Another weekend passes us by...
I realised I only ever update this nefarious journal after a weekend these days, I am going to edeavour to let you know more insignificant details of the stuff during the week too.
But not today :)
My weekend was top, it all started (as weekends are prone to do) with a sly sneaking off at 4.30 and saw me heading back to the House of Geek for a night of beverages, TV and shooting things. I caught up with the new Grey's and Private Practice and I thoroughly enjoyed both ! Private Practice makes its mark as it's own series and is well worth a watch by fans of Grey's or even people who have never seen Grey's and never intend too.
I originally had loads of plans for Saturday but I scrapped them all as I was feeling too constrained by lists and schedules. Ironically I ended up doing most of my planned things anyway but because they were no longer planned my odd little mind was calmed :) I cleaned the Bathroom, proper cleaned too, not just the usual surface tidy. I headed over to Northfield (which is just like I remember it) to pick up my 3rd copy of Heroscape and then I headed into town to pick up the Reiner Knizia game Mensa Connections which TK Maxx is selling at the bargain price of £6.99. I even picked up a few Christmas presents for Emma too ! I met Em's for a quick bite to eat and then I ordered my new glasses after much deliberation in the shop. I'm not too keen on the new ones so I think they have been relegated to my spare pair even though they are newer :) We played Mensa Connections when we got in and thoroughly enjoyed it, yet another Knizia game which is simple to learn and loads of fun to play. Emma was a bit poorly so planned party-age on Saturday night did not occur so we got a relatively early night.
Sunday morning/daytime was a lazy day with much TV and boardgame geekness. We watched the end of season one of Boston legal and played a few games of Lost Cities, Mensa Connections and even a game of Heroscape (using the basic rules).
Lost Cities is still a brilliant game, nice and quick with loads of strategy with the luck of the draw thrown in to make life more complicated. Another Knizia game with top notch production values. Oddly, despite having played it hundreds of times before I noticed loads of rules I never had before :) Emma beat me 2 games to 1, but I snuck in in the final count and won by the total number of points as I had a cracking score in the third game !!
Mensa Connections is a tile based symbol matching type game which does have a surprising amount of strategy in it, after beating me on Saturday I did not hold much hope for a win but managed to sneak a victory in. The trick seems to be to keep scoring tiny amounts of points for all your colours, not letting any get to far behind (and calculating when best to block your opponent too, not just scoring points for yourself).
Heroscape (for ages 8+ :S) was originally bought by me as the hex terrain it comes with is lovely and is good for any wargame. I originally was intending to build a Flintloque battlefield to play against
paddyflynn on Sunday night. However I thought I might as well give the game a try as is. Me and Emma set up the board in about 20 minutes and had a quick read of the basic rules and played the basic scenario 'Attack at Dawn' for the Table of the Giants battlefield. Emma played the 'bad guys' who got a Marro dude (some kind of alien clone-y race) and some Samurai plus one other figure. She played them mainly because they started with an Orc riding a bloody huge dinosaur (one of the two BIG figures that come with the game), I played the 'good guys' with some Viking heroes, some warriors and a Valkyrie. Please note I did not get the other BIG figure, the Dragon. Surely enough she destroyed me in minutes :) The basic game was far too basic for my liking but is a good introduction to people who've never played a wargame before (such as Emma). We were going to play the advanced game as it seems like a good set of wargame rules but Boston Legal took over, followed by an afternoon kip for Emma and a hour or so of the excellent shooter Stranglehold for me. One thing though, Heroscape is beatiful to look at both whilst setting up and during play. It's currently in Argos at £5.99 for the full game (originally £34.99 when it came out). It's fun, easy to learn and comes with loads of brightly coloured terrain pices and fully painted plastic minatures with no removeable weapons :) This is a great present for wargamers and kids, especially at £5.99. If you can't find any (as most Argoses (Argosi?) have sold out) TK Maxx are selling it for £12.99 which is still a brilliant deal for what you get in the box.
In the evening
paddyflynn came round as planned and we were joined by
_tonylee_ so we chose beer and films instead of wargaming goodness and watched the animated Dr Stange movie (which was very good indeed) followed by this weeks The Batman episode (also surisingly good featuring Green Arrow no less !).
