We tried a new game called Impulse at games night. The game was way too slow with 6 people. With 3 people it was about right. The first game we called early, and the second and third game we played with three people. The game has a little too much uncertainty with the draw. There are good cards and not so good cards, and you might go the entire game without drawing a not so good one. The difference in some isn’t great, like movement, but others, like drawing more cards, have a large difference. This means that if you get behind you fall further behind. The Impulse group of cards is also interesting since you might not be able to use the cards in the impulse, depending on what is in your hand. I didn’t much care for it.
This book touches a lot more on the ethical issues in the series, but doesn’t come to any kind of conclusion on them. I’m not sure if I like or dislike that. There is a good touch on the political aspects of the experiment, but it doesn’t go into detail either. The death of the main character seems trivial and anticlimactic.
This book has some good points, but most of it seems like bickering. The actions aren’t terribly believable, but decently interesting. The main characters are really well written, but most others are not due to their over-controlling traits. There was also too little mention of the ethical ramifications, just a light touching on them.
This book has a pretty good story, but the difference between the people isn’t very believable. There are also some ethical questions raised in the book, but aren’t even close to being addressed until 2 books later. I like the main characters, as they seem real.
I played a good number of games over the long weekend, starting with the usual thursday games night. We played a game of New Era that Tina ran away with. She had an amazing engine going that no one could catch up with. She did what I would normally like to do, engine in the first two turns then points after that.
After that we played some Lords of Waterdeep and I got destroyed early by Jeff with three mandatory quests in a row. Jeff lost the game, but he won in spirit since he was just being his chaotic self.
Another day we played Goblins Inc. with full table talk. This is much better than the times when we didn’t have any table talk since you don’t have to worry about your partner doing something stupid or missing a good opportunity. This rule has everyone at the table able to talk about everything, but it must be fully public talk. This means that you can whisper and plan, but you can reason through some things. I won this game by a lot, and it was a good bit of fun on top of that. The strategy really came into account, and choosing cards really mattered in some cases.
We also played Vegas showdown, but a couple of the tiles I was relying on didn’t show up. That made me fall behind and I wasn’t able to recover. It was still a pretty good time.
This was a decent book, but not my favorite setting. The clash between the standard world and the magical world didn’t appeal to me much. The main character was great, and the plot was decently well written, but the world doesn’t appeal to me. The one thing I don’t like about the plot is how there is an absolutely evil guy behind it all. I typically like the morally ambiguous situations more.
On the weekend of June 28 and 29 we went camping in Norther California at Ahjamawi lava springs state park. The park is only on one side of the lake, which is the opposite side from the entrance, so we kayaked to the camping site. Steph used an amazing folding kayak that you can see her in here
Most of the area around the campsite was forrest, but there were a few fields. Also as soon as you got away from the lake it turned into much more of a desert landscape. There was a group that got a little lost on the way to the campsite and ended showing up at 10pm after paddling for 3 hours. It only took us 1 hour 15 minutes going straight to the site, so they got way off track.
Steph and I decided to take a hike out on our own, and we learned it was a lot hotter and drier than the area near the lake made it seam. We got out to a lava tube, that was disappointingly small, and it took us nearly 3 hours to do the hike. On the way back we took a shortcut that went through a lot of poison oak patches, and we stripped down when we got to camp. There was a nice spring nearby that we went and washed in, which felt really good. The hike did have some interesting things to see like some pretty flowers and a tree that was completely destroyed by woodpeckers.
We decided to do a quick hike to a “historic mansion” that I expected meant run-down. I was more correct than expected, with the house not only run down, but terribly infested.
It was a pretty good time all in all
We played another game of Caverna at games night. This time I went strong fighting, but it didn’t pay off. I was too limited in space to do much of anything. I think I’m going to look for a much better engine build next time and use some military as secondary building actions, that combined with lots of people and building off the edge of the board I should be able to get a lot of things done. I look forward to playing it again.
Adam got a new game, which is incredibly complicated. Caverna is the big, more complicated brother of Agricola. This is especially the case since all the upgrades were available at all times. There were so many options, and it was hard to make any decisions. On top of that there was a battle mechanic that lets the player choose from a list of options, making more decision points. This is a good game, but way too complicated.
It's an Exciting World 