Jan was out of town and I would be bored, so it seemed like a good time to resurrect Pie & Games Night, previously immortalized by the wonderful Jan Doise. Bolstered by my recent RPG community efforts, I had invited widely and not limited to people I actually know. We ended up with a nice mix of weirdos and far too much pie and cake!
I played Concordia, a strategic pool building game themed around ancient Italy. It has a nice early and mid-game but the end game really bogged down. This may have been because two of the three players were new to the game, and strategic pool builders are hard to pick up straight away, so our game may have turned out unbalanced. It was interesting enough that I would play it again, though. Card drafting and pool building are mechanics I enjoy a lot. Though I think other games do both of those things in more interesting ways. Meanwhile the other group played Factory Fun, which looked interesting and King of Tokyo – a first for Eiko who got very excited about it.
After this first round, we teamed up to play Roborally together. Roborally always makes me happy and this was no exception. I know many people find it utter torture to play but for me it’s mostly a fun, more thinky Dungeon Quest. Plus, pushing your boyfriend into a pit is always hilarious. We cut the game short after the first person had reached the second flag (this took a good hour, I’m sure) and a few people had to leave.
We rounded off with a game of Cards against Humanity. I’m pretty bored with the game by now, we’ve simply played it too much. But it remains a nice relaxing finisher and a good way to lower your inhibitions and get to know people. That sounds dodgier than I meant it! I just meant that it doesn’t feel like you have to watch what you say very much after you spend half an hour looking for cards that would make good porn names for Bobby _____ Mc Gee.
The next day we played some Love Letter with Ernesto to wind down. With only three players we struck out hard and fast.
Nice weekend!
Jules the gamer 