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Lowell Kempf
United States
Chicago
Illinois
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Thanksgiving isn't usually a heavy gaming holiday for me. I don't come from a gaming family. Apparently I'm a genetic sport as far as gaming is concerned
However, this year, my fiancee and I ended up staying in Illinois this year. It gave us a chance to practice making a traditional meal (Okay, she did most of the work) and I carefully studied Alton Brown's instructions on how to carve a turkey.
And we invited a fellow temporary orphan over who was also a fellow gamer.
After a tasty meal, we sat down in the living room to play games and drag the cats away from the games. (little wooden cubes and meeples seem to be kitty magnets, I swear)
We stuck to fairly light games but it was a good few hours of gaming. Between my back problems and other obligations, November hasn't been much of a face to face gaming month for me so it was nice to play some actual physical games.
Ironically, since the iPad had made all of us Ascension junkies, our friend brought along the first expansion, along with the Rat King promo, so we could see what it was like. So we started out our face to face time playing a game we had all spent hours playing virtually
I have heard complaints that the Rise of the Fallen did not do enough to change the game and just added more cards to the mix. I would say that is a fair assessment but I think it still works well. It adds enough cards to make the game more interesting but not too many cards to make the game too random.
After we got a chance to see the new cards, I pulled out Maori, a game that I have always enjoyed have been thinking about lately. Our friend had played it before but it turned out he had been taught the wrong rules, that each person had their own ship circling the matrix, not the explorer ship. Mind you, the game has enough variants that one more won't hurt it. We played two games by the base rules and everyone had fun.
Then, I pulled out Buy Word, a Sid Sackson game that uses words to fuel an economic engine. It not only rewards longer words, it pretty much requires it. I had to teach the game to my fiancee and our friend but they both enjoyed it. Sid Sackson delivers again, as he so often does.
We ended the evening with Witch's Brew, a game that effectively fired Citadels for both my and my fiancee. While it is a game of role selection, everyone has the same deck of role cards. Unlike the random deck of city cards in Citadels, the potion cards that will get you your points are laid out in a progressive order. As ever, we all really enjoyed Witch's Brew.
So, good food, good friends and good games. Plenty to be thankful for.
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