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!)

In which Horror is watched, but not necessarily understood, and a couple other things

So, we caught A Tale of Two Sisters over the weekend. It was a little on the confusing side. And not just because we had to read the subtitles. I suspect The Uninvited (the American remake) is much different. Partially because wikipedia confirms this and partially because the original definitely took a few turns that left us scratching our heads. It starts off a little slow, but just at the point where you start to get fed up it picks up nicely. There were some nice creepy moments and you definitely want to know what's going on, but the end makes you work for it quite a bit. I'm not sure if something was lost in the translation or if we just weren't quite up to the task. So give it a go if you want, it's not bad, but you may wonder just what happened. (And all without a single plot detail - nicely obscure letter 'd')

And now another installment of Games my Wife Hates. Mostly because she's about to have to play it again. This time we're talking about Arkham Horror. I picked this up because of my oft noted love with all things Lovecraft/Cthulhu. First things first - this is published by Fantasy Flight Games and they're known for a few things: their main line board games are not cheap ($80 is not an uncommon price), they have some amazing artwork/components, the games themselves tend to take a while, and their rulebooks can leave a little to be desired. The biggest strike against this game is that it takes 3-4 hours to play. And it is certainly difficult to carve out that sort of time commitment when you have 3 hellions kids running about. I can't really argue that one. Strike two deals with the difficulty, and this comes in a couple flavors. Arkham Horror is a cooperative game - all the players work together to defeat the Great Old One rising from the depths bent on world domination/destruction of humanity. The victory conditions the game sets really do require that you all work together as it's tough to save the world. A lot of the time you feel like you're spinning your wheels - gateways to other worlds will open again if you don't have the proper bits to make sure the darn things stay closed. And you actually need to play a bit to get the feel for the way the game works - which locations are the most notorious for opening said portals, which locations offer money or items or other things you need, how best to set up your characters stats so you can safely navigate the world you find yourself in. The rules themselves are also a little on the complex side and take some getting used to. It's also recommended that you track down some of the player aids created by others as the rulebook is a bit of a nightmare. And when the game takes a long time to play, it can be difficult to get that experience. Unless of course you happen to just fall in love with the thing.

Which my wife hasn't (see title of this segment in case you forgot). There are things to love - the pieces and board are a thing of beauty. Fantasy Flight is known for their bits for a reason (of course, my wife would argue there are way too many of them). It is nice to play a game where you all work together - it's not something that happens a lot. And the theme is indeed part of the game - it's not hard to feel the urgency that the characters themselves would be feeling as another monster has just shown up, but you're low on health and sanity and maybe you should just try sneaking past the darn thing... I have managed to convince lovely wife and the letter 'r' that we should play the game at least once a year. Mostly because I can't quite bring myself to part with it. I'd really like to give it a go with a few more people (it can play up to 8 I believe) as I suspect that really helps with some of the difficulty. Of course it might make things a touch more confusing too. One thing is certain, if you do decide to give this one a go, make sure you have somewhere to set it up, it takes quite a bit of room.

And this is the point where I send a quick Happy Birthday to lovely wife as she is certainly worthy of said felicitations. You're the best sweetie!

Recently stumbled upon the Yoshida Brothers thanks to the vastness that is the internet and the randomness that is Pandora. They're a couple guys that play the shamisen. And they're good at it. Also the Jonathan Coulton cd Best. Concert. Ever. is quite nice. I'm really looking forward to checking out the DVD of the concert that's part of the package.

Here's a lovely, creepy short story for your October pleasure. It's in the same vein as Paranormal Activity.

And on a final note, ListenUp has come to an end of sorts. The show's host, Garnett Lee, as well as regular guest John Davison have moved on to new jobs. There will continue to be a podcast of sorts, but it won't be the same. I'll miss that show, I listened to it every week for the last several years. The members of the cast definitely fell into that strange internet friend type territory. I listened to them enough that I felt like I knew them. So good luck to Garnett and John and good luck to those still with 1up. Here's to the future.

Take a breath

Well.

Yes.

Lost Cities is brief gaming brilliance. It's a two player card game that plays quickly and yet involves some decent strategy. Can you get those last few cards played before your opponent exhausts the draw pile? Do you feel lucky punk? Well do you? Surprising amount of tension in a deceptively simple mechanic. Snag a copy.

Penny Dreadful was just that. Dreadful. That movie should have ended when the trunk was closed the second time.

Read all the Jesse Stone novels as well as the Dexter novels. All recommended. Dexter in particular.

The kids are gearing up for Halloween and then it's a dinosaur birthday for wee Graeme. Looking forward to that.

Managed a game of Arkham Horror the other day. Lost and the world was devoured. Poor world.