George had Tina and I over to play games, and we chose Scythe. Tina had played a few times before, but George and I hadn’t played before. I didn’t understand exactly how to go about things at the start, and did some really stupid moves. Besides the stupid moves I was feeling a bit out of it from the fast I had been doing. Tina didn’t quite double our scores, but she was way out in front. We had a good time with it and I would love to play again.
On Sunday I dropped Stephanie off at the airport for her latest trip to China. Then I went to Tina’s for long games day. I had a good time playing with Jonathan in Feast for Odin. I would have preferred to play Mage Knight, but it worked out that I could meet up with Lindsay, Kevin, Debby, and Andrew for dinner. The Mage Knight game was only about 2/3 of the way through when I left. I won Feast, but that wasn’t a bit surprise as I had played before and Jonathan was doing it for his first time. He did really well, and saw the strategies I used and copied them. That led to some blocking of spaces I wanted as we were trying to use most of the same actions.
At dinner we had some tasty Indian food. I really enjoyed the Tandori Chicken, but it was more of skillet than clay pot. We went to Lindsay’s afterward and Andrew had thought ahead and brought swim trunks for me to wear to the hot tub. We talked about doing a movie night and I set up some methodology for deciding what to watch.
Today is my 30th birthday, and to celebrate I took 13 of my friends, and a +1 to hang out in a cabin near north lake Tahoe for the weekend.
We got up there around 6pm on Friday, with a 5.5 hour drive. We expected it to be a lot faster, but I vastly underestimated the amount of traffic that would be around Sacramento. The cabin was nearly perfect for the 16 of us to hang out and sleep comfortably. The only issues were that the downstairs was figid, and the bunk room had two people that snored/sniffled on Friday. Thankfully the snorer moved to the downstairs room and the sniffler took a bunch of antihistamines, so Saturday people got better sleep.
We did a MTG draft Friday evening, as well as a round of Terraforming Mars. Others did karaoke on the system George brought, and did a puzzle of a puppy and kitty. There was also a hot tub on the back balcony that overlooked Sugar Bowl. It was a really nice view, and Jeremy was kind enough to offer drink service of a mixed fruit daiquiri from the fruit Lindsay brought. I wish I had written down the proportions because it was phenomenal.
For the draft Kevin ended up winning when we finished up Saturday morning. Andrew had a hard time with the draft based on position and the decks he opened. It is hard to do well when you open off color and land rares. I got a lot of really amazing cards, but didn’t have the deck come together for a consistent strategy. Saturday morning Kevin and I also did a one on one sealed. I got insanely lucky and opened two planeswalkers (Chandra and Nissa). I won the first and third games with him scooping as soon as the second one came out.
Saturday morning was a great morning. George did a phenomenal job on the eggs, and Tina cooked the bacon. It was a lot of fun to have everyone together, chatting, and relaxing.
A dozen of us left at 12:30 for some whitewater rafting. We didn’t get on the river until around 2:30, and then got off around 3:45. It was a lot of fun, and even though it wasn’t challenging it was exciting. Jeremy was the only one to fall in, but it was for a matter for seconds, as the guide had him in the raft before he even registered what happened. I was in the front of one of the rafts, with Steph, Riley, Rong, Andrew, and Debby.
While we were on the river, Lindsay and Kevin took a walk along Donner Lake, and Irene and George went into Truckee.
When we got back it was time for some hot tubbing, and we relaxed for a bit while people trickled in from their coffee stops on the way back from rafting. Lindsay and Kevin had done a great job with the potato and leek soup. Lindsay even was kind enough to grab extra potatoes when the ones I brought turned out to be green. Andrew was kind enough to take over as grill master, and Debby ran logistics for the meats. I was really happy that the two of them helped out so much with that.
After dinner Brian got out the cheesecake that he had brought for me.
I was really glad everyone who was able to join for the weekend. It was a great time, drama free, and a memory I will not soon forget!
I’ve been playing more poker, but just for fun and wholly expecting to lose money. I have been, more due to the skill of the other players than any bad luck or self fulfilling prophesy. It has been a lot of fun, I must admit. I can do about two hours of poker before I can’t concentrate and play really badly. This can actually be a lot of fun now, because of the new table that Andrew bought. It has RFID tags in all the cards, and the table reads what hands people have. It then shows the action in a stream to another room. I’ve really enjoyed watching that while the others that have busted out come to chat.
Steph and I went into the city to hang out with Nick for his annual meatball invitational. We had a lot of great food, then Steph and I played a really fun round of Innovation. For all the times I had tried to destroy the world before in the game with the nukes card, this was the first time it actually happened. Nick forced me to draw it, and I drew red, so the whole game was reset with just the remnants of the deck remaining. We quickly drew out and they won on score.
We tried making more of the veggie meatballs, but drowned them in broth. The broke up and we ended up with a veggie meatloaf. It was still good with the tikka masala sauce.
It has been a long time since I’ve updated things here, and most of that is due to all sorts of time consuming things going on, most of them good.
Late October we did a Magic draft at Andrew’s place. It was a Kaladesh draft, and I actually read up on things beforehand. I read one strategy that seemed good, and found that I had the card in my hand to start. So I ended up going with the assembly line robots. It worked great, especially since I got a second one passed to me immediately. I didn’t play one of the people, but ended up winning best of 3 every time. I got lucky with Andrew, and we played a few extra matches for fun, he ended up wining 3 games straight to get the best of 5.
Steph and I went to Lindsay and Kevin’s place to join them for the newlywed’s game. Jamie and Leyan, Andrew and Debby, as well as Alana and Haru joined. Stephanie and I were doing really well, but the others were able to catch up, and we went into overtime. Haru and Alana, Kevin and Lindsay, vs Steph and I. In overtime Steph and I got eliminated early, then the other two couples had a lot of tied rounds. I don’t recall the final winner, but everyone was having a good time. Debby and Andrew were surprisingly bad at it this time, especially considering they won the previous time we did this.
Tina, Adam, George, Steph and I played a game called Battlestations. It is a turn based space RPG. I was a flying spaghetti monster engineer and died almost immediately. We ended up completing the scenario, but just barely. George made a masterful roll that kept us from blowing up, but we really should have all died instead of just me. The good side of me dying is that my clone now outranks all of them.
Steph and I joined Adam and George for dinner at the Indian Street Cafe, then went over to George’s place to play the game Dead of Winter.
George ended up being the traitor, but when called out he got the reconciling card. He did stab us at a really good moment, and only some quick checks confirmed that it was him who stabbed us.
I ended up getting a really good character that fed off of all the others abilities, and he also picked up a few blueprints so I was raking in the items, and at the same time building up a formidable group of characters. I had 5 characters for a few turns and it was really fun. I also had almost all the weapons, so I was killing tons of zombies, getting tons of items, and winning all sorts of ways. Despite two crisis coming up that required drugs I was able to keep my drug horde and Steph covered for me. Everyone ended up winning, even George.
It's an Exciting World 