Space Battle

Planning how long a board game day will take is impossible. Today we travelled to a couple that lived not far from us. We arrived around half past twelve. This hour was set because the hosts did not want to drag it out into the night. Yet, given the chosen games, we played for over eight hours...

There was another couple there that we had not met before. They seemed nice and friendly. I could have today's couples as the regulars on board game nights. After introductions and small talk we soon opened the first box called 7 Wonders. The hosts, being really good hosts, explained thoroughly how to play it. Each of us got a randomly picked wonder (I got Alexandria) and each wonder had special "abilities" that could be used after reaching that building stage. Ten cards were handed to each player but the player could only pick one to use. There were resource-cards, end-of-the-game-points-cards, science-cards, military and such. If you are interested I recommend you follow the link to get the full description. I totally missed one part of my wonder where I had a lot of resources but instead of using them I paid John a lot of money to use his. He in turn had a lot of money which he could use to build his own stuff. It is clear I lost pretty bad in this game, but I thought it was fun and I would want to own it.

We had a lot of snacks to eat all the time. We had had the impression that they did not have a lot so we brought some with us. Apparently this was not needed since, after we unloaded our backpack, we almost needed a whole table just for the snacks. Then later we were served a very German desert which was an apple stuffed with jam, nuts, raisins and honey together with vanilla ice cream. It was interesting and good, I enjoyed it.

The hosts were dog-sitting a friend's dog so the little furry ball ran around our feet most of the time. He was very excited to meet John and jumped up on him to say hello but the dog barely made any notice of me and was very wary of my presence. I wonder if I smelled cat. Ymir had been sleeping on my pants earlier. The dog's name was Oki, which I naturally thought was a Star Wars reference but when I said that, people laughed.

Next board game we played was Battlestar Galactica. This was originally a movie, then a series and has evolved into something much more. There are two coasters at Universal Studios named after it and I have tried them both when we attended the Horror Nights in October. So we knew what it was about but not where the name came from. After playing this we added the movie and the series to our to-watch-list. I made a big deal out of the gender equality problem that this parallell universe seemed to have - I noticed there were only three women and seven men to chose between as playable characters. My biggest problem was the fact that if this was a parallell universe then why could not women be a majority of a military vessel? I rolled the highest number on the dice and got to pick my character first - female pilot called Kara but nicknamed Starbuck.

This was one of those games where half way through a player suddenly gets a card that tells them that you are now against everybody else. Those are called cylons. John started as one and was soon discovered by our captain and admiral (it was random that the same person got both titles). He had bad luck with his bad guy-moves and it looked like the humans were going to win. Then halfway through I received the card that told me that no, you are not a human, you discover that you have been a cylon all along. I tried to sabotage the main ship from the inside but the humans made it quite difficult. Instead I announced myself and teamed up with John on our cylon locations. Together we almost managed to kill them and we got so close. I rolled many good dice to hit the rooms they needed but in the end the humans got away with one simple card.

It took hours to complete this game and in the middle we ordered pizza for dinner, but that did not stop us from playing. I did enjoy some parts of the game but most of the time I was at a loss. I asked for a lot of advise when it was my turn and I almost always let other people tell me what to do. I could not wrap my head around the actions I could make. This is not a game I would buy and play myself. John compared it to Eldritch Horror, a board game he had bought me as a birthday present, and even though I could almost see some resemblance I did not enjoy playing it as much as I did Eldritch.

By nine in the evening we had left the building. The Uber got there much faster than we had expected and so we left rather quickly after the game was over. The ride home was snaky, just like the last time, and I got motion sickness almost directly. The driver was very kind even though we talked a lot about death in his family. His grandfather died last night. Not the most cheerful topic I have ever heard in a cab, but it felt rude to ask him to change subject. I made it home alive and John took care of me.