12/5 Featured Games

Hey guys and gals!
This past Friday we had an awesome night of gaming.  We played a few games with animals (as our theme indicated) and a few games without.  We got in a game of Smash Up, Lords of Waterdeep, Caverna, Robinson Crusoe, and Splendor.  I'm pretty sure an excellent time was had by all thirteen people, including our two newcomers Kevin and Clayton.

Next Friday marks an exciting day for us at FND.  It will be my wife's first day back since the birth of our son, Grady!  As such, since I'm in charge of this blog and the featured games, I'm going to be a bit selfish and have our next session's theme be "Games that Beth loves!"  I told her this recently and she responded "But then I won't be able to choose what to play!"  That's an excellent problem, my dear.

So, without further jibber jabbering, here's the games:

Splendor

Splendor is super popular right now in the gaming community and our game group is no different.  I think FND has had it played each session for the past three or four sessions.  My BGG list of games played had Ticket to Ride easily at the top for the year 2014.  In two months of owning Splendor it has soared above it, due largely to Beth's unfailing love for it.  It is a very easy game.  You take gems.  You buy things with gems.  Those things let you buy more things.  You get points.  You win.  It takes like 20 minutes but its pretty fun.


Carcassone

Carcassone is a classic tile laying game.  It's kind of like Dominoes but fun.  You get points based on how you place your meeples and the tiles each turn, creating cities and fields and roads and farms.  It's really simple and is really fun.  We have the Big Box so we have a boatload of expansions and can play up to six (I think, maybe seven).


Castles of Burgundy

Castles of Burgundy by good old Stefan Feld is a very highly regarded game by Beth and most gamers.  It is very 'elegant' for lack of a better word - on each turn you roll two dice and those basically decide your options you can take.  You're 14th century nobleman in France building up your land.  Honestly the theme is pretty lightly involved, but it is a very enjoyable game of taking efficient actions and building your estate.

Trajan

While we're listing Stefan Feld games, Beth also very much enjoys his game called Trajan.  Trajan takes the mechanisms found in Mancala and turns it into a way of taking actions.  Each turn you move little pieces around your roundel just like in mancala at whichever one you end on that's the action you take.  Now, I suspect when Five Tribes arrives at our house hold (the newest game by Days of Wonder) Trajan will go down a bit as it uses a similar mechanic in a bit lighter of a way, but nonetheless right now Beth really enjoys Trajan.


Ticket to Ride

Beth, like every other human being, enjoys Ticket to Ride - particularly on our fancy 10th Anniversary Edition.  Trains.  Tickets.  Pretty maps.  I don't think I need to explain Ticket to Ride much more than that.

Escape: Curse of the Temple

We literally just got this game, however we played it three times in a row just the two of us the first night - which is impressive because we don't play a lot of games two player.  This game occurs in real time (exactly 10 minutes long) and you are trying to escape a temple (picture Indiana Jones) before it caves in on you.  You are frantically rolling dice as fast as you can in order to get the necessary symbols to secure the required number of power gems needed to escape.  Curses can come up that prevent you from talking, make you lose dice that fall on the floor, and all sorts of other crazy things.  It is super fun and fast and frantic.


Kingsburg

Kingsburg is a dice rolling game somewhat similar to Castles of Burgundy.  You use your dice to influence various advisers, thus getting resources, which you can use to build up your little empires defenses and infrastructure.  It's really simple and it is really enjoyable - I don't think anyone's ever played it with me and not had a good time.  Beth, of course, enjoys it too.

Ultimate Werewolf

And finally we couldn't have a game night dedicated to what Beth enjoys without it also including a chance for her to lie and betray all of her friends.  So we'll play werewolf at some point.  If you're new and have never played, essentially you lie to your friends about whether you're a werewolf or a villager and try to get them killed.  It's fun.

So, those are all of the games we'll be playing next Friday!  I hope to see everybody out!  Even though they're games Beth enjoys, I think overall they're games the majority of FND enjoys, too.  I will update this again if I a 'reminded' of any games I forgot :-)

Blessings!

7/18 Recap

Greetings Friends of FND!

This most recent session on July 18th was another very successful gaming session!

We had fourteen people present, one of which was new.  Lee, Beth, Brian, Annmarie, Amy, Drew, Helen, Dave, Dana, David, John, Amber, Heather, and Tim (our new guy) were all present!  Fourteen is actually the lowest we've had in a few months but if that was our average (it's not) it would still be one of the highest (possibly the highest) averages of all GCOM locations.  Technically speaking it is our average attendance, but that's including the first few sessions where there were only a handful of us getting it started.  Our more accurate average is right around 16.

The theme of the week was Civilization building games and we definitely played some.

To start while waiting for newcomers there were two games going.  One was a friendly game of Uno (I'm guessing anyone reading this knows how to play Uno).  The other was Smash Up.  The big thing to come out of that was that Brian, who owns the game, finally suffered his first defeat - at the hands of Helen.

