30 in 45 – Games amid the quest for the ring

While we were playing the Lord of the Rings card game, we did take some breaks and play other games, especially on nights when the kids got to be late or we had other things going on.

October 4 – Way of the Dragon
Results:
A: 5
J: 7 -> WIN!

Report:
This is a fun, take-along dice game that we explain is “Chinese Yathzee.” You move your pieces along a track in conjunction with the number of that symbol. It’s fun and can be pretty strategic as far as dice games go.

Adam started out strong with this game rolling one of every symbol on the very first try which got all his pieces on the board in a hurry. He actually rolled that 4 or 5 times during the game, but it wasn’t nearly as beneficial as the first one.

I just played my game, and managed to roll all of one symbol (which we hadn’t done yet). I ended up just getting all my pieces into the score rows before Adam could get more than a couple in the scoring zone. So, I won out.

October 11th – Dungeon Lords
Results:
A: 20 <–WIN
J: 8

Report:
Adam was the more fearful Dungeon Lord by a LONG shot this game. While Jessica was the Lord of Dark Deeds (was the highest in the evil-meter), Adam claimed more single titles than her making him the be winner. He had a room in his dungeon that increased the number of points he got for single titles.

Jessica played a respectable game. She let her evil level go unchecked early in the game and attracted the attention of the first year Paladin. While she defeated the Paladin and two other adventurers, one scrapped away with his life barely intact. And it left her dungeon with a few too many conquered tiles and made for a rough second year.

October 12th – Elder Sign
Results:
Investigators: WIN!
A: Jenny Barnes
Je: Amanda Sharp
Ju: Ashcan Pete
Ja: Bob Jenkins

Report:
Elder Sign is a dice rolling game that is set in our favorite universe of Arkham. Our investigators are in a museum trying to collect enough elder signs to prevent an ancient one from awaking and taking over the world. You roll dice and use the results to complete adventures and gain items and elder signs.

We were fortunate enough to be able to play this when we were having game night with our friends Justin and Jaidi.

We really had this game easily in hand the whole time. The doom track only had 3 or 4 tokens on it. We all seemed to have really hot dice this game and just cranked it out. So, we decided to plan another game too.

October 12th – Tobago
Results:
A: Yellow ATV: 17
Je: Blue ATV: 25
Ju: Red ATV: 23
Ja: Green ATV: 26

Report:
We all played a really good game tonight. This victory came down to the very last treasure that Adam and Justin had absolutely NO part in. Jaidi knew there were 2 treasures with 6 points each in the pool and she had 2 shots at time. So, she waited and passed on a 5 point treasure that Jessica got. It was a very good thing too since she won by 1 point. 🙂

So the days in between these games were actually game free. We had a lot of life and other things needing our attention that we couldn’t find time to play. So our end is a little anti-climatic, but we did finish. It feels a little forced though, but fun.

October 18th – Can’t Stop -iOS (2 rounds)
Results:

Round 1
Adam WON!

Round 2
Jessica WON!

Report:
This is a new iPad game we got that is based on the board game Can’t Stop. It’s a dice rolling, press your luck kind of game. The goal is to get 3 of your pieces from one side of the board to the other. You move your pieces based on the way you roll and pair the dice. Some of the rows in the board are smaller since getting those results are a lot less likely. It’s a great game for parties since it is easy to pick up and plays quickly. Since it is a game of almost total luck, it’s easy to lose and fun to win.

October 20th – Ticket To Ride iOS
Results:
Adam: 153 Jessica: 85

Report:
Adam totally knocked it out of the park. He got a bunch of routes that were crazy high scoring. When he laid down the train that marked the final round, he left Jessica in the cold needing one more purple car that would have completed 2 of her high scoring routes, which would have been a MUCH closer final score.

October 21st – Forbidden Island iOS
Results: WIN!

