So yesterday was International Table Top Day, but between Matt working late and my bookclub meet, the gaming did not happen in my house. So we made up for it tonight. 3 two player games to kill time, trying not to think about the epic awesomeness of Game of Thrones that aired today... sigh... 
Anyways, it was still a good night, especially since Matt and I have been slacking on our game nights.
So on the menu tonight was City of Thieves, King of Tokyo, and Miskatonic School for Girls. I may suck at being the king of Tokyo, but I can be a damn good thief!

What? Two posts in one day?!?! 

I like time off. Time off is my friend. 

Anyways, after my zumba class, I was informed that people were inviting themselves over for a game night, which, considering I generally love hosting and it has been far too long since we last had a game night, this was alright by me. I've also noted how sucky I've been at documenting these games, so I made sure to do some of that this time. 

The first game we did was Defenders of the Realm, a cooperative fantasy game were you choose your hero and try like crazy to not be killed or let the world be destroyed. This was only my third time playing this game (if you ignore the back-to-back plays in the same night), and the funny thing is that I never remember how to play it, but I firmly remember loving it. I expect that I will have to be re-taught the game, even if we play it tomorrow. Anyways, the one thing I did know when sitting down to it today was that I wanted to kill the dragon. She is one the stubbornest bosses on the board, but I was determined. I chose a new character for this game. I've been the Cleric and the Sorceress before, so this time I tried out the Eagle Rider. All three of these characters are pretty good. My eagle rider didn't win, but I did manage to take on Sapphire the Dragon all by myself, no one could reach me to even try to help. All of my cards resulted in direct hits (thanks to Eagle Rider's special ability of being able to re-roll failed dice) and I proudly took the kill! She was the only boss I killed; the unicorn riding dwarf was collecting hood ornaments with the bosses he was cleaning up after the other players brought them down. You know you're the badass when you strut around demon infested villages on a unicorn, swinging an ax overhead. 

After that epic adventure, my friend MM unpacked his box of Settlers of Cataan since neither Matt nor his friend had ever played it before. I explain it as Carcassonne meets Pillars of the Earth, but since more people tend to have played Settlers than either of those other games, I guess that explanation only works in my house. Basic Settlers is almost too simple of a game for us, I guess. Between it being a minimum three player game and the fact that EVERYONE has this game, we haven't added it to our collection. Though tonight was my first time playing with a Settlers expansion... something about Knights... We did the basic game first, then the expansion. I got blocked in during the first game and couldn't expand to save my life. Second game I build a huge road, but that did me little good when MM built up his cities super fast and out victory-pointed (yes, I use made-up verbage!) us all! Long night, but a fun one. 

Still need to have a bug game night soon so that we can break open Shadows Over Camelot. I have played it before but we haven't even opened the game since we bought it. Another game I remember nothing about other than the fact that after I first played it I knew that I had to have it. Joys of goldfish memory.

I have realized that I might need to add a new section to this website, one that has absolutely nothing to do with books. After all, there are plenty of other things in my life, though most of them just as geeky. Like gaming for example, and no, I don't mean video gaming; I get enough of that second hand from my partner. Tonight we spontaneously purchased a new table top game that neither of us had ever heard of, which is rare for us because usually we put some research or playtesting into a game before buying. This one caught our eye just from the title: "Miskatonic? Why, that reminds me of Arkham Horror (our most beloved house game of all time). Oh, look! It says that it's set in the Lovecraft world! It is Arkham's Miskatonic! But why in the hell is there a Hogwarts looking girl's school in Arkham?!?!?!" Upon reading the back discription, "While H.P. Lovecraft wrote his stories with a sinister tone, this game is lighthearted and cheery, because we're twisted like that," we were sold on it. We were practically skipping up to the till and eagerly we tore open the box when we got home. The rulebook is a little thin but there was a video guide online that was very helpful for getting started. I was in charge of the rules so we were a little slow to start as I was getting Matt caught up, and then we ran into some trouble with Locker cards and the random values they had (and no help in the rulebook about that), but thankfully for online forums the mystery was solved and we played a re-match game. I lost both games. The first I fell deep into insanity very early on while Matt was barely even half way. The second game I drove him down one point away from Cthulhu brain possession and then was overwhelmed by 4 demon teachers that two useless girl-powerless school girls didn't have a hope of even putting a dent in so I dropped down 11 points into the loser's circle of mental breakdown. It was cute, entertaining, and made for being made fun of - you lose sanity as your teachers use paddles on you, what's there not to take in the gutter? Best of all, even after two games of decent length, we both still feel rather up-beat as opposed to being mentally drained as some of our more intense games can do to us. A new favourite? Well, it won't replace Arkham Horror for us anytime soon, but it was more entertaining as a two player game than Red Dragon Inn for example. I am very interested to see how it will play with 3 or 4 (it's a max 4 player game). Oh, and no, you don't have to know anything about Lovecraft to play or enjoy the game, but I think it's better if you do simply because it makes it all the more ridiculous ( ie. the Lunch Lady is Lulu, can you guess what she looks like? Hint, very iconically squidy). All in all, fun game, worth the buy in our house!