In which I don't make fun of Twilight

Mostly because that's a subtle enough jab for now and there are plenty of places to do it for me.

Nope the bulk of this post will be about boardgames. Why (you may ask yourselves)? In large part because ol' letter 'd' had a birthday recently and boardgames were received. And played. (Which we'll also get to.)

But first, from the Sometimes You Can Go Back files: Krull and Something Wicked This Way Comes are both still decent movies. They show their age a little, but not as badly as you might think. So if you need a rollicking adventure or something a little creepy, one of these will fit the bill. Don't blame me if you get them mixed up, they make cover copy for a reason folks. But yeah, totally check them out again.

Also, Dexter in the Dark the 3rd book in the Dexter series byJeff Lindsay was good. A little on the interesting side, a little creepy (in that Dexter-ish way) and so on.

So. Yes. Boardgames. This year I decided that I would host my own mini boardgame convention. And so I did. Friends were invited, food was prepared and games were set out. The big news from the convention is that Arkham Horror is indeed good. I was finally able to convince the letter 'r' of this and even lovely wife thawed in her opinion of it. It's still long (I think we clocked in at around 3 hours) but once you know what's going on it becomes a lot more enjoyable. This is indeed the secret to playing this game. Make sure someone knows the rules. It works best when one player acts as a moderator of sorts and makes the turn taking of everyone else easier. "Oh, you want to do this? Well roll these dice for me and we'll see what happens. Congrats! You've just defeated the maniac. Oh, that's too bad, the Byakhee left you an insane, gibbering wreck, time for a trip to the Sanitarium." And so on. We even managed to save the world from the ravages of Azathoth. Way to go us!

We took a break for lunch and then played some Pitchcar with the kids. This is an awesome dexterity game. You lay out a wooden race track and then take turns flicking little wooden discs (your racecar) around the track. It's great fun. Anyone can play. We had 7 of us from ages 5 to 37 and had a blast. Highly recommended. It is a little pricey (quality wood track and pieces yo) but worth it.

Up next was Puerto Rico. We tried this one a while back as well and didn't quite get it. The secret to this game is playing San Juan first. It's a very nice training game for Puerto Rico. Basically you're trying to settle a little island colony. You each take turns claiming various jobs that allow every one the opportunity to do something. The player that picked the job gets a bonus. Over the course of the game you build up your settlement and earn points. We had a fine time playing this one as well. Also recommended (play San Juan first).

We had some dinner and then played some more Pitchcar. Swag was handed out (a couple print and play games from over at BGG). A good time was had by all.

Now you might think that would be the end of the tale, but you'd be wrong. As this was a convention those games were owned by the participants. Nothing new there. Well at least not ownership wise. No that's where the ol' letter 'd's birthday came in handy. I managed to pick up Skip Bo, Citadels and Galaxy Trucker for said journey around the sun.

Skip Bo is a fun little card game that works best with 4 and played as a partnership game.

Citadels also finds you trying to build a city and claiming various jobs to do it. The trick here is jobs are played in an order and not all of them get picked. And each player only gets the benefit of their own job. One will let you kill someone else (force them to miss their turn), one will let you steal someone else's money, and so on. Also a lot of fun. And pretty easily picked up. We play it with 2 of the 3 kids (recommended 8 and up).

Which brings us to Galaxy Trucker. This is a great game in which you build yourself a spaceship and then watch it get blown to bits. It's awesome (if a little nervewracking). The first portion of the game is a bit puzzle like as you compete to put together the ship best suited to the journey you're about to take. Once that's accomplished you go through a set of adventure cards that tells you what exactly happens to your poor little ship. Asteroids! Pirates! Abandoned ships! Also a great game, although the age recommendation on this one is a little higher. Our 11 year old is starting to make sense of it. It can be a little rough explaining that she's out of the race as she lost all her crew to vicious space pirates in round 1 (build more crew cabins!). An added bonus is the fact that the rulebook is downright hilarious. Truly a good time.

As for those other things, Thanksgiving was nice. We had a decent time with lovely wife's family (I was shockingly bad at Bananagrams that day) and the food was good. I avoided Black Friday, had a good birthday, got the Christmas tree up (December?! who let that happen!) and so on. My week off seemed far too short and towards the end was a little bittersweet as I missed Mom. But all in all it went well enough. Next time I'll have the game convention at the end instead of the beginning. ^_^

So thanks to family for the lovely gifts (especially Dad for the new camera) and I hope you all had a lovely holiday as well. Now to get ready for the next one. (Christmas shopping almost complete!)