Report:
I honestly don’t remember much about this game in particular. But I do remember that we did find all the treasure, and we escaped from the island as it feel apart around us feeling a little bit like Indiana Jones. I also remember us saying the world should thank us for recovering these priceless artifacts from being lost forever.

October 21 – Elder Sign iOS
Results: Win

Report:
We won this one, but at a cost. We battled with Cthulhu and this is the first time we have one it. The way Cthulhu plays is a little different than other ancient ones. After obtaining a certain number (I don’t remember what it was), we traveled by boat around the sea until we had enough investigation icons to raise Cthulhu and battle him. We got it done, but Adam lost his life in the process. I was able to pull it out in the end thanks to Jenny Barnes awesome ability to get both bonus dice when using items instead of just one.

Again, we felt like the world should thank us for saving it from the unspeakable horrors. World, you’re welcome. 😀

Days Left: 0 Games Played: 30

30 in 45 – We’re all tied up

It seems that Adam and I are all tied up with our win -loss records.  Quite an accomplishment for me since I seem to lose a lot, but apparently that’s not entirely true anymore.  I am getting better at some of the strategy games, and since Adam and my brains work very differently, he has a hard time figuring out what I’m going to do next.  I have the same problem, but always have so it doesn’t play as much to my disadvantage.  🙂

September 17th – Small World

Results:
Jessica: 80
Adam: 93

Report:
Since we learned we had been playing this incorrectly for a while now, we were excited to play it correctly.  It turned out to be a little more balanced.  Well, that is until yon Dragon Master Trolls came and squished everybody in their path and left behind a trail of fortresses that spelled utter DOOM to anyone trying to conquer them.

I hope that conveyed the despair that Jessica felt after I played my trolls because I don’t think she was very happy with me.  I gave her permission to weep.  Still, her Wealthy Wizards bolstered her end-game scoring to a respectable scoring gap.  Ah, yes, it’s good to be a troll.

Thursday, September 20th – Forbidden Island iOS version
Results:
A & J –> Lost

Report: Our goal here is to get all the treasures and get off the Island before it all washes into the sea.  We can prevent some of this by shoring up flooded areas, but if a flooded area is flooded again, it washes away.  We thought we were doing really well.  We had gotten two of the treasures we sought, and were almost set to claim another when we drew a waters rise card.  It reshuffled an already flooded Fool’s Landing (our way in and out of the Island) into the flood deck.  The first card that came up in the flood phase was Fool’s Landing.  Thus washing it away and leaving us stranded on the Island as it sunk all around us.

Thursday, September 20th – Ingenious iOS version
Results:
A: Lose
J: WIN

Report: The goal of this game is to match colored tiles in such a way that you gain points.  You have 5 colors you are managing.  You want each on to be as high as possible.  The person who has the least amount (in any color) is the one who loses in the end.  You really have to play it to understand, but it’s fun.  This is Jessica’s game that she can usually count on for a win.  She plays it in her spare time while watching TV.  So, she’s pretty good at it.  This round of the game was no exception.

Monday, September 24th – Tobago
Results:
A: 61 – Win
J: 51

Report: Adam here.  Wow, 4 days since our last play.  We are going to need to ramp up the pace.  Ok, so you say Tobago, I say Tobago.  I guess that works better out loud.  This is a game of treasure hunting and movement optimization with a little set theory thrown in.  Since at least one of those things is incredibly interesting to me, I love this game.  It was a little slow starting because we had sort of forgotten the rules. When familiar, it would play quickly.  I think I found the first treasure and we swapped back and forth after that with an exclusionary treasure for each of us.  Jessica got cursed once and lost some serious points.  That and a little luck bumped me to the top, and Mr. Red Jeep won the day!

Lord of the Rings – The Card Game (9/25, 27, 28, 10/1, 2 thus far)
We are playing a lot of this game. Look for the LOTR Edition coming up

September 30th – Unity

Results:
Adam -Orange –
Jessica- Purple – WIN!

