle Artimus finish his ritual. It took all the life force from Jenny and transferred it into him, extending his life indefinitely.

What an inheritance, sheesh!

Tuesday, March 15 – Stone Age

Results:
Adam (yellow): 175 <-win
Jessica (blue): 165

Session Review:
This is a game sort of similar to Catan, but much shorter, and much better! It involves players vying for resources (wood, stone, gold, brick) to pay for civilization cards and building huts. You also have to worry about keeping your workers fed.

It was yet ANOTHER really close game! Adam didn’t have much of a card strategy, but he built 8 (!) huts. Jessica had a nice set of unique cards as well as bonus cards, but it put her just shy (by 10 points or so) in the end.

Also, remember to ready your tools each new round! Sorry, inside joke.

Wednesday, March 16 – Dungeon Lords

Results:
Adam (yellow): 4
Jessica (red): 11 <–WIN!!

Session Review:
That's right. You all see it. I won one. Adam being the gracious husband let me be REALLY happy about winning and celebrate. 🙂 Thanks, honey.

On to the game, Dungeon Lords is about trying to build the biggest, badest, scariest dungeon around. So you try to fill it with horrible monsters and traps that allow you (the dungeon lord) to take the adventurers brave enough to venture into your dungeon captive.

Adam's dungeon faired better in the first year than mine did. He was able to capture all three of his adventurers while only having 1 of his rooms/tunnels conquered. I didn't do so well. I only was able to capture 2 adventurers and had 4 rooms conquered before that pesky third adventurer ran out screaming and drooling into the night.

The second year, I was able to only have 1 room conquered before I captured all 3 adventurers. I was a little better prepared this time. Adam had a harder time of it, and he had 2 rooms conquered before capturing his adventurers.

When scoring, all my crazy building paid off for me, and it allowed me to get the extra titles I need to claim victory. 🙂 Good game.

GAMES PLAYED: 15  DAYS LEFT: 26