Gaming in January 2012

Inspired by Mike, I thought I’d write up a little summary of my gaming related activities for the month.

On the boardgames front: January is OxCon month and all of my boardgaming too place there.

I gave Civ a try only to remember that I’d played it once before when I was half way through the game. (It is quite fun, but I’m still not sure that it is a good game as it feels too much like a game of “Who will blink first”).

I got in a rare game of Seafarers which I proceeded to win by a large margin after discovering a 6 gold and a 5 gold next to each other on the same turn.

I also managed to play half a dozen games of Dead Rising which I’m growing increasingly fond of. The expansions have arrived now so I’m going to have to try it with some other races and custom warbands.

I entered the Settlers tournament and managed to come third (after new rules were invented to tie break the tied tie break for second place). I’ve now managed to come consistently near the top for a few years, so I’m feeling quite pleased with myself.

Finally an honourable mention to Cities, an interesting tile laying game. Sadly it completely lacks interaction. A collection of tiles are selected in a random order, but each turn each player gets an identical tile and places it in their own play area.

Next up, RPGs: A GMing heavy month for me, I’ve been running Fantasy Craft with a Mythic Roman setting on Tuesdays. I’ve been very happy with my players as they’ve taken the plot in directions I hadn’t imagined and kept me on my toes. I think I’m getting better at improvisation. I’ll try to get a proper write up done after the final session next week.

The monthly Traveler game continues. We broke into a disturbingly insecure military base to sabotage the Giant Ancient Anti-Hyperspace Weapon Of Doom.

Finally I ran the adventure from the new D&D Red Box. It went down reasonably well, although one player was unimpressed with the dungeon crawl slog making things somewhat boring for his character (the party tank).

On to wargaming: No plays this month, but great success with my New Year Resolution, which I have so far failed to break.

If I have a quiet evening in, then I will do some painting.

Some nights I manage 10 minutes, some I manage 2 hours (and quite I lot I’m out and thus not subject to the resolution). It has meant that I’ve got through a couple of dozen skeletons, mostly finished a dozen elves, and have another dozen skeletons almost ready for the QuickShade stage. Decent photos coming soon!

I’ve also half assembled the Magnus the Traitor starter set for Warmachine after two people asked me to start playing the game enough times.