Fifth of July

Been having a lot of fun at Housecon the past two days. It's going on still today, but not sure if we'll make it as Mary Beth didn't get much sleep last night. But lots of games have been played and I've been having a blast. I'll try to see if I can even remember everything. They were in the midst of a game when we arrived on Friday so Mary Beth and I broke out Paperback, which is a recent acquisition that Mary Beth had brought and we'd never played before. It's one of those perfect melding of two disparate games. Paperback is like a cross between Scrabble and Dominion. It's got a lot of Dominion's card framework, but it's a word-building game. It's really awesome. I won that game. We played against the next day 'cuz Jason really wanted to play it (didn't win that time). We also ended up playing Lords of Waterdeep (that was fun, a D&D game, but completely not D&D, you're sort of the people "arranging" the quests of a D&D game and it's in more of a euro type framework). A game of Ghost Stories was played on Friday. It's one of those co-op games where at least one bad thing happens every turn (possibly more) and you've got one chance to MAYBE do something on that turn so generally way more bad stuff is happening than you can do to fight it. We got to where the boss card was the next card before almost all of us were wiped out right in a row (Mary Beth was the last standing, but she fell shortly after us). The next day Sarah and I played again. We couldn't get a full four players (no two other people wanted to play this game again). We were going to each play two of the characters, but we followed a suggestion of only playing two and having the others be "blank" or whatever. Well, half the players meant the ghosts approached twice as fast and we died pretty horribly pretty quick. I was sad too 'cuz I wanted to try out the strategies Mary Beth and I came up with the night before after first losing. I'm probably forgetting something played on Friday, but we played Spyfall again. This time I got the spy and the first time I got the spy I was asked the first question. I gave an answer and Matt gave this increduolous look. I might have avoided the vote but I just started laughing after he called me out. Somehow I still ended up actually winning that game. At some point Friday night, we realized the importance of playing in character (each non-spy has a role on their card along with the location). It makes the game much more...a game! It adds some cushion to the spy 'cuz some roles could have completely different responses for different questions. It also gives the whole thing some much needed focus. We played again last night and I just kept getting the fucking spy over and over (though, in terms of getting enough points, you really HAVE to be the spy at some point to win, you're able to get way more points than everyone else calling the spy out). Well, after being the spy so many fucking times in a row, I ended up getting much better at being the spy. We played two games and I tied with other people for the most points both games. I won a game of Splendor yesterday. We played Mysterium and this time I was the ghost. Yikes! Hard. At first everyone was doing terribly. None of the cards I was getting were very good clues for what was out there and it took most people several guesses for the first few rounds. But it started to fall in place towards the end and they just managed to get to the last round on the last night and they guessed it right so we won! I felt proud of my ghosting abilities. I guess it's a lot harder though if you have more people playing. It was only me and three others this time. Oh fuck. And we play tested the game Matt is making. Coursus Honorum. It's all Roman Empire themed. I felt kinda dumb or whatever 'cuz I was playing something else during most of the set up and explanation but I was free before they started and I really wanted to play it so I got in, but I didn't catch most of what was going on until we'd been playing a little while. It seems pretty cool and it was fun listening to the discussions on what the weaknesses are and ways to improve. Okay. There was probably something else played, maybe a couple more things. But I can't remember right now. It's been a pretty awesome blast though of game explosion.