Report:
The point of UNITY is the get all the pieces you have on the board in a collection together by strategically picking up and moving pieces around the board. Jessica was still grasping the concepts of this game. It had been frustrating to her in the past, but it seems that she’s got it figured out. It was a rather handy win for her. It did help that when Adam set up the board he let Jessica chose the color she wanted to play, and she chose the group that already had the most unified group to start with. So, it was easier to deal with the rest.

September 30th – Issac

Results:
Adam: 52
Jessica: 77

Report:
Man alive was Jessica on a winning streak tonight! Issac is a game about strategically laying down varying lengths (and point valued) sticks, and picking up said sticks in such a fashion that gains you the most points. Personally, I think I just got lucky and made some excellent blocks and pick ups that really put Adam in a position to gain fewer points. In the end, I got to pick up at least 3 or 4 more sticks, which resulted in a larger victory. After that win though, Adam didn’t want to play anymore games with me that night. 🙂

Days Left: 19   Games Played: 18

30 in 45 – We’re at it again!

We were recently re-reading our old blog post from our last adventure into the 30 in 45, and thought we were incredibly entertaining and wanted to do it again. We started into it on September 6th. We are due to finish on Sunday, October 21st.

The challenge I see us having this time is there are more things we are wanting to do at night rather than just watch TV. I am currently indexing about 20 names a night and trying to exercise at least 4 nights a week. (For more information on what indexing is click HERE) and Adam has some new computer games that are vying for his attention as well. We’ve already missed some nights, but here’s what we have so far.

September 6th – Dungeon Lords
Session Results:
Jessica: 6
Adam: 4

Report:
We were testing out this game again. We hadn’t played it for a while, and someone had offered to trade Adam for another game. He wanted to make sure we didn’t like it anymore by playing it a few times in quick succession (for the record, we like it.) We started playing a little late since the boys got to bad a little late, and Matthew was having a little bit of a rough night.

We only played the first year of our dungeon building. And I can’t really remember much about it after that. In the end, I was able to dig more tunnels and get more imps which gave me more unshared titles than Adam, and I was able to win by a couple. The lesson we walked away with: Always be able to pay your taxes! It will get you in the end if you don’t.

September 7th – Dungeon Lords
Results:
Jessica: 24
Adam: 16

Report:
We got it set up and playing a lot faster. We went through the first year a lot faster than the night before. Jessica dug a lot of tunnels and had a lot more rooms working for her than Adam. When the adventurers braved our dungeons, they were able to conquer all of Adam’s 3 tunnels and one room before one escaped by the skin of his teeth. Jessica’s dungeon faired better, and she had 1 tunnel conquered and no adventurers ever saw the light of another day.

The second year, we realized why the game was going so easily for us, and why we were getting more monsters than we remembered. Apparently, you’re supposed to pay the monster upon hiring them, NOT just on pay day. This really cut down on our hiring of monsters and made us use our resources a little better.

When the adventurers made it in, Adam’s dungeon faired MUCH better than the year before and better than Jessica’s this year. He was able to defeat all the adventurers quickly. Jessica took a couple more rounds, but was able to defeat them all too. In the end, it was that first year that really took it’s toll on Adam’s score, and Jessica pulled out the win.

Adam’s notes:  Jessica really knows how to be an evil dungeon lord!  I don’t know how she does it, but every time I turned around she was one-upping me.  This game seems to be growing on us.  I nearly traded it away, but right now I’m glad I did not.

September 8th – Thurn and Taxis
Results:
Jessica: 7
Adam: 31 <-Win

Report:
This was not Jessica’s night. Adam put together an absolutely BEAUTIFUL route of 10 cities that got him into nearly every province very early in the game. Jessica lost a route since she took a gamble and it bit her in the keister. Adam got a lot more of the bonuses and got rid of all his houses before Jessica was even close. As a result, she lost about half her points.  Adam’s notes: This always seems to be a game I can do really well at.  I think it is just because you don’t have much to keep track of, but either way, I find it a joy to play.

