We had six people over for spades and majong so we could have two games going at once. Tory, Adam, Lindsay, Kevin, Andrew, and Debby joined us. We started out the night with some open faced chinese poker. Adam destroyed us all in the last hand and won because of that. Then we played some spades, and Steph and I just couldn’t get good hands. I played to aggressively in my bidding a few times, and we got set. I choose to not play majong, as it just isn’t the kind of game I like.
I had a pretty good time on Thursday playing a coop board game, Xenoshift, with Steph and Brian. The game was a bit longer than expected, and we won, which also wasn’t expected. The game design was a little sloppy as the order of operations wasn’t clear in many cases. There were also a few really confusing points around when certain cards could be played. We got overrun early on, but eventually got a good buffer built up for the later waves, which was completely necessary. The ramp up of difficulty was a little odd since turns 1, 4, and 7 were the hardest, with turns 3, 6, and 9 being the easiest. I still had a good time playing.
Steph hosted a majong night with us going to Sicuan Bistro beforehand. The ma po tofu was delicous, as was the rest of the food there. I had a lot of fun learning and playing the game, which was more complex than I thought once you added in a few more restrictions. It still relied a little to heavily on luck for my taste.
Steph and I went to Andrew’s place to hang out. We ended up playing poker, so Steph went to hear a friend play jazz at a bar in Mountain View. I had a good time losing a lot, but still learned a lot about how everyone in that group plays. I’m picking it up pretty fast, but losing a good deal of money in the process.
We played a couple simple card games at games night on Thursday. Chris taught the simple game of Loot to us and we had some good fun playing it. They were too afraid of me for me to get very far, but I had a good time playing it. Chris won the first and second rounds, mainly because he was able to manipulate the others into doing his bidding. I was enjoying the laid back simplicity of the game.
We next played smash up, and I was able to get some pretty amazing combos off against Chris. He was able to stop my early and mid-game, but my late game still came through strong and clinched a pretty significant victory for me.
I went to play Texas Hold ‘Em with Leyan’s group. Jeremy, Andrew, Lindsay, and Keven were there as well. It got up to a 10 person game at points, and I was only able to really think for about 2 hours. I ended up losing $80 that night, but had a pretty good time doing it.
Andrew hosted an Oscars and MTG night at his place. Debby printed out Oscar brackets and we guessed who was going to win what Oscar. I had some opinions on the major categories, but completely guessed at others. Debby had a bit of an unfair advantage since she’d be listening to the gossip around who was expected to win, which led to her winning. Surprisingly Andrew was behind her by only one correct guess (10 to 9). I was at a respectable 7 correct, but not that respectable since many of them were random. The one I got that was correct and purposefully chosen was the male lead in Theory of Everything. Stephanie got a sad 2 correct, which is significantly worse than random guessing for the whole thing. She made the mistake of only putting things down for the movies she had seen. About a third of the way through the Oscars, the guys pulled out some MTG and did a draft of Khans and Fate. It was a fun draft, and I won one out of my three matches. The other matches were really close, and I was decently happy with the way my deck played.
I played a game of Dungeon Lords with Adam and Tina, where Tina won by quite a lot. We did a lot of the expansion items, and I got a great room early on, the trap room. Some of the first traps I got were great, and made the fatigue step not happen. I was able to completely hold off all the adventurers for the whole time, especially since I had the long hallway in the second round. I probably should have been more evil so I could get the lesser paladin. I did some really stupid things, which made me not able to pay the taxes, and so I lost a lot of points from that. Adam got bumped out of a good number of placements and got destroyed by the paladins.
We spent President’s day as a long games day. We had a great time playing the expansion to New Era. It made the game much smoother, with a much better start.
We also played some Coup, Blood Bowl, EPYC, and Race for the Galaxy. It was a good time, even though I only won at one round of Coup.
It's an Exciting World 