Game nights started in high school. I've hosted game nights off and on since college. For many years a group of us settled on Catan. I started writing recap emails years ago. You can only be young once, but you can be immature forever, I suppose.
Yesterday was a weekly game night. I was looking forward to seeing if I could play a solitaire game from high school that I really like.
It is a corps- and army-level game of the end of World War II in Europe. The last 5 months, basically.
And then the power died around here just as I was about to start. So I ran to the refrigerator, grabbed a beer before leaving it shut until power is restored, and went to Plan B:
This game is at least one that I figured we could play for weekly game night. I read the rules in the fading light and filled out two aircraft data sheets for a one-on-one dogfight.
After refreshing myself on the rules from many decades, I set up the board and two planes. But I just didn't feel like playing in fading light.
So I gave it up and downloaded Peacock TV to finish watching Warehouse 13 before it goes away in a few days.
And then, after over an hour my power came back. And then died. And then came back after another 20 minutes, or so.
At that point my desire to play evaporated and I just watched the TV show's last two episodes.
Oh well, I'll play both of these games one day. This goes on every week!
I pulled out a game I've been meaning to learn: Advanced Squad Leader. That tactical combat game is so complicated I've long been leery of starting down that path. But the Starter Kit version seemed like it would be fun yet not too complex.
Oddly, it has been a long time since I've tried to learn a new game with complicated rules. Or maybe computer games that know the rules have atrophied my rule-reading skills.
As I started to struggle through the phases with multiple options, it seemed like I was missing something. It was so different from other games--even tactical combat games--that I thought I was doing it wrong.
So I went to the InterWebs and quickly found a tutorial on the scenario I was playing:
As it turns out, I was doing it (mostly) right. But it did seem wrong. And seeing someone who understands the rules playing it more fluidly helped me see the flow.
By the time I finished the video it was at the game night limit so I packed it up.
One thing I learned is that it is detailed enough to not appeal to most people on the game night list. I had thought this would be a simple tactical game appropriate for game nigh light.
Still, it was good to get back into playing board war games. This was such a common part of my youth that it is good to restart that.
I do plan to return to the game quickly and play that initial scenario all the way through before I forget what I learned watching the video. I'll post something as an update when I do that.
Game night is back with all its past glory intact. Plus more! It was the first indoors and official game night at Casa Beej since March 2020.
The dice tower and box of dice returned! The Poop is back to indicate who has the turn, with the passing of the poop ceremony restored. The meme slide show returned, with even more Catan memes!
Hitting the wrong button was no longer an unrecoverable error when playing!
It was glorious!
Dave, Paul, Pete, and Tony joined me for game night this last Saturday. It was a struggle to remember rules after over a year of letting SkyNet Klaus handle the logistics and rules for us in the online game during our virtual game nights. Some had more dire problems than others (coughtonycough).
It was Ito Night! We had Tostitos, Doritos (cool ranch) Fritos (jalapeno), Cheetos (crunchy), and Tacquitos (chicken and cheese). Plus thin mint and sugar free cookies, HoHos, mini Reese's Cups, and some other chocolate thing. The House Swill of Labatt Blue Light was ready, as were assorted pops and carbonated waters.
Thanks to Tony and Dave who graciously brought non-swill beer (totally unnecessary, but the event was huge, of course). And Paul brought a bourbon in a fancy case to toast Father's Day to salute dads. Very thoughtful.
Happy hour started at 7:00 p.m., and gaming started at a little after 8:00 on the expansion set. But for all of us, it was a brand new game as the base. (Because I bought a new one to have sufficient material for Mega Catan!)
On to the games.
I was orange, Pete was white, Paul was blue, Tony was red, and Dave was green.
We played the harbormaster variant and used the new between-turn build phase in place of the old Interstellar builds, which is tentatively called Second Breakfast. Although there is some muttering about needing a better name. What? Not quite nerdy enough?
Also, we used a small poop to indicate who has the Second Breakfast role. The name is not settled. Mini-Poop? Lil' Poop? Shart? So there is now a simultaneous passing of two poops like Air Force missile silo crew turning their launch keys. But it is perhaps unneeded. We shall see how much this is needed going forward.
