I can’t believe it’s been a week since Strategicon! I’m seriously having convention withdrawal. My Phoenix friend and I decided to go to OrcCon for two very different reasons. I wanted to play Virgin Queen, which was slated for 11 hours of game play, and he wanted to play Mega Civilization, which was slated for 14 hours of play. And guess what? Both of us succeeded in doing so! Huzzah!
If you follow me on Instagram, you saw that last Friday I got to meet the Game Boy Geek himself, play games are his house and bask in the glory of his awesome board-game room. How cool is that?! I seriously still get starstruck when I meet folks from the Internet who are very active in the board-gaming world. And it all came to be because of a happy coincidence!
I’ve been going back and forth on what to write for this week, which explains the lag. It’s not that I haven’t been doing any board gaming; it’s actually quite the opposite! I’ve been doing a lot of gaming in the past week or so but it’s nothing new that I haven’t written about. So this be more like an update on the state of things.
At a game day last week, my friend confessed to me, “I don’t have the energy to learn a new game,” and I agreed. There are those days where you just want to slip into something oh-so-familiar with a group of other folks who also know how to play that particular game. There is neither a 30-minute (or longer) explanation during game setup nor that drag where the one newbie is asking lots of questions on game play and strategy while everybody else is just eager to keep the game going.
Don’t get me wrong … I love introducing new games to people, and questions are always encouraged, but there is something deeply satisfying about opening up a box and jumping right in.
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.
Last weekend I went to Game Day, and a curious thing happened — all the games that I played were new to me! This hardly happens as whenever we learn a new game, somebody usually suggests an old familiar game soon after, so that our brains don’t hurt too much. Or I usually suggest BSG because I do love playing BSG.
It’s been a busy week or so being out of town for my cousin’s wedding in LA, but now I’m back! Well, at least until Christmas vacation. I finally got a chance to get Mombasa on my table during last night’s game night. My two friends came over (we unfortunately couldn’t find a 4th player), but the night went well and my friends enjoyed it! Success! I always get a little nervous being the only person teaching a game as I’m afraid if I don’t teach the game properly, it could affect their judgment against a game that’s otherwise awesome. But I’m lucky I got to do a demo at BGG Con as well as play an entire game (albeit we got a lot of the game rules wrong) so I already had experience playing it. Plus, I read, read and reread the rulesbook so I could quickly answer questions.
I meant to write this post sooner but things got busy during Thanksgiving weekend. Hope everybody had a wonderful holiday weekend! And one of the things I’m thankful for is being a part of a wonderful board-gaming community.
Anyway, if anybody has any reservations about joining Team Geek at BGG Con, I would say to you: Do it! You’ll be glad you did! (Plus, you get a super sweet jersey!)
Wow, BGG Con came and went to so quickly! I arrived Dallas a day before the convention to attend Team Geek orientation, and immediately got into gaming that evening. I’m planning to write a follow-up post next on what it was like to be part of Team Geek, so this entry will be strictly about gaming and other activities.
BGG Con 2015 had sold out over 2,800 tickets and to make room for even more gaming, it had booked Room 25 on each floor so that folks had the option to game there instead of going down to the main ballroom in the convention floor. These rooms were pretty cool, each having about 6 tables each, complete with water stations and a bathroom inside. I met up with some friends on Tuesday night to play card games. The first one was a German set-collecting game from Essen that translated to 3 Is Too Much. The next one was Red 7, which is a hand-management player-elimination game. Both were fun, but now I realize I forgot to take photos of either one of them. I blame it on being tired from a travel day.