This week’s gaming: Mombasa, Arkham Horror and others

The new year has been busier than expected, and it’s been a little difficult gathering up the troops for a game night. But it finally happened this past week.

This past Thursday, I got Mombasa onto the table again with my core group of gamers, and it was awesome. I came thiiiiiss close to first place — only 2 points away! But it was definitely a lot better than the previous time I played, when I came in last. But most importantly, all the guys in my core group of gamers have played this game and love it as much as I do, which means it will definitely make it to the table more often than not. Woohoo! I ended up purchasing some Mayday card sleeves for the game in order to protect each player’s action cards.

I also found out that two of my closest gaming friends are leaving town in March to try to get work elsewhere and be closer to in-laws. He and his wife are both gamers (so it’s doubly sad!), and it was at his house that we all met for the first time to play Arkham Horror on a semi-regular basis.  He has decked out his Arkham Horror sets with glass beads for sanity and stamina, a magnetic Great Old One doom-track holder, and a bell to signify some of the expansion special locations, which we love ringing every round. Anyway, I’m happy for them to be closer to family, but of course sad that I’ll be losing a close gaming friend.

Five of us gathered on Saturday to play Arkham Horror with the Kingsport Horror expansion to battle against Atlach-Nacha, who is one big baddie. Usually in a regular game, once a gate is sealed, it can no longer re-open. That is not the case with Atlach-Nacha; sealed gates be damned! So we knew going in that battle with the Great Old One was inevitable, so we stocked up on Allies throughout the game so that we can help defeat him in the end. So after a little over 3 hours, we battled him and were victorious! Hurrah!!

Next up, we played Roll for the Galaxy. This is the second time I’ve played it (the first time at Friendship Con). I had played Race for the Galaxy a few times prior to this, and never really quite understood what I was doing. I guess I played it so infrequently that gameplay never quite solidified in my brian. During this Roll for the Galaxy game, however, I’m pleased to say that I finally understand what I’m doing. You roll your dice behind a player shield, and the icons that come up are allocated to their corresponding actions spots. You must pick one action to take, and the rest of actions occur if another player selects that action. There are only five actions altogether that can happen. For every dice you have behind an action, that’s how many times you can take that particular action. The goal of the game is build planets and collect victory points. As you build planets, your special abilities can change and you may be able to get even more dice. It’s actually a fun game, now that I can understand it. I don’t have a strategy quite yet, but it’s all finally making sense to me! And I didn’t come in last place. Score!

Lastly, we played two more games to wind down the night: Dixit and Tsuro. I just now realized that I failed to take any photos during our Dixit game, and that’s too bad. The artwork is gorgeous, and it’s a great storytelling and socializing game. When you’re the storyteller, you’re basically trying to give clues so that people will pick your card among a stack of other player’s cards. If your clue is too obvious that everybody picks your card or super obscure that nobody picks your cards, you don’t points. As other players, you’re trying to get other people to pick your card instead of the storyteller’s card. When you score points, you move this little wooden rabbit meeple along a victory point track. Tsuro is a tile-placement game where you move your boat along the track that’s printed on the tile. You will die if you hit another player’s boat or fall off the board. It’s easy to learn and takes less than 30 minutes to play.