Board Games

I finished my judging for the Cardboard Edison Award. Out of the 15 games I judged, there were 6 I would like to see go through to round 2 (which is 5 more than I had last year) and I think 3 of them have a real chance at it. I excitedly await seeing what games make it into round two.

A fairly light week on board games, though we did pick up a new one. I got the Unmatched: Cobble and Fog box. I’ve heard that it’s the best set and we enjoyed the Jurassic Park one we won last year. When I heard they were going to stop producing this one I figured now was a good time to go for it. I’m hoping to play it soon. I also got the map pack for Ark Nova which has a really interesting map layout. I might try and solo that one over this week.

Feb 16: When considering games to cull from our collection, Dinner in Paris came to mind. We played it once last July after we bought it and it was neat but I didn’t have a strong urge to play it again since then. So we put this on the table and got to playing. We both really liked it and want to keep it. I was kind of a jerk and really sectioned off half the board for myself in many ways which led to me guaranteeing a majority for scoring. Once I had locked in two of those, I just went for terraces and finishing goals. I knew Rachael would end the game eventually by doing a couple more restaurants, and in the meantime I could focus on just spending resources every turn instead of gathering them. This worked out to a strong win for me.

Feb 17: I started the day off with two games of Orchard. I wanted a quick game just to have something to do and after playing through both sets of cards I realized, I’m ready for this one to find a new home. I’ve seen what it has to offer. I might try and pick up Grove, the follow up to this one. I like the general gameplay, just don’t need this one anymore. That night we played another chapter of My City, episodes 10-12. This was a neat one and we both found ourselves planning more than we had in the past, leaving gaps for specific tiles to go and really playing our best. We both had some tight scores where one more tile one way or the other would have swung the win. Rachael won two of the games that night, but I got just as many progress bubbles filled in because of a new game mechanic.

One last topic of the week is, I designed an insert for Project L (pictured right). This one is 3D printed and is intended for the Kickstarter version with all the expansions. The files are on Thingiverse now. If you have the retail version of the game, this insert won’t work for you, though there are a few others on the site that might be useful.

Movies

This week we saw Ant Man and the Wasp: Quantumania. We went with a few friends like usual for the new Marvel movie. It was a good way to start off Phase 5. It had weird stuff, lots of cosmic things, we’re introduced to the new big bad. And I think everyone’s characters were well written and acted. There were a few VFX things that pulled me out of the movie, but overall I enjoyed it. Not the best, but far from the worst Marvel thing lately.

FilmJoy released their Nope video on Nebula, so I think I’m going to try to watch that this weekend and finally catch up. Might try and squeeze it in a couple parts. I try not to watch movies in two parts, but I’ve got some appointments this week during my usual morning time before work so I won’t have as much time to watch it in one go.

Pottery update

I’ve got three electricians coming this week to give me a quote on how much it will be to wire my new kiln. I’ve got tomorrow off for the first time in forever, so I’m going to try and get to the local clay supplier and see what they’ve got, try and get some questions, maybe buy a few tools. I’m probably getting ahead of myself a bit, but I don’t get that many chances to get to their store since they’re not open nights or weekends, so I’m going to try and make it worth it. I got several books from the library on glazing and now I’m trying to learn what a good set of base raw ingredients for glazing would be so I can start testing different glaze recipes.

Work update

We are building a new branch at our library and it’s a month-ish until it opens. Which means I’ve been finally able to put in the makerspace equipment I’ve been storing for months. I have a lot of mixed feelings about this new branch, but it’s hard not to be excited about it when I get to see all the new equipment offerings we’ve got on hand and getting all of that set up. It reminds me of when I set up our first makerspace and just spending my time there testing, trying, and rearranging until everything was “just right” only to redo it all a month later when we got a better sense of things.