September 9th – Small World
Results:
Jessica: 77
Adam: 92

Report:
With this game, Adam observed some trends that seem to happen quite frequently. The berserker race power isn’t as cool as you initially think it will be, and it ends up with trolls a lot more often than not. The biggest realization we had was that we’d been playing it wrong for quite some time.

Apparently, when one of your areas is conquered, you don’t lose all your pieces. You only lose ONE of the pieces that was defending your area. We’d been losing all our pieces, and as a result Adam COMPLETELY pummeled Jessica’s trolls and drove them to decline after one turn!! It was kind of a turning point for the game, but it was still fun.

September 12th – Pandemic
A & J: WIN!
Disease: conquered

Report:
When we started, the set up looked pretty good. Only one of the four diseases was really going rampant, things didn’t look so good for Asia. We kept trying to get things under control, and just as we would get close the city we were almost ready to treat would come up again and we’d have a major out break on our hands. That happened about 6 or 7 times, and just before the world was about to succumb to disease and explode, we were able to cure all the diseases. Thus, we saved the world last night. You’re welcome world! 🙂

September 14th – Race for the Galaxy
Results
J: 58 <– Win
A: 48

Report from Adam:
This was a really lucky game of drawing for Jessica. She pursed the alien technologies, and she drew card after card of alien cards. In the end, she was able to draw a 6 cost development that SERIOUSLY capitalized all her alien cards, and she pulled out a pretty handy win.

I was pretty frustrated with her win since the last time we played Jessica won with fewer points than I lost by this time.  She did seem pretty pleased with herself as she did a victory dance.  I  even got some great synergy going, but Jessica managed to play the right cards.

September 16th – Endeavor
Results:
J: 67
A: 69

Report:
This game is an interesting game. You can’t ever really know how you’re doing (unless you’re THAT obsessive about keeping track of points in your head) until the very end. Although Adam won, Jessica was not that far behind. She was bumming about halfway through the game when she saw that Adam was REALLY working up his point tracks.

In wise move of drawing buildings, she grabbed a card that allowed her to draw 2 cards on her turn. So, she drew cards that really upped her point tracks and put her in a position to win. But alas, Adam had managed to pull out the win.

The strange thing about this game, we didn’t put ourselves in a position to attack the other or the neutral player ever. We also had every space on the board occupied. We’ve never done that before either. All around, we had a great game.

Days Left: 35   Games Played: 7

30in45 – Adam’s Final Thoughts

OR

How I Learned to Enjoy the Game and Stop Obsessing Over Winning

Dr. Reiner Knizia, designer of many, many classic boardgames, once said “When playing a game, the goal is to win, but it is the goal that is important, not the winning”. So true. I thought I understood this before, but I didn’t. To me, this quote isn’t just about being a good winner/loser; it also encompasses enjoying the journey.

Several times thoughout this challenge I would tell myself before we started a game that I wasn’t going to over analyze my moves to the point of absurdity because I needed to enjoy the experience. Inevitably, I would find myself doing the calculations in my head of the benefits/costs of each possible move such that I hardly even noticed that my opponent was even in the room. I could have been playing against a computer for all the attention I was giving to the social experience.

The social experience, for me, is the most rewarding thing about game playing, but it was too easy to focus on being the winner. Everyone needs to play to win, or it isn’t fun. That’s why games with lopsided rules or unbalanced game play are no fun because both opponents can’t really play to win. My focus was often playing to be the winner; this subtle distinction made for a huge difference in my enjoyment. Once I learned how to actually “play” with others, it became much more enjoyable!

Unfortunately, some games are just bound to fail with specific groups. We found one such game (Call of Cthtulhu) that just doesn’t work with us. We become overly hostile while playing it, and it never ends well. We have learned that games with such overt conflict, where every move is about tearing the other person’s position down, do not work with us. Games are all about gaining the edge, but building up my own settlement/economy engine/zombie horde in comparison to how my opponent is doing is vastly different than simply bringing theirs down to the ground consistently.

