That boy ain't right

Holy friggin' crap. One of the best uses of vacation time EVER... It was good for the soul, and E even said it was one of the best days of her life (brought a little tear to my eye to hear her say that). (Needless to say, math teacher E and her boyfriend may surely be invited to future events with effusive commentary like that. Not only is stuff like that good for the soul, but it's good for the ego!)

Board Game Hooky Day, as it was called, was something special. It can probably only be done once or maybe twice a year in its current form -- us parental types need the time in case of sick child, or family vacation time -- but it can easily be done on a weekend with the appropriate planning and forethought.

I basically had 12+ hours of playing nothing but board games, and my life is better for it.

I even learned three new ones: 2 positively great games, and 1 that was sorta meh. No, I didn't get to learn Princes of Florence, Puerto Rico, Wallenstein, or the copy of Hammer of the Scots that was given to me as a particularly generous Secret Santa present. But I was still ecstatically happy.

The great:

1. Bang!, a very silly, very light, and very raucous card game set in a generic Western town where everybody has a secret role to play with accompanying secret goals. The gunfight immediately erupts, and doesn't let up in the least until the appropriate people end up dead. How fitting that beer's the only thing that cures what ails ya in this game. Yes, beer.

   Opportunities for future game nights will include the two expansions I have, and that others may also be set on collecting now: Bang! - Dodge City and Bang! - A Fistful of Cards.

   I will also have to invest in the soundtrack for this movie. Because, really, what's a Western without a male choir behind you as you're killin' people up on Boot Hill?

2. Power Grid. To date, this is the best economic simulation game I've seen yet. It has three main components, all of which build game tension: an auction component, a fluctuating resource market (which actually allows cornering the market on certain resources, as I found out to my detriment), and a connection mechanism slightly reminiscent of Ticket to Ride. The rules presented a bit of a steep learning curve at first, since we'd never laid eyes on them before now; however, now that we have a number of people who already know the rules, I don't think they'll be hard at all to teach. (I've been guilty of this sort of overestimation before, but I think it'll be just fine, really.)

   Something else to invest in: an expansion game board for Power Grid -- France and Italy. (The original game board shows the US on one side and Germany on the other.)

   Note to self: start in the densely populated areas -- for example, the East Coast or the South.

The meh: Betrayal at House on the Hill.

Fiddly fiddly fiddly. The saving grace for this game is that the game will be different every time, and for some unexplained reason I still like games where there's a traitor in the midst of the players (yes, like my much-maligned Shadows Over Camelot). However, with a game this fiddly -- with eleven bajillion pieces to manage once the traitor is revealed -- it kinda destroys the horror theme it attempts to create.

All the more reason to trade this one away, if I can, and get Mall of Horror. From what I've read about it, there is no traitor in this game but it's a game that's explicitly based on betrayal: the zombie hordes are advancing on every position, and you're going to have to betray and abandon someone to get eaten, but whom? And are they going to betray you first? And will you even survive? (That sort of game.) Anyway, I've been looking for a horror game that does the chilling atmosphere a bit better; while good old Fearsome Floors has a certain goofy twisted charm with its constructible monster and blood slicks, it's still not the full-on atmospheric horror experience I'm looking for. (Note to zombiegrrrl: know this guy anywhere?)

Profuse loving thanks go to my wife, mammamer, for putting up with my predilections and allowing me the time. I appreciate her more than she knows, and some more after that.
Many, many thanks to minnie and Vim for hosting and managing the nerd onslaught.

And, as usual in these impossibly nerdy situations, I had to document it:

1. Endgame of Fearsome Floors. E thinks she has it won....
2. Doc! I need 50ccs of concentrated dorkitude! Stat!
3. Minnie inspects the Dork Cart.
4. Rook contemplates just how much damage he can do with that wealth of cards in his Bang! hand.
5. Power Grid. I get warm fuzzies just thinking about it all over again. Especially when I forced L to get that filthy coal plant he didn't want...
6. I think there were 20 games of Settlers being played throughout the day, particularly during the magic of Power Grid.
7. Tikal. What you see there is Minnie liveblogging the whole thing because Rook is taking too long with his turn. I think we're actually still waiting for him to make his move now.
8. Rook and Minnie are giant hams at the end of Betrayal at House on the Hill. Maybe it's because I chopped them into mulch with my animated plant vines.
9. Rook's queen is having some serious problems. However, he was learning the game for the first time, and he had a frenzied teacher attempting to explain the rules in 5 minutes.

In any case, I think I know what I want to do for my birthday now. (And my indulgent, loving wife lets out a prolonged sigh.)