January Game Night

 Game Night.

I met two nice guys in the same line of work. We played three games together. The first game was Nidavellir - a fantasy dwarf themed game where you are going around taverns hiring up mercenary dwarves. The theme was kind of cool but to be honest it had very little impact on the game. There was no big battle at the end, there was no impending doom that we were scrabbling to prepare against. Each round we just blind bid on dwarf cards in order to maximise scoring potential. I managed to win by about 30 points and was pretty chuffed as I feel like I haven't won a boardgame in quite a while. I was pleased with my victory. The guys said I was doing pretty well and felt I was going to run away with it, even though I was concerned. There is a mechanic where you can trade in one of your coins to get a higher value coin and thus guarantee yourself first pick of the three dwarves on offer. I was consistently lagging behind in this, but managed to get two good heroes who helped, and then I got three heroes who acted like the train stations on Monopoly where having more of them multiply their value significantly. 

In conclusion - fun game. Dwarf theme was cool, but not super relevant. I had a really good time with it though. Downside - setup was kind of a PITA, and the rules seemed really complex at first.

Two other games were played - my traditional game of Citadels where I lost again; then we played Forbidden Island. I had played Forbidden Desert years ago, so it was nice to revisit this subset of games. We ended up not finishing but were pretty much two turns away from winning by the skin of our teeth but the night was ending and everyone around us was packing away. 

Neither game made me immediately want to go out and buy it, unlike Cascadia from last month (still not purchased, but I keep coming back to it). Cascadia has remained in my head and I am doing the boardgame equivalent of the tattoo 5 year test with it. If you still want the tattoo after five years then get it - with boardgames I am giving it a few months. I don't really buy them and think I can probably get a copy over at UK Games Expo probably...

I didn't win the raffle, but was going to take the Citadel Age of Sigmar painting set if I had won.

The guy I played with last month won a second time in a row. That guy is lucky. 

Here is to February - that is in halfterm so I can see my leaving during a film night in order to get there. 

I had to park up the road it was so rammed.