Games-Heavy Weekend

The Wife's sister and her boyfriend were up for the weekend - hence no blogging. We had a great time - we'd not seen them for several months and it was great to hang out with them again. They're games guys too, and they don't get a chance to play very often - mainly with us at Christmas and when they visit us.

We got several games in, but in terms of hours played we did a lot of gaming as we played some longer games. After her excellent performance on holiday (winning more games than anyone else, despite playing fewer games than most), The Wife was the lady to beat...

First up on Friday night was Ticket To Ride. It was the first time Matt and Suzy had played, but they enjoyed it, and were competitive, but despite our best efforts The Wife won by a huge margin. Cue some playful ribbing from The Wife. Oh, the shame.

It had been a while since Suzy and Matt had visited, so they hadn't seen the last couple of year's additions to my games collection. Surveying the games available, Matt seemed very interested in Twilight Imperium Third Edition (herein after referred to as Twiglet for the sake of brevity). So after a brief trip into town (during which I found out that the review is not in this month's copy of BBC MindGames, I bought Carcassonne: Inns and Cathedrals and delivered a copy of Border Reivers to a friend at Beyond Monopoly), we sat down for a game of Twiglet. Our previous games of Twiglet have lasted between 2.5 and 10.5 hours - it's an all-day game. However, we didn't sit down to start until gone three, and by the time we'd set up the game and explained the rules, it was five o'clock. Past experience had an estimated finishing time of between 7:30pm and 3:30am! As it turns out, the game (only) lasted about seven hours, so we finished around midnight. It was the first time the 'Imperium Rex' card had come out - which instantly finishes the game. At that point The Wife had nine VPs and I had seven. So she won again: two for two, not bad. We both would have got to ten that turn, but The Wife would have done it first, so even if Imperium Rex hadn't have come out she'd have won anyway. Good work.

On Sunday we went out for a day trip to Whitby, which by the time we got out on the pier was... bracing. I popped into a couple of traditional games shops, one was a great disappointment, the other was great. In addition to their large selection of traditional games, chess sets and wooden puzzles they had Blokus, Carcassonne, Puerto Rico and Settlers of Catan prominantly displayed, and The Wife spotted more modern games on a lower shelf. It's great to see these games getting the exposure they deserve. That evening, Puerto Rico and Carcassonne both hit the table, I won Puerto Rico (at last! Redemption!), with The Wife and Suzy winning one game of Carcassonne a piece. All in all, a great weekend, with a nice amount of gaming too.

In other news:

• Luke (HamsterOfFury) who posts here about his game design efforts has started a blog/podcast with the best name imaginable: The Happy, Happy Board Game Love-In.
• I heard from BBC MindGames this morning that the review will be in the January edition (out 5th December) and it will reach a staggering number of people.
• I finally made it to Paul's for Monday night gaming last night, I'll post a session report tomorrow (I'm a bit behind schedule).
• Dave is coming round again tonight, probably more Space Hulk, plus an opportunity to play-test a game he's designed. Cool!

Perhaps November won't be so games-dry after all.