After this we segued into two groups of games.  The first table was quite large and played 7 Wonders.  Only about half of the group knew the game so Beth taught everybody.  Apparently she did a good job because after winning the first, Dana won the next two games and she was one of the newbies.  They played three straight games of 7 Wonders so apparently they enjoyed it!

While this was going on I (Lee N.) taught Through the Ages: A Story of Civilization to Tim, Drew, and Heather.  This is definitely the most complex game we've done at FND to this point and these three learned it quite impressively. We ended up calling it at the end of the Age II with me on top, but for it being the first game while I have played it a handful of times, it was pretty competitive.  They seemed to get it very well and everyone had a good time.

They finished 7 Wonders with a little time left so they finished the night with Telestrations while we finished up Through the Ages.  This was actually the smallest quantity of games in recent memory at FND but we still got a solid five different games in.

The next session is August 1 (this upcoming Friday) and the featured games should be posted within the next 24 hours.  I will be out of town for this upcoming Friday but am very okay with leaving some of my games at the church for others to use.  Below is a link to my BGG Collection.  If there's anything you really want to play Friday please leave a comment and I'll be sure to have it at the church.

http://boardgamegeek.com/collection/user/Nicholee

Many blessings!

5/30 Recap

Greetings!

This most recent FND session featured yet again record numbers!  We had 18 people come out to play games - Lee N., Beth, Brian, Dan, John D., Lee T., Logan, Dustin, Heather, Helen, Ruth, John S., Vita, David, Dana, Jake, Drew, and Amy.  Dustin, Heather, Jake, and Logan were all newcomers.

Because we had so many people we were able to play a wide variety of games - having as many as four going at one time.

Beth taught Carcassone to David and Dana at one table.  They both seemed to enjoy the game, though David a bit less so as he was beat pretty convincingly by his wife.  Dana won this one, despite it being her first game!

Meanwhile, I taught Takenoko to Ruth, John S., and Vita.  Takenoko is a very light game involving pandas and bamboo and gardening... It's a little different, but the components are beautiful.  Like Beth, despite being the teacher, I did not win!  Vita pulled it out by just a few points.

As these games were going on more people filed in and they took to some other tables with different boxes.

Jake, John D., Any, Drew, and Helen all gathered around for a game of Smash Up!  I'm not sure of any of the details, but I do know that Helen reigned in the crown despite being dealt into the game late.

Finally, Brian, Lee T., Logan, Heather, and Dustin busted out a game of Lords of Waterdeep, which has seen quite a good deal of playtime at FND.  Brian won this game.

While Waterdeep and Smash Up! were still being played, it was time to start one of the featured games of the week - Telestrations.  Telestrations, as detailed in the preview, is party game that combines the drawing element of Pictionary with the 'telephone game.'  It is quite hysterical and the few rounds we played were no different - made particularly humorous due to a few members particularly interesting drawing abilities.

After Telestrations broke up we moved onto a whole new round of games.

Alien Frontiers, another of the featured games, was learned by Dustin, Dan, Logan, and Lee T.  Frontiers is a reasonably complicated game and they all picked up on it quite quickly.  Despite a very back-and-forth game, Dustin, taking control of the Smugglers faction, was able to end the game on top of the scoring track.

At another table John S., Ruth, and Vita taught Ticket to Ride to Dana.  Unfortunately her luck of winning new games ran out as John S. won this one.

A second game of Smash Up! started up with Jake, David, John D., Brian, and Helen, however this time it was Brian who won the game.

Finally during this stretch of time Beth taught Takenoko to Drew and Amy - Drew felt particularly manly playing a game with pretty colors and a nice painted Panda and looks forward to playing it again as soon as possible.  Despite his affection for it, he was bested by his sister - Amy won.  Apparently it was a good night for people learning games to go ahead and win.

Takenoko and Ticket to Ride finished up around the same time with still around an hour left of gaming so I taught John S., Beth, Amy, and Drew the last of the featured games - Kingsburg.  The four of them seemed to really enjoy it as there was a lot of tabeltalk occurring - particularly at the end when the King's dice roll for defense was exactly what Beth required to win the battle and have everybody else go down.  Despite that convenient luck, Drew was still able to pull out the victory with Beth in a close second.

The last game that was played was Hanabi - a fun and relatively quick cooperative card game.  Brian, Helen, Lee T., and my self played and ended with 20 points - good for the third highest winning category.  Not too bad!

As you can see we played a LOT of games!  Good times seemed to be had by all and we are very excited to see are numbers continue to grow.

We are making a large push to get our next FND past the 20-person mark so we will be doing some extra things to make that happen - including some prizes, food, and more!  Be sure to check the featured games page when it is posted for more details.

If you weren't at this most recent FND hopefully we'll catch you at the next one!

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!