Game One
Dave placed first in game one, followed by me, Pete, Paul, and Tony in the coveted DP spot.
This was the starting-ish position (I forgot to take a start game picture, but only a bit of road building had taken place):
I was pleasantly surprised to see I had inland expansion options, no doubt increased by the desert placement that made the area not completely desirable. But my first lunge went to the coast to improve my horrible sheep position and to build more on my meager wheat resource. I initially had the longest road. But Paul built out to block my link-up attempt.
Pete had a shot at the longest road but he also faced the potential loss of harbormaster.
Paul maxed out his road and was vulnerable to losing that title.
Tony did great with his DP woods start and wood port, and expanded to the southern woods--even walling it off! Which gave him a shot at a 13-long road. Funny enough, Paul could have blocked construction of that road on the coast. But Tony still had the roads to restart the road and get 13 segments inland depending on what I did and what Dave did.
Dave was not a contender for longest road, and he had a very compact empire. But it was fully urbanized by the end and he did have the port options for trying to get harbormaster. Ultimately the knights put him over the edge.
This was the end game position. Dave had 11 points with the largest army. Paul had 10 points with the longest road card. Pete had 10 points with the harbormaster card. Tony had 9 points with two victory point cards. And I had 9 points.
It was a close game and a long one. Congratulations Dave, for the win!*
The dice were horrible to me and clearly favored my foes. The dice tower gave me too many robbers and the box of dice did not bestow favor on me despite repeated changes. I opened the possibility of keeping track of dice rolls so he have "probability" charted as with the online game. But nobody seemed to be willing to interrupt their drinking and gaming to be Game Night secretary. So you will have to trust my obviously unbiased memory of the dice rolls.
*Okay, this was a tragedy. The game does not automatically end the game when the game notices you have the required victory points. Tony had 9 points, including the longest road, plus two victory point cards down. But he thought he needed to play them like other development cards. He did not realize his error until after he had lost the longest road. Which was too late to claim the victory. Tragically for Tony, he managed to tie Paul who maxed out his road. If Dave hadn't played a third knight to get the largest army and the win, he could have reclaimed the longest road. Assuming Pete or Paul didn't get one more point before him, of course. The turn order and Second Breakfast building opportunities would have given Paul a SB build chance, then Tony a SB, and then Pete's regular turn. My turn would have been in there, too, but without the ability to quickly get two points.
This isn't the first time failure to claim a victory has happened. But usually it is from not noticing your points. And then praying it gets around to you again to finally claim it.
Anyway. That happened.
Game Two
We aren't quite the well-trained pit crew for resetting the game that we used to be, but we did pretty well on muscle memory.
The colors remained the same, and I played first, followed by Pete, Paul, Tony, and Dave in the coveted DP spot.
This was the starting position:
I felt good about my position in the north if I could reach the wood port and improve my wheat situation. I did that and linked up coast-to-coast to seal off the north. I hoped I might get longest road and harbormaster within that enclave. And moving north kept my road building as efficient as possible even though that 3 port called to me if I could beat Pete there.
Pete lost early options to expand inland when Dave cut him off. But Pete then cut off Tony for an alternate route. He also lost expansion chances on the coast when I reached the sea and build first on the coast. I had thought of trying to build to the port space but didn't want to risk losing more wood and rock resources.
Paul reached the coast and moved south, blocking Dave from that route. And he had two port sites in his smaller enclave. He had a shot at harbormaster with enough time. Longest road would have been a problem unless earned early enough to claim victory before maxing out.
Tony fully urbanized on his narrow empire effort to get longest road. He had 10 road segments, tying me but one behind Dave. Had Dave not gotten harbormaster, whoever got to 15 roads first would have held it!
Dave rapidly built roads south. Despite Dave's long road it was safe from being broken with a build from Pete's side. Only Paul had a theoretical chance to break it from the east. But Dave extended to the coast and grabbed the harbormaster while hanging on to the longest road by the skin of his teeth! By builds it was a close game, but the two building achievement cards that Dave got were the decisive factors.