It actually relates really well to life. We compete at EVERYTHING. You’ll notice that good things often come about when the “competitors” are building upon/creating their own stuff; in contrast, when we compete by tearing down others to look better ourselves, no one wins. War. Smear campaigns. I-told-you-so matches. We need to make sure that we are enriching ourselves and the world around us.

Anyway, I could probably write on many other things that I’ve noticed as we’ve played so much. It’s really amazing. We have slowed down quite a bit since it has stopped. I’m really grateful to Jessica for doing this with me, and I’m sure she is as well.

30in45 – Jessica’s Final Thoughts

This experience was an interesting one for me. I started this a little on the hesitant side. In months prior to this, Adam would ask me if I wanted to play a game, and I really would rather have done something else. If he were to ask me now, I’m a lot more likely to say yes (generally, I’ll usually say yes now).

I agreed to the 30in45, so I could spend more time with Adam. I felt like we just weren’t doing enough together, since I think sitting on the couch and watching TV doesn’t count as doing stuff together. We learned new things about each other, and it’s been a really good experience for us as a couple. I think we enjoy one another’s company more like we did when we were newly married.

It also found us a couple new game friends to play with. 🙂 It’s always fun to play games with other people, and now we have more people we can play with.

All in all, it’s been a great thing for us to do together. Thanks for suggesting it, Adam!

30in45 – The Last of the Games

We finished! We played 30 games in 45 days. We had a lot of fun doing it, but you’ll hear more about that in a follow up post. 🙂

For now, our last 3 games.

Friday, April 8th – Last Night on Earth

Results:
Adam (zombies) –> WIN
Jessica (Heroes) –> not so much…

Session Report:
We played defend the manor house, and it was a fight to the very last.

The zombies had only hours until the heroes won, but luckily for them, they had already picked off 3 of the 4 heroes. With the a last ditch effort to keep the zombies out of the manor house, the Father Joseph lured 5 zombies outside the house. He already had 2 wounds and was sadly killed in battle. It was a pretty exciting end.

Saturday, April 9th — Arkham Horror

Results:
Adam-Dexter Drake: Incomplete
Jessica- Mandy Thompson: Incomplete
Jaidi-Kate Winthrop: Incomplete
Justin- Leo Vincent: Incomplete

Session Report:
We got the game all set up, we were gearin’ up to go. We got through two rounds, and then our kid got sick. And had to call it a night, which is too bad. It was shaping up to be a good game too.

We have rescheduled for later this month to try again.

Monday, April 11 – Race for the Galaxy

Adam: 38 –>WIN
Jessica: 32

Session Report:
I played an incredible strategic game, but Adam appeared to play a better one. FRUSTRATION!! I really do try to beat him. It just seems like whenever I’m doing REALLY well, he seems to do even better. I will get him. Mark my words, I will get him. When I do, you’d better believe you’ll hear about it. 🙂

30in45 – The Final Push

Monday, March 28th -Arkham Horror

Results:
Adam (Mark Harrigan/Leo Anderson)- WIN
Jessica (Mandy Thompson/Jacqueline Fine) – WIN

Session Review:
We were battling Yig. Our monster situation always stayed under control, but our gates were opening all over the place.

We were SURE we were goners, because Yig was up to 9 Doom tokens (out of 10). In a fortunate stroke of luck we were able to get six gates sealed before Yig awoke from his slumber.

Friday, April 1st – Arkham Horror

Results:
Adam (Dexter Drake/Wilson Richards)- WIN
Jessica (Diana Stanley/ Marie Lambeau)- WIN

Session Review:
We battled Cuthulu, and we WON. We started out with gates opening left and right, but with the right spells and weather cards we were able to send all our investigators into Gates and close all of them before we had a 5th one open.

It was a very lucky few turns for us, but still that’s all part of the fun.

Sunday, April 3rd – Carcassone

Results:
Adam <–WIN
Jessica – not so much…

Session Review:
Played this on the iPad during Conference. I don't remember the score, but it was just a quick game.

