Soirée Jeu

Inspirational song: Games Without Frontiers (Peter Gabriel)

Now that football season has ended, in a satisfactory manner, we needed something to do with our Sunday evenings. The neighbor asked whether we would be interested in making it a regular board game night until the end of summer. We all agreed. We would have been fools not to.

I really can’t name the first game we played, that took most of the evening. It was something about a haunted house, but the name just didn’t stick in my head. It was very complicated, and I didn’t do particularly well. The first half of the game is team-building, where the whole party explores a decrepit mansion a room at a time. As you draw cards and roll dice against the odds, eventually someone sets off the haunting phase of the game. This particular version pit T against the rest of us, with him as a zombie lord. My character, a 13 year old boy with few exceptional strengths, died when he couldn’t run away from the two zombies who appeared in the same room as he. It was a surprise when Mr S-P and our old college roommate found a couple really good artifacts in the deck of cards, and teamed up to defeat T’s zombies. It was thrilling to the end.

The foster kids had to leave after that game, because of work, but the rest of us stayed and played a round of the bean game, a German card game called “Bohnanza.” It’s not a complicated game, but strategy is important. We all did well, but the former roommate and I tied for first. This is definitely one of our favorites.

Foster daughter printed up more 3-D figurines while she had T’s printer (which she returned tonight). The ones she brought were so perfectly customized I nearly broke myself laughing at them. One is my daughter’s character in the campaign Mr S-P wrote himself, a cat who received all the magic powers when a sorcerer blew himself up in the same room, so the cat can shape-change into a small boy (named Oliver). She printed a miniature with both the cat and boy on it. And for two year, Mr S-P has been playing a character who has slowly evolved into the most flamboyant, gregarious, charismatic adventurer I’ve ever seen. He’s not quite a bard...more cult leader at this point. His most powerful attack is intimidation. Just that. Foes frequently either shut down emotionally and get dispatched, or they give up and run away altogether. I took several photos of the figurine. It has been hours now, and I’m still giggling at how perfect it is.