Happy New Year, board gamers!

Whoa, where did December go?!? Hope everybody had a wonderful and safe holiday season. It’s been a busy and fun few weeks, hence the lack of posts here, but I’m planning to be back on the regular again in 2016.

Let’s recap the second half of December. My gaming group did their annual White Elephant exchange. This is what I got last year, and I’m happy to announce that I did better this time around! I think I initially opened up Ticket to Ride Europe and had it stolen from me. A couple more steals and I eventually ended up with Two Rooms and a Boom (and some chocolate Whoppers). Score! We opened up the game later in the day to play a few rounds. It was a lot of fun!

And then I headed to LA for Christmas week and squeezed in a Disneyland trip in the process. I seriously hadn’t been to Disneyland in about 13 years, and it was my first time to California Adventure as well! I’m a roller-coaster gal, so I’m usually going to Magic Mountain if I had time to visit a theme park. Disneyland during Christmas season is magical!! Everything is so freakin’ festive. I was most blown away by the Small World ride, which was decked out in so much lights and the entire ride was actually revamped with Christmas songs and decorations. Fun times.

I took home a few games to play with family during my visit. I ended busting out Eight-Minute Empire quite a few times at home, since it’s a shorter game but supremely satisfying, in my opinion. My sister and brother-in-law learned to play it for the first time, and we’d play it during random pockets of time while waiting for food to cook and such. We also played Exploding Kittens, which I had received as a Christmas gift this year, too. My sister and I couldn’t stop laughing at the Taco Cat card, which proudly exclaimed “I am a palindrome!” Oh, grammar jokes! It’s a fun super short card game that lasts about 15 minutes.

On Christmas Day, I introduced my cousins to Codenames and we played a few rounds of that. As the codemaster, I accidentally killed our team when one of my clues pointed directly to the assassin. Womp womp. My cousin’s boyfriend then took a stab at being the codemaster, and we ended up winning. Go team! During another family gathering, I purchased some board games for my cousin’s children: Machi Koro and Survive: Escape from Atlantis.  Machi Koro is city-building card game where you’re quickly trying to complete your monuments. They also brought Pentago over, which is like Connect 4, but the grid moves and you need to get 5 in a row to win.

I visited some other friends that week, ones that I previously taught Ticket to Ride to. After dinner and a fun gift exchange, we busted out their copy of Ticket to Ride. Squee! I love it when my friends get into board gaming. We ended up teaching another friend who had never played a eurogame before and it ended up being a fun night. I ended up coming in second place as I couldn’t beat the Vancouver to Montreal ticket, which then helped my first get the longest route bonus.

Lastly, I returned to Arizona  a few days before my friends’ wedding. They decided to have a small ceremony in Sedona (which is about 90  minutes north of Phoenix), and I was so happy to be a part of it. This particular group of friends I have gotten to know very well in the past year and a half, all thanks to board gaming. And bonus, his now-wife enjoys gaming as well (and is pretty good at convincing us she’s not a cylon during BSG!).

So now 2016 is officially under way. May this year be better than the last! And here’s to more board gaming and friendship!