Hello Joe! How’s it–What’s that? Your name’s not Joe. Okay, how about Goofy? Joe’s fine? Yeah, that’s what I thought.
Work has been a little crazy lately. We implemented the new case system last week and it’s a huge adapting process learning how to use it. This is going to be an interesting year.
Last Tuesday it rained. A lot. On any other day of the week, I wouldn’t have cared about the weather, but Tuesday is game night. I didn’t want to miss out on game night. The club organizers confirmed that game night would proceed as planned but recommended caution for anybody thinking about attending given the icy conditions. I was taking the bus so I figured I was safe enough. There were fifteen or so other brave souls in attendance and to the best of my knowledge, a good time was had by all.
The last time I tried to take the bus home, I wasn’t aware that the buses stop running at 10:30, so when I tried taking the bus at 10:55…well, I’m just glad I had my earphones so I could listen to music as I walked home. But that was last time. THIS time, I was armed with the appropriate knowledge that would permit me to catch the last bus. Or so I thought. Due to the icy conditions, the bus company decided to stop service early. Once again, I had been foiled. Fortunately, the rain had ceased and I still had my earphones so I listened to music as I walked home. I only slipped once and was able to keep my balance well enough to stay on my feet. So yay that.
Before my unfortunate discovery that the buses had stopped running early, I tried Blokus for the first time. Imagine plastic pieces that are shaped much like tetris blocks varying between 1 and 6 squares in size. Each player has 21 pieces and the goal of the game is to place all 21 pieces on the board. Sounds simple enough right? Well, when you place a piece it has to touch corners with a piece you’ve played previously. But it can ONLY touch your own pieces at the corners. No sides can touch. The same restriction doesn’t hold against other players’ pieces. Those can touch. It’s a lot more fun than it sounds. We played three games before moving on. That’s when I introduced the people I was playing with to Tokaido. Again, it went over well which is cool. I’m glad I added it to my collection.
In other gaming news, I stumbled on a new game at Wal-Mart of all places. While browsing through the CCG selections, I found Star Wars Galactic Connexions. It’s a tile-laying game with a dominoes-feel. Each piece is hexagonal with a value on four of the six sides (the top and bottom sides are always blank) ranging between 0 and 5. You can lay a tile next to another so long as the value on the side of the tile played is higher than the value of the side it’s being placed next to. You score points equal to the total of both sides. So if I place a tile so that my 5 touches your 3, I get 8 points. If you can place a tile so that it touches more than one tile (remembering that your values must beat the values of the sides of the tiles they’re touching) you get the points for each side. So if I can play a 5-4 tile between a 4 tile and a 3 tile, I score 16 points. Theoretically, you could place a tile so that all four scoring sides touch other tiles and score points for each, but it didn’t happen for us. We only ever managed to connect two sides.
The rules suggest that each player build a deck of seven tiles to play, but I think that makes for a pretty shallow experience. We played so that as you played a tile, you drew a tile from the reserve and continued until no tiles remained. I got creamed. My mom was a lot more fortunate in her tile draws and was able to make a lot of combos.
The rules also allow for scoring extra points if you can name a story connection between the tile you’re placing and the tile you’re connecting to. Example, if I place a Luke tile next to a Leia tile, I can get more points by saying they’re brother and sister. The number of bonus points is based on the border of the tile being played. Red-bordered tiles (like Luke Skywalker) are generally easier to connect story-wise and are worth only 2 points. Blue-bordered tiles (like Sabine Wren) are a little less easy and worth 3 points. Green-bordered tiles (like Malakili) are the hardest to connect and give four points. My mom has next to no Star Wars knowledge and I thought it would be unfair to use these rules. I don’t know that it would have made a difference if we had though. I was that soundly beaten.
The only downside to the game is that it’s collectible so getting all the tiles (there are two sets of 75 so far) can be quite expensive. They made different colored variants of each tile too. Grey tiles are common, black are uncommon and clear are rare. And of course there are chase “super-rare” colours like Jabba-Slime Green, Death Star Silver and Lightsaber Purple (to name just a few) adding to the insanity. To be perfectly honest, you’re much better off buying a complete grey set on eBay. It’s all you really need. That’s what I’m going to do for Set 1 (which I apparently missed out on). I’ll round out my Set 2 collection with individual purchases on eBay as well.
Okay, that’s all for this week. Have a good seven all and we’ll do this all again next Monday. Carja V.