Steph and I cooked up some delicious Tom Yom, then went to Brian’s pool party. The party was enjoyable and very relaxed. We talked with a lot of people about a lot of things, got some time in the pool and hot tub, then left to grab dinner at Zeni’s. The food was good as always, and I ate too much as always. We then headed back to Beachhead where we watched the finale to the season of Game of Thrones. We then played a couple rounds of Race for the Galaxy before heading to bed.
Adam, Tina, Iliya, Brian, and I played some games. We did a 5 person game of Tzolk’in, with the tribes included. I was the group that started with 5 people instead of 3, but I lost due to inability to feed. I did have a great time building 4 of the monuments, but it didn’t make up the point difference. I’ll have to do a game where I spent the whole time trying to get the gods to love me.
After that we did a game that was based on poker, but it didn’t have the same dynamics. The game was too readily meta-gamable and the meta game wasn’t much fun. After a few hands we decided to call it a day.
Iliya and Brian left, so we had a game of 3 for Race for the Galaxy. Tina had a great first game with a rebel build that turned out really well. Then I had a phenomenal game in the second game scoring 91 points and getting 17 prestige.
Steph and I met Jeremy at the Chocolate Garage and had some decent chocolate. We got some of the ones we really like, but didn’t get any of the new ones. We also stopped by the Cladio chocolates and got a few boxes. One of the boxes Steph is giving to her parents, since they asked for it. We also grabbed the ingredients for some Tom Yom soup and plan to make it tomorrow morning. It should be tasty.
Steph and I met a lot of people at San Pedro Square Market for Brian’s 30th. We had dinner before going, so we only got an ice cream sandwich. It was very tasty. We talked with people when we could hear. A somewhat jazzy band was playing and had the speakers turned up way too loud. They weren’t particularly good, and I could hardly understand what the singer was saying. Her voice was good, but the diction was terrible. I ended up getting a headache from the music, but the 
rest of the evening was nice.
This was a great ending to a wonderful series. Alliances that were formed and the final fight were excellent. I especially enjoyed the wakening of the great furies to finish off the Vord queen. There were a few loose ends that came up, like what happened to the great furies after they finished the Vord queen, or where the original group of Vord were that caused the Marat to come to Alera. I would love for another series in this universe.
We played a seven person game of Seven Wonders. It was a game with Steph, Chris, Erik, Jeff, Cynthia, Iliya, and me. I really like how this game is highly parallelized, but you still have interactions with other players. The game went well for me, but not well enough. I was going science and was able to get a lot of points there, but many of the science cards were in the same hands, so I wasn’t able to fill out as much as I would have liked.
Steph, Iliya, and I then broke off to do a three person game of Lords of Waterdeep. We had a good time of it, and I was able to build 10 buildings. Since I was the builder this made me win on the bonus points. I did well even without that since I had so many buildings generating revenue for me via the other players using them. I was able to complete a good many quests.
While I liked this book, I was a little disappointed at points in it. I was hoping to have more happen in Canea, but they just showed up and then left. There was no major exploration and explanation of the larger continent. The Vord there were also never dealth with, and there remained only one queen left. The defenses of the cities against the Vord in Alera also weren’t described in as much detail as I would have liked. As they had a lot of them to get through.
Archer and Lana have enjoyed many of the new toys we’ve been getting for them, but they still go after the laser pointer the most. Here are some videos of them playing with the laser pointer and a feather clump on a wire.
Archer after the feather clump, Archer at Play, Lana at Play, Lana in Circles
This book had a lot of great plot points, but the overall plot didn’t change all that much. It was still excellent and full of action, intrigue, and fun anecdotes.
It's an Exciting World 