Almost coherent

After several years, and only a couple actual plays, I traded away Arkham Horror. It was time to let it go. We just don't really get three hour games to the table very often. Especially games with very complex rule sets (or at least rule sets that aren't well explained). I still have a few three hour games, but they either get played more (Mansions of Madness waves a tentacle) or are new enough that I haven't given up on them yet. I got a decent amount of store credit at a local comic book/game store and ponied up a little more cash to pick up Betrayal at House on the Hill. Think of it as The Haunting of Hill House the game. It's a story driven affair in which you spend the first half exploring a haunted house together and then at a somewhat random point the Haunt starts up and one of the players may become a traitor. At that point the traitor tries to accomplish a goal and the remaining players try to thwart said goal. Each team has a story book they read from to get the gist of what's happening.

We tried this out last weekend with a good deal of fun. Lovely wife and the girls joined me as we wandered through the mansion prior to the Haunt. I won't spoil what happened except to say we had one of the few encounters where there isn't a traitor. Instead we ended up turning on each other as we tried to escape. It was actually pretty fun. M and I both safely escaped while lovely wife and McK were left to a horrific fate. I've heard the game can be pretty random and occasionally unbalanced depending on how the house is set up as the haunt starts, but I think we'll be ok with that. The narrative you can create while playing is still pretty fun. So a worthwhile trade methinks.

I also dug out Bohnanaza for grins and chuckles. This is still an odd little card game, but I think we'll give it a  few more tries.

The lawn can stop growing now...

And that's about all I've got. We are slowly descending into the madness that is the last part of the year - filled with various birthdays and events. The kids are pretty much back into the hang of school. The weather is once again nearing comfortable. Now if I could just convince the rest of my life to follow suit...