Board Games
Mar 27: We had a pretty good gaming week starting off Monday night with friends. We were looking for something low stakes and so we grabbed LOTS off the shelf. This was one we were thinking of getting rid of and this week convinced us on it. It’s a fine dexterity polyomino stacking game. But there hasn’t really been much challenge with it. That said my kid loves playing with the blocks, so it’s moved onto her game shelf.
Mar 28: I had a long morning before work today so I played a solo game of Cape May. This is a favorite of mine and the solo works pretty well. I used a hard AI with it and this was the first time I’ve lost the solo version of this game after 7 plays. I made the mistake of focusing too much on my individual goals which weren’t that high of points while they snagged several majorities for high points. They also just kept getting bird draws which racked up a whole lot of points while my bird draws were mostly duplicates which is low scoring instead. I still liked the game and losing actually gave me a renewed interest in the game.
Mar 30: Last week the solo/coop variant for Ashes: Rise of the Phoenixborn arrived. I got started with this one and quickly felt overwhelmed. I could not figure out how to win this one. I got it down about 1/3 of its health by the time it wiped me out. The big thing I think I need to try is deck construction. I just used the standard Brennan Blackcloud deck and there were several cards that didn’t work for the situation. I’m going to try and do it again after constructing a deck that’s a bit more helpful and see how that goes. I might also wait a little bit and see if the forums on BGG expand a bit with some discussion of strategy.
Mar 31: Speaking of solo games that went poorly, I played the first game of Legacy of Yu. This is a legacy game. As such, this is going to be the only picture of it I share since it’s more of less the default first game set up. But this one also really got away from me. My first two moves I built 1/3 of the canal and was feeling really good, but then the game snuck up on me pretty hard and I lost very quickly. I’ve got some ideas now having read a bit of discussion on BGG, but I’m not sure if it’ll work. I’m hoping to play this again maybe today or before work this week and see if my luck changes.
Apr 1: Continuing the trend of “Saw at FLGS, bought at Unpub” we played Beer and Bread by Scott Almes. Now typically I don’t like his games. I haven’t played many that I enjoyed beyond one or two plays. But this one caught my eye in the unique way it works. Here players are sharing a pool of resources in order to brew beer and bake bread. In opposing rounds you either draft from a hand of cards, so use just what’s in your hand or swapping with a display. We were doing pretty well and I had a solid plan going into the final round when I got just defeated by having a hand of cards that required a resource I had no way to get which lost me the game. It was really frustrating, and kind of put a damper on it. I did enjoy the game overall so we’re going to definitely play it again, but that last round gave me a sour taste at the end.
Movies
I forgot that last week I also watched Boston Strangler. It’s the new one that just came out on Hulu. It was alright. The acting was good and the scenes were shot well, but it was just kind of meh. I do like the approach of telling it through the reporters perspective, it was still just generally not that exciting of a movie.
Then yesterday my wife and I went to see Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves. This was a really good D&D movie. It had a good selection of D&D things from places, names, and spells. It had good comedy, nice drama, and the plot worked well. I was worried it would be a series of fetch quests, but that was only the first act while they assembled the team. Then we moved into the main plot with good motivations and logical story. I think I enjoyed it more because I know D&D things. I think someone just looking for a fun fantasy movie might not get as much enjoyment from it. But I thought it was fun and recommend it.
TV
This week, Um Actually returns for season 8 on Dropout. This great geeky show has three people trying to find pedantic corrections in factually incorrect nerdy statements. This episodes features Brennan, Siobahn, and Ify in what I assumed would be the finale when they showed the trailer. But there’s great laughs along the way. I didn’t do great as a lot of the topics I wasn’t aware of, but still a good watch.
YouTube
This week I have two videos to recommend. Colin Furze returns with a new version of his Drift Bike project. This time he’s made spherical steel balls to use as the wheels so we can drive it on grass without tearing it all up. It’s just yet another ridiculous project from Colin and it was a lot of fun to watch.
I found a new channel this week for film and TV discussion called SavageBooks. In this video they discuss the no longer canon 2003 Clone Wars animated Star Wars series. It’s 100% the better Clone Wars series and is some of my favorite Star Wars so seeing it discussed with the respect it deserves. It surprised me to learn that while it’s not canon anymore, you can still watch it on Disney+. Knowing that, I think it’s my plan to watch that again this week. The whole thing takes about 2.5 hours to go through so it’s worth a watch.