Monday, April 4th – Small World

Results:
Adam – 98 – WIN
Jessica – 93 – not so much…

Session Review:
It was a quick, high-scoring game. Adam played Giants for 4 turns, and Elves for a full 6 turns! Jessica played Orcs, Ratmen, Trolls, and finished with Halflings. It was close, and neither one of us was sure who would take it in the end.

Wednesday, April 6th – Arkham Horror

Results:
Adam (Marie Lambeau)- Lost
Jessica (Michael McGlenn)- Lost

Session Review:
Separated out the Dunwich expansion,and played with the base set. We were prepping for a game with a couple of our friends this Saturday. We don’t want to overwhelm with too many extra rules from an expansion.

We thought we were getting pretty good at Arkham, and we were pretty sure this would be a fast and quick game. BOY were we wrong! Arkham Horror had not been so horrifying to us in a long time.

This game beat us up one side and down the other. If it wasn’t gates opening all over the place or monsters being released willy nilly into the streets.

In the end, when we FINALLY got our game back on track, the last gate opened up and we battled with Ithaqua. We nearly won, but alas we were ONE success short of taking him out. Dash it all!!

In the end, we decided that the addition of the Madness and Injury cards that were introduced with the Dunwich expansion will be left in for our next game. Going insane and losing your stamina was really hard to kept the flow going and motivation up. We thought it was great (at times), but it would be difficult to newcomers.

GAMES PLAYED: 27  DAYS LEFT: 5

30in45 – Hit a slow down

Apparently there is a limit to how long people can play games just about every other day before they get a little tired of it. We hit that wall in the last week. From Thursday, March 17th to today (Sunday, March 27th), we have played 6 games. We didn’t play anything for 3 nights. We just didn’t want to. The only reason we played a game on Wednesday was so we could get back into it. We did choose a card game that was fairly short and that we hadn’t played in a while.

Over all, the last ten days were a little lighter on games than usual, and the only reason our count is up to 6 is because we played one game 3 times this week (the short card game).

Friday, March 18th – Fury of Dracula

Results
Adam: Hunters –>WIN
Jessica: Dracula

Session Review:
The point of this game is for the Hunters to track down Dracula and take him out. Dracula stays hidden as much as he can, and lays traps for the Hunters to try and slow them down.

It looked like a clear win for Dracula when one of his minions took out Dr. Seward about half way through the game. Adam was EVEN willing to concede a victory to Dracula.

Dracula, foolish, prideful vampire that he is, refused wanting to win for real. Well, in the end, the hunters were able to pull some FABULOUS cards that revealed Dracula’s location nearly every time he moved, and they were able to best him in combat.

Saturday, March 19th – Mansions of Madness

Results:
Adam: Investigators
Jessica: Keeper –> WIN

Session Review:
This scenario was kind of creepy in that Jessica used to be a school teacher and she was the one who got to play keeper of the school. It was AWESOME!

Our scenario began with a botched first clue from the keeper, and she gave up a round of her turns to try and make up, but it probably needed to be a couple. Once the investigators were on track, they swiftly dealt with the pair of witches that appeared in the Gallery.

The frustrating part of being keeper was that I couldn’t summon monsters, so the only things I could do TO the investigators was move them away from their goal by 1 space OR use my mythos cards. I did try to make good use of them, but I’m still learning the finer points of keeping.

In the end, a Hound of Tindalos appeared in the attic, and try and they might the investigators could not stop it’s exit from the building, and they were haunted by that sight for the rest of their miserably short lives.

Wednesday, March 23 – Race for the Galaxy

Results:
Adam: 36
Jessica: 36

Session Review:
WE TIED!! Jessica hadn’t played this game is quite some time, and it was amazing that she did as well as she did.

So, Adam went early on for the Rare Elements worlds and windfalls that could produce. Whereas, Jessica took a slower Alien route.