This was the end position. Dave finished with 11 points, including longest road and harbormaster. Tony had 8 points. Paul and I had 7 points. Pete had 6 points.
Congratulations Dave!
I will say that my memory is that 11 was reasonably good to me in the game. But I don't remember my 5 rock paying off, which was one reason I really wanted the 3 rock at the coast and didn't want to risk mission creep by trying to get the port, too.
We finished up close to 1:00 with only two games played. That was a bad record and hopefully this was just the luck of the draw and not a measure of our degraded in-person playing skills after letting Klaus handle all the rules.
We watched Season 5, Episode 8 of Game of Thrones. No boooobs. But it was back to the old practice of judging driving and deciding whether time, caffeine, or spending the night (where is that French maid outfit, anyway?).
After putting away the food items I headed off to bed at about 2:30. The hooker was still trying to fit into the French Maid outfit in defiance of the Pandemic 20 she had put on.
And I woke up at about 7:00 to find somebody had left a huge mess in my home! Virtual is looking better--I kid! Cleanup wasn't too bad. The blood stains came out with some bleach and I got the tacquito fragments off of the ceiling by standing on a chair. And there are a lot of dishes and whatnot to wash.
Actually, separating out the expansion kit pieces was super easy and barely an inconvenience with all of the expansion pieces being old-style design. And after all the searching for Tony's pieces bag, I found it this morning in the box.
As always, I welcome and encourage comments on game play, things we forgot, or names for new rules and objects. And if anyone wants to volunteer as statistician for recording dice rolls, feel free!
And a meme before you go.
Thanks to those attending. It was great to get the gaming gang back together! Virtual was certainly adequate but it was not the same. We'll do it again in July.
With a new in-person monthly Catan game night coming up soon, I decided weekly game night this week would be a work evening if nobody could attend. I remembered that the last real world Catan game showed missing pieces as the result of my initial work to divide up pieces into basic, expansion, and mega versions. I didn't realize how much work I had to do to make the mega version work!
It took 2-1/2 hours but the basic game is complete:
The expansion kit for 5-6 players is now set:
And the mega-expansion kit is now created and set:
The major thing I had forgotten for the mega set was the additional circular pieces indicated resource strength for the extra hexagons. So I used blank extra pieces. Otherwise I just had to settle on what extra cards to add. And write down the specifics for the revised "second breakfast" build phases and points needed to win in mega versions.
I think we can handle 10 players if we had to.
And I am thinking that along with the "player poop" I will try a smaller "second breakfast player poop" to remind players of that build phase opportunity coming up.
Woo! So June game night with Catan can handle any likely attendance now.
Although I'd have to resort to some stools in lieu of a full chair set. If we can fit around the table ...
Well, one problem at a time, eh?
Weekly game night is working out. But next week will definitely be playing a game, regardless of who shows up!
The second weekly game night was something I intended this for on some nights: work.
Not that beer wasn't involved.
After that, I wanted to organize my newly painted miniatures from my long winter project. That project lasted about 4 months and cut through almost all of my painting backlog. I painted a lot.
Almost all of the bags in the center are painted and need mounting. Some are unpainted as extras. And some that I need to spray paint await this summer but aren't on the table.
On the left are modern armor plus the start on mounting Crusaders.
In the middle are World War II ships and Spanish-American War ships.
On the right are World War II armor plus American Civil War in the back.
Amazing that this is about 45 years worth of collecting. Laid out in one place it doesn't look like that much!
I really do have lots of mounting to do for the miniatures. I started a remount of my modern and World War II infantry plus the Crusader era stuff. And a small amount of Civil War support units and artillery.
And as I organized the miniatures and reboxed them, I decided that I need to glue the small vehicles turrets on their hulls. They are pointless for rotating and honestly I'm starting to forget some of the vehicles that I used to recognize and match hulls to turrets so easily. So that's another job.
Anyway, the project took me 4.5 hours, so over my time limit. And required an after-game night beer to de-stress.
I hope most game nights aren't this much work, but I really like setting aside time for this even if nobody can make it.
