Board Games

Jan 30 – SCOUT: I imported the card game that would become Dealt! here in the US because the presmise was interesting to me. It’s a semi-trick taking/ladder game where you get a set of cards with numbers and you can’t rearrange them. Then you try and play sets or pairs, etc from your hand based on where the cards are. Last one with cards loses the round. It’s a good game. Then I watched Tom’s manic review of SCOUT on Shut Up and Sit Down and it convinced me this was a better version of that game. If you don’t know, Scout also gives you a hand of cards you can’t rearrange and you palys pairs and sets etc from your hand based on where the cards are. But there’s no tricks. You just keep playing in a sequential turn order trying to beat whatever was played before you. If you can’t, you take a card from the current set and you can add it anywhere into your hand you want. Also cards are double sided with two numbers on them, so sometimes taking a card can be an advantage to make a really good future hand. It’s fun, interesting, and tense at times as you try and make the right call at the right time. We really like it and we introduced it to some friends on our (now returned) weekly game night and it’s likely to make an appearance again.

Jan 31 – Empires of the North: This spin off/spiritual successor to Imperial Settlers was our E game of the Alphabet challenge. (Yes I know it’s technically “Imperial Settlers: Empires of the North” but we always call it by the Empires title and it’s the only E game we have so I count it.) We accidentally played the same two factions we did last time but we reversed them this time. I was doing pretty good taking an early lead and was feeling good through the midpoint. Then in what turned out to be the final round, Rachael blasted out two high point cards and conquered and island earning 13 points (half the points needed to trigger the end game) and jumped to a strong lead. I was a bit shocked, but once I saw her combos I realized where I had kind of failed to utilize mine effectively. Good game I hope to play again soon with two brand new factions.

Feb 4 – Fort, Ganz Schön Clever, and Welcome to the Moon: After a few days of no games for Rachael to finish a giant puzzle I got her for Christmas, we got back into the swing of things. I played a solo game of Fort using the Robokid solo mode from BGG. It works really well for solo play and I included the Dogs with it for the first time. They were interesting but the way the game went they mostly went in my favor and didn’t provide much challenge for fighting over them. I won handily and probably should up the difficulty next time I play. This also counted as the F for our alphabet challenge. That night we then played Ganz Schön Clever (or That’s Pretty Clever in English) for the G of our Alphabet challenge. We both did better than we’ve done before, but I won this one. Once again the foxes threw Rachael off and while she tried to get more of them, forgot to do much with the blue die and only had 7 points in that region. We wrapped up the night with Welcome to the Moon. We’re on mission 4 of our campaign and this one was really neat. You’ve got to place your numbers in the underground mines, then when you fill a column you extract that and send the resources up to the surface to collect. This one I just ran with. She focused too much on filling rows which is kind of what we’re used to from the original Welcome To but this one you kind of want to focus on clustering in columns to get resources. I finished all the goal cards and pretty much doubled her score. But she wants to play that map again becuase it was interesting approach to the formula. Overall we’re really liking the variable boards of WttM over the original.

In other gaming news, I started judging my batch of games for the Cardboard Edison Award. This is my second year as a judge and only being 1/5 of the way through my games there’s one I hope goes onto round two. I’m also looking forward to attending the in person round 2 judging this year as I wasn’t able to last year.

Movies and TV

My movie this week was All Quiet on the Western Front. Netflix released a new one and I watched that. I knew nothing about the story. I never so the original, I never read the book, I’ve never held a conversation about it with someone. So I was surprised to find the story was about a German soldier and his unit when I had assumed this was a story of and American or Brit all along. It’s a really good movie. I’m not big on war movies and the only other movie I’ve watched about WWI was 1917 which was also fantastic. I really enjoyed following the character as he starts excited for the war, immediately realizes how awful war is, suffers loss, finds new friends, almost seems happy with his position, mourns his fallen comrades, commits acts he regrets, and follows through with his orders until the very end. It’s not a movie I’m sure I’d return to. Once again war movies really aren’t my thing. But I definitely recommend it as a watch.

For TV this week, I began Shrinking on Apple TV+. Jason Segal is a therapist at his emotional end after the death of his wife and his life is spiraling and he just breaks ethical rules and tells people what he really thinks they should do even if it’s not socially polite or morally questionable. Harrison Ford stars as his boss and it’s by Bill Lawrence who I’m a big fan of from Scrubs and Ted Lasso. I’ve only seen the first episode but I enjoyed the premise.

Next week I think I’m going to try and watch Nope. I don’t really do horror, but a friend who loves them said it’s not the traditional slasher film and thinks I’d enjoy it. FilmJoy is having an upcoming video discussing it, so I want to try and watch it before that comes out.

YouTube

Two recommendations from YouTube this week. First is the newest video from North of the Border. Adam continues on his Last of Us style builds but instead of replicating a monster from the game, turns Luigi into a zombie with Peach and Mario on the defense. It’s another great video with lots of jokes and well done sculpting skill.

The second is a video from StudioBinder about Invicible Superheroes and how to make them interesting. I’ve been really enjoying their videos lately and their look into film and storytelling. Their main point comes down to, even if a hero has a physical invulnerability, giving them an emotional weakness or putting things they care about into dangerous situations gives them some way to be hurt. It’s a really good look at the genre.

Video games

In Pokémon Scarlet this week I managed to just about wrap up the Team Star storyline. I’m excited to finish this one and move on. I’m honestly playing this to just get a copy of Koraidon for my living dex, but I wouldn’t mind trying to shiny hunt some of the Pokémon that are only in that version of the game, namely the Paradox Pokémon. Plus when the DLC likely comes out, I’ll be done with the game and ready to proceed into that section right away.

Pottery Update

I took my kid to their first pottery class at our local art center. We made a decorative bowl using Valentine’s clay shapes and some heart ornaments. Next week we’ll go back and make a plate. They really enjoyed it and are looking forward to more. I hope this interest keeps up once I get my kiln delivered and hooked up and then we can continue this as a family activity.

A bit about me

I realize that having started this blog back up, unless you dive around through the rest of my site, you don’t really know much about me. I work at a public library in Ohio. My job is to oversee the maker space so I spend my days around laser cutters, 3D printers, embroidery machines and more. It’s a lot of fun. I enjoy the work a lot and primarily my focus really is teaching as we train every patron who comes in to run the equipment themselves. Right now we’re gearing up to open a new branch which will have a second maker space there so I’m getting our final equipment purchases made, stocking away materials for the future, and space planning. I’ll be excited when the new location is open and we have a new set of toys to play with. I’m especially eager to try the combination of laser cutting sublimated plywood. I’ve got some board games I’d love to try and make deluxe pieces for by printing some images onto the plywood then cutting them out. Could even do it with acrylic too if that works out the way I’m hoping it does.