Adam ended up playing the twelve cards needs to end the game first, but Jessica had played the right cards to maker her 10 count.

In the end, it was 36 to 36.

Friday, March 25 – Race for the Galaxy (2 rounds)

Round One:
Results:
Adam: 36 –>WIN
Jessica: 23

Session Review:
Adam won this game. Jessica’s cards just weren’t working well for her. And she didn’t get any 6 card developments that would help her.

As a result, Adam won by a landslide.

We mostly just kept on playing the same phases as each other and realized we needed to be playing the advanced game which lets you choose two phases each.

ROUND TWO:
Results:
Adam: 38 –>WIN
Jessica: 33

Session Review:
We used the Advanced Game play rules, which made for a much more interesting and speedy game.

Adam focused on getting a diversified production/consume cycle that he could milk for all it was worth. He ended up with an engine that would yield 6 victory points each turn and ran that into the ground until the end.

Jessica’s alien focus was quite valuable as well combined with a decent pile of victory points. In the end, though, it wasn’t quite enough, and Adam pulled out the win.

Saturday, March 26 – Mansions of Madness

Results:
Adam: Keeper –> WIN
Jessica: Jenny Barnes
Justin: Ashcan Pete
Jaidi: Kate Winthrop

Session Review:
BEWARE IT’S LONG AND DETAILED.

We played the first scenario of the game, The Fall of the House of Lynch, the first one that we played when we got the game. This time, we played with a different objective which, according to the rules of the game, only the Keeper knows. In this playthrough, the mansion was the home of Walter Lynch. Edith (his wife) and he had lost their son some time ago, and Edith eventually passed away as well from the same disease. Walter has stricken with grief; as a result, he tried to contact his son through a seance which backlashed on him and drove him insane. A local company had a vested interest in Walter, so when he went missing, they hired some investigators to investigate his mansion.

Ashcan Pete (Justin), Kate Winthrop (Jaidi), and Jenny Barnes (Jessica) smelled some burnt food when they entered the mansion, so they headed to the kitchen to investigate. They found a clue, which were some footprints that led from the kitchen, to the foyer, up the stairs and down the hallway where some bedrooms were. Pete also found a silver key that could hopefully be used to open a lock somewhere else in the house. Kate and Jenny decided to hurry to follow the footprints, but Pete couldn’t resist poking around the pantry for some more items. Maybe he just wanted a late night snack? Either way, it cost him dearly because no sooner was he in that small room, but a maniac burst through the door, shattering it to splinters with his axe and attacked him!

Pete managed to fend him off and tried to escape back out through the kitchen, but the mysterious evil forces of the mansion made him walk right back into the pantry as if he had no will at all! The maniac still attempted to get him, but Pete eventually delivered the final blow with his guitar and killed the maniac. Meanwhile, Kate and Jenny had been hurrying up to the bedrooms to see where the footprints led. They found the master bedroom locked! They realized in horror that Pete still had the silver key that could unlock it and noticed that he had been separated from them for a while. Jenny hurried back while Kate explored the guest bedroom to find anything useful there.

Jenny found Pete with blood all over him standing at the foyer’s entrance, but he said he’d be fine, so they headed back up the stairs towards the hallway. Before they could leave the foyer, another maniac burst out and attacked! At the same time, a zombie lit on fire started wandering down the hallway, though he seemed a bit confused and distracted. Probably that whole burning thing.

While Kate had been left alone, the mansion broke her sanity just a little. She became paranoid of the other investigators and refused to be in the same room as them. She holed herself up the in the guest bedroom for a while, and it wasn’t until much later that she was able to pull herself together and find the others. Perplexed as to where Kate went, Jenny and Pete ran away from the maniac and snuck past the meandering zombie into the master bedroom. It never really seemed to be aware of their presence. After solving a puzzle in the bedroom, they found another clue! It was a journal entry of Walter’s about how in his grief over Edith, he buried her in the basement. Around that same time, they heard a scream from that general direction. They all ran as fast as they could, with Kate now being somewhat sane again, through the foyer and towards the basement. This was where they would find the last clue!