All in all a good weekend :)
Laters,
C.
But not today :)
My weekend was top, it all started (as weekends are prone to do) with a sly sneaking off at 4.30 and saw me heading back to the House of Geek for a night of beverages, TV and shooting things. I caught up with the new Grey's and Private Practice and I thoroughly enjoyed both ! Private Practice makes its mark as it's own series and is well worth a watch by fans of Grey's or even people who have never seen Grey's and never intend too.
I originally had loads of plans for Saturday but I scrapped them all as I was feeling too constrained by lists and schedules. Ironically I ended up doing most of my planned things anyway but because they were no longer planned my odd little mind was calmed :) I cleaned the Bathroom, proper cleaned too, not just the usual surface tidy. I headed over to Northfield (which is just like I remember it) to pick up my 3rd copy of Heroscape and then I headed into town to pick up the Reiner Knizia game Mensa Connections which TK Maxx is selling at the bargain price of £6.99. I even picked up a few Christmas presents for Emma too ! I met Em's for a quick bite to eat and then I ordered my new glasses after much deliberation in the shop. I'm not too keen on the new ones so I think they have been relegated to my spare pair even though they are newer :) We played Mensa Connections when we got in and thoroughly enjoyed it, yet another Knizia game which is simple to learn and loads of fun to play. Emma was a bit poorly so planned party-age on Saturday night did not occur so we got a relatively early night.
Sunday morning/daytime was a lazy day with much TV and boardgame geekness. We watched the end of season one of Boston legal and played a few games of Lost Cities, Mensa Connections and even a game of Heroscape (using the basic rules).
Lost Cities is still a brilliant game, nice and quick with loads of strategy with the luck of the draw thrown in to make life more complicated. Another Knizia game with top notch production values. Oddly, despite having played it hundreds of times before I noticed loads of rules I never had before :) Emma beat me 2 games to 1, but I snuck in in the final count and won by the total number of points as I had a cracking score in the third game !!
Mensa Connections is a tile based symbol matching type game which does have a surprising amount of strategy in it, after beating me on Saturday I did not hold much hope for a win but managed to sneak a victory in. The trick seems to be to keep scoring tiny amounts of points for all your colours, not letting any get to far behind (and calculating when best to block your opponent too, not just scoring points for yourself).
Heroscape (for ages 8+ :S) was originally bought by me as the hex terrain it comes with is lovely and is good for any wargame. I originally was intending to build a Flintloque battlefield to play against
paddyflynn on Sunday night. However I thought I might as well give the game a try as is. Me and Emma set up the board in about 20 minutes and had a quick read of the basic rules and played the basic scenario 'Attack at Dawn' for the Table of the Giants battlefield. Emma played the 'bad guys' who got a Marro dude (some kind of alien clone-y race) and some Samurai plus one other figure. She played them mainly because they started with an Orc riding a bloody huge dinosaur (one of the two BIG figures that come with the game), I played the 'good guys' with some Viking heroes, some warriors and a Valkyrie. Please note I did not get the other BIG figure, the Dragon. Surely enough she destroyed me in minutes :) The basic game was far too basic for my liking but is a good introduction to people who've never played a wargame before (such as Emma). We were going to play the advanced game as it seems like a good set of wargame rules but Boston Legal took over, followed by an afternoon kip for Emma and a hour or so of the excellent shooter Stranglehold for me. One thing though, Heroscape is beatiful to look at both whilst setting up and during play. It's currently in Argos at £5.99 for the full game (originally £34.99 when it came out). It's fun, easy to learn and comes with loads of brightly coloured terrain pices and fully painted plastic minatures with no removeable weapons :) This is a great present for wargamers and kids, especially at £5.99. If you can't find any (as most Argoses (Argosi?) have sold out) TK Maxx are selling it for £12.99 which is still a brilliant deal for what you get in the box.
In the evening
paddyflynn came round as planned and we were joined by
_tonylee_ so we chose beer and films instead of wargaming goodness and watched the animated Dr Stange movie (which was very good indeed) followed by this weeks The Batman episode (also surisingly good featuring Green Arrow no less !).
All in all a good weekend :)
Laters,
C.