Easter meet up
Easter was good - some friends came by on Saturday, played some boardgames, ate good food and listened to music. Found that I have a two step connection to the bass player of Marit Bergman, one of my favorite new Swedish artists. If you haven't heard her, she's worth checking out.
The boardgames we played were in order:
Alhambra - I've mentioned it before, and I think it went down better this time. It's a simple game about collecting money, buying city parts and building your own Alhambra bigger and better defended than anyone else. I think we played it slightly wrong though, but we all did the same mistake, so no big deal. This was the only game I won all weekend. Good start, then it went downhill...
Mystery of the Abbey - Fairly good deduction style game in the same vein as Clue, but still quite different. It's fairly light hearted, but I think we were too sober to follow the more silly cards, though there was a bit of chanting going on... The game is about finding out who murdered one of the monks in an abbey, by questioning the other players about what they have found out, and by drawing random cards that give help in various ways.
Ticket to Ride Europe - The sequel to the successful original Ticket to Ride (which now has gotten a third game in the series, TtR Marklin) is a favorite with this group, and I like it a lot too, but I'm a little burnt out on the whole genre at the moment. I played it so much (the original Ticket to Ride, that is) with the Denver group that I like to play some other games most of the time now.
RA - I think RA might be my favorite game of all, but I have no idea how to do well in it. I've finished last both times I've played it so far. It's an auction game, where you collect different types of resources - monuments, cultural personalities, pharaohs, gods, gold, rivers & floods, and score points for what you've collected. It looks simple (and plays simple), but it's everything but. A brilliantly designed game.
Sunday was planned to be an all-night vampire flick event, but we hadn't been able to get hold of the new Swedish movie Frostbiten ("Frostbitten"), so we added Neil Gaiman's Mirrormask instead which I'd picked up as a US import a couple of weeks ago, but never gotten to watching. To that, we saw the Russian Night Watch. I liked both fine, but kinda felt they were both a little lacking in some sense. Mirrormask was...well, I wish they hadn't gone so far to make sure it was kid friendly. As it was, it was pretty much an extremely beautiful children's movie (old children, but still). Night Watch tried to cram so much in that I felt I was missing every side plot that *should* have been there. "Special" characters were introduced, and you expected them to fill some kind of role, but they never did. Still, it was pretty spectacular at times. It definitely compares favorably to Underworld, which I guess is the recent vampire movie this reminds most of, even if they are very different. No risk of White Wolf suing this movie, I think.
We also had time for a couple of boardgames on Sunday before the movies - Metro was a quick starter, and we had another go at Caylus, and I think everybody came away from it with rather positive opinions. I'm liking it more every time I play it - there is a lot of depth to it which I need a few times to figure out, I think.
Now back to the grind - four day business trip next, leaving tonight. So very happy Oblivion runs on my laptop. :)
The boardgames we played were in order:
Alhambra - I've mentioned it before, and I think it went down better this time. It's a simple game about collecting money, buying city parts and building your own Alhambra bigger and better defended than anyone else. I think we played it slightly wrong though, but we all did the same mistake, so no big deal. This was the only game I won all weekend. Good start, then it went downhill...
Mystery of the Abbey - Fairly good deduction style game in the same vein as Clue, but still quite different. It's fairly light hearted, but I think we were too sober to follow the more silly cards, though there was a bit of chanting going on... The game is about finding out who murdered one of the monks in an abbey, by questioning the other players about what they have found out, and by drawing random cards that give help in various ways.
Ticket to Ride Europe - The sequel to the successful original Ticket to Ride (which now has gotten a third game in the series, TtR Marklin) is a favorite with this group, and I like it a lot too, but I'm a little burnt out on the whole genre at the moment. I played it so much (the original Ticket to Ride, that is) with the Denver group that I like to play some other games most of the time now.
RA - I think RA might be my favorite game of all, but I have no idea how to do well in it. I've finished last both times I've played it so far. It's an auction game, where you collect different types of resources - monuments, cultural personalities, pharaohs, gods, gold, rivers & floods, and score points for what you've collected. It looks simple (and plays simple), but it's everything but. A brilliantly designed game.
Sunday was planned to be an all-night vampire flick event, but we hadn't been able to get hold of the new Swedish movie Frostbiten ("Frostbitten"), so we added Neil Gaiman's Mirrormask instead which I'd picked up as a US import a couple of weeks ago, but never gotten to watching. To that, we saw the Russian Night Watch. I liked both fine, but kinda felt they were both a little lacking in some sense. Mirrormask was...well, I wish they hadn't gone so far to make sure it was kid friendly. As it was, it was pretty much an extremely beautiful children's movie (old children, but still). Night Watch tried to cram so much in that I felt I was missing every side plot that *should* have been there. "Special" characters were introduced, and you expected them to fill some kind of role, but they never did. Still, it was pretty spectacular at times. It definitely compares favorably to Underworld, which I guess is the recent vampire movie this reminds most of, even if they are very different. No risk of White Wolf suing this movie, I think.
We also had time for a couple of boardgames on Sunday before the movies - Metro was a quick starter, and we had another go at Caylus, and I think everybody came away from it with rather positive opinions. I'm liking it more every time I play it - there is a lot of depth to it which I need a few times to figure out, I think.
Now back to the grind - four day business trip next, leaving tonight. So very happy Oblivion runs on my laptop. :)