Hello there reader. Yes, I mean you. You’re reading this, aren’t you? If you’re not reading this, we wouldn’t be having this simulated conversation right now.
I was biking home from work today and suddenly my back tire started to wobble. It felt like it was going to come off. I stopped and got off my bike to check out what was wrong and heard a telltale hiss. I was losing air pressure fast. Doh! Fortunately, I was close to home, but more fortunately, I was even closer to the bike repair shop. I’d been having trouble with my chain so I figured this would be a two-for. I also figured I’d have to leave my bike there and be stuck on the bus for tomorrow at least while the shop owner fixed whatever was wrong. Lucky me he was able to fix it on the spot and change the inner tube in less than twenty minutes. Kaloo kalay!
My last extended weekend was a pretty nice one. I went up to Trois-Rivieres on Friday, saw my good friend Steve, bought a mess of games* with some money I was gifted with for no particular reason whatsoever 😉 and got home in time for lunch. Then I spent the afternoon gaming with my mom. There were the usual games of Lords of Waterdeep, Takenoko and Star Wars Carcassonne, but also one of my newer acquisitions, Favor of the Pharaoh.
In Favor of the Pharaoh, players start with three dice and roll them Yahtzee-style, trying to obtain specific results which will net them tiles with special abilities, mostly more dice. This continues until one player manages to roll at least seven of a kind which will net them the Queen tile and the Pharaoh meeple. Each other player gets one chance to beat that player’s roll (either with a higher seven of a kind or more than seven of a kind). If this happens, players continue taking turns going round the table until a whole rotation occurs without someone managing to better the new top result. So if I rolled seven threes, everybody would have a chance to either roll seven fours (or higher) or eight (or more) of a kind. If it gets back to me without anyone rolling better, I win. If someone does roll better, I still have a chance to beat their result (and I have the Queen tile that nets me the power to change any one die to any face I want. It plays really quickly and as has been the case with a lot of new games lately, I’m terrible at it. I lost all four games we played of it. In a two player game there are less copies of each tile to be won so once a player starts getting tiles they have an easier and easier time to keep winning new tiles, leaving even less tiles to be won by the other. My mom kept getting great rolls and winning tiles. Nonetheless, I still think the game is a lot of fun. I’m looking forward to trying it with a full complement of four players.
I went on a flashback tear over the course of the four days off and completed three flashbacks. So that’s thirteen out of eighteen done already (I also plan on four all new Masters of the Universe mash-ups to bring the total up to twenty-two). On top of that, I went back and reworked the Skeletor flashback, which is something I rarely do with a finished piece (much less one that’s already been published on the site). I was really unsatisfied with the shoulder fringes of Skeletor’s armor so I went back to lengthen them. You can go back to the original post to check out the revised picture. I left the original flashback to compare.
That’s about all for this week. Have a good seven and we’ll do this all again next Monday. Carja V.
* New games: Star Wars: Rebellion, Potion Explosion, Parade, The Game, Odd World and the JSA Crossover pack for the DC Deckbuilder game.