Memorial Day Board-B-Que Recap

Greetings FNDers!

This past weekend, as many of you know, FND hosted a Memorial Day Board-B-Que.  Attendance staggered in slowly over the first couple of hours but by the end of the day we had 15 people show up!  Not too bad for a bonus event on a holiday.

Those present were Lee (myself), Beth, Brian, Annmarie, Jill, Dave, Evie, Lanna, Lily, John, Dan, Lee T., Don, Judy, and David.

Over the course of the afternoon/evening we got a lot of games in and also ate some food hot off the grill!  If you're reading this now I will be uploading pictures as soon as I get home this evening from the event.  For now just imagine pictures of devilishly handsome and intelligent people playing board games.

To start Lee (me), Jill, Evie, Lonna, and Lee T. played a game of King of Tokyo.  Evie was a bit aggressive and got her monster killed in round 2.   Lanna dealt the final blow to Lee T. not too far along, leaving the rest of us to fight it out for supremacy.  The body count stayed at 2 and I won the game by achieving 20 victory points, largely by accumulating cards that gave me points for subsequent purchases as well as discounts to subsequent purchases - a powerful combo! 

After this we split up a bit.  Brian, Annmarie, Jill, and Beth played a game of Smash Up!  I didn't write down what everyone was, but I believe Beth was time-travelling ninjas, Jill was trickster something or another.whatevers that Jill was playing will have something to say about that next time.
.. Oh well, they were all amusing things.  From what I understand the game was quite close and despite it being Jill's first game, it was a tie ball game right until the last turn, where Annemarie deviously handed the game to her boyfriend on her turn giving him the victory.  I suspect the Trickster

While that occurred, Dave and I played Memoir 44!  It was both of our first time playing so we did the recommended starting scenario - Pegasus Bridge.  It features the Allied forces trying to capture two bridges from the Nazis and historically was one of the first battles of D-Day.  Fortunately for the real-life Allies they did not have me in charge, as in our retelling the Axis won the contest, collecting 5 victory medals to my 4.  Dave had a magically good unit of infantry burrowed in behind sand bags that I simply could not defeat due to some pretty poor dice rolling on my part.  Nonetheless, Dave won the game fair and square and be both came away really enjoying the easy mechanics and historical theme of Memoir 44.

A third game popped up during this - Dan, John, and Lee T. played 7 Wonders.  Lee T. ended up pulling out the victory, though I believe all of the scores were within seven points of each other.

After all of this it was time to start cooking I passed on the game of Lords of Waterdeep that began with Brian, John, Dan, and Lee T. and opted to play some Telestrations with everyone else.  We had a great time playing Telestrations - it's hard not to.  Unfortunately the Waterdeep game did not get finished as some of them had to leave early.

Food was then eaten with joy and delight.

After we finished up eating we still had more time to game!

A 5-player game of Ticket to Ride broke out between Beth, Don, Lee T., David, and myself.  I ended up pulling out the victory in this one, due in large part to some extraordinarily lucky ticket draws on the last turn.  I realized I would probably come in 2nd or 3rd if I didn't take a gamble and ended up drawing three tickets I'd already completed on the final turn of the game!  Otherwise, my lovely wife would have won.

While this was happening Jill taught Evie and Lonna Castles of Burgundy.  Jill won pretty handily but the girls did well for their first time!

Finally, Beth, Lee T., David, and I closed out the game with a game of Hanabi, which is a fun and easy cooperative card game.  Beth and I just picked it up so it was only our second time playing.  For our first game we did pretty well, netting 21 points (out of 25 possible) and scoring in the second highest victory line!  We really enjoyed the new game and were pretty pleased with the purchase, especially since it was a meager 8 dollars.

As you can see we played a LOT of games!  It was a great day and we saw the consistent numbers continue, which was particularly exciting because we half of the group were people at their first or second FND event. 

If you couldn't make it out, hopefully you'll be joining us this upcoming Friday (5/30) for our next FND regular session.

Blessings!