They evaded the still lingering maniac and flaming zombie as they rushed there. They arrived at the basement, and to their horror, the screaming they had heard was another zombie who was obviously Edith, raised from the dead! While Kate was dealing with the maniac and the flaming zombie and Jenny with Edith, Pete found the last clue in the basement which revealed that Walter was still alive and had raised Edith from the dead in his insanity. He showed up in the foyer and began to attack Jenny with his axe.

So there they were, surrounded by zombies, a maniac and Walter, and Jenny and Pete were nearly dead and insane from all they’d seen. Only Kate was in any sort of decent shape. The old house, having been subjected to such evil and being so decrepit, started to shudder as if to collapse. The monsters made quick work of Jenny, killing her. Pete just couldn’t take the horror anymore and committed suicide. Kate, all alone, spent the last few minutes of her life heroically attacking Walter while being clawed upon by the other monsters. It was to no avail and her sanity couldn’t hold up. Her mind broke until she was gibbering mess. At the last, it wasn’t the monsters who ended her life. The house finally collapsed into the ground, as if swallowed up, not only killing everyone and everything, but finally putting an end to Walter and his madness.

GAMES PLAYED: 21  DAYS LEFT: 16

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

30in45 – More Games

It’s been a week since our last post, and we’ve played more games. We got a few new games too. Actually, we’ve gotten 3 new games since last Thursday. On Friday, we got our package of 2 games that we ordered a few weeks ago, Mansions of Madness and Small World. Those are the games that we’ll start with.

There was a lot of anticipation for getting Mansions of Madness, and as a result we played it a couple of days in a row.

Friday, March 4 – Mansions of Madness

Results:
Adam: Keeper
Jessica: Investigators ( <- WIN

Session Review:
Jessica played two investigators in The Fall of the House of Lynch scenario. All event cards came out before Adam's monster could get to the front door to escape. All were swallowed up in the house but we'll assume one of Jessica's investigators made it out because she was in the foyer in the end.

Saturday, March 5: Mansions of Madness

Results:
Adam: Investigators -> WIN
Jessica: Keeper

Session Review:
Adam played the investigators in the Inner Sanctum scenario. Adam inadvertently set a fire in the chapel by botching a spell, and prevented Jessica from getting enough cultists gathered to release her monster soon enough to be around for the necessary number of rounds. Curse you botched spell!!

Sunday, March 6: Small World

Results:
Adam: 90
Jessica: 89

Session Review:
How is it I keep losing by ONE!! I didn’t play a dragon that my race could have play one time, and look what happened. I lost! Adam calls it a tie since it wasn’t a landslide win on one side or the other. Grrr…

Tuesday, March 8: Pandemic

Results: Round 1
Adam and Jessica: LOST

Session Review:
We decided to play Legendary instead of hard. It really does make a difference in difficulty. A disease got out of control in Europe. We had one disease cured, and we were ready to cure two more diseases when we got another epidemic card. This caused several cities in Europe to cascade outbreak. And the world succumbed to disease and there was nothing we could do.

Tuesday, March 8: Pandemic

Results: Round 2
Adam and Jessica: LOST

Session Review:
We decided to give it another try. And basically the EXACT same thing happened. A disease in Europe ran rampant. We were about to two diseases when an epidemic card caused 3 or 4 cities to daisy chain outbreak and we lost, again…

Wednesday, March 9: Carcassone w/ Bridges, Castles, and Bazaars

Results:
Adam: 114 <-WIN
Jessica: 111

Session Review:
It was a battle over a farm. We kept linking farms together to try and out do the other with the number of guys on it. We ended up tying for the largest farm, and we had to share the points for it. If I would have scored points for a loop I made of road I would have won by 1!!! DAH!!!!

GAMES PLAY: 10 DAYS LEFT: 32