B is for the Best I can do. L is for the Lines of text I’m writing. O is for the Open discussion that has yet to follow one of these. And finally, G is for Gawd! is this awful intro done yet? This is what my blog is to me. So yeah. Blog time.

In last week’s blog post, I mentioned–or at least, I THINK I mentioned–that last week was going to be my first week back on a full-time work schedule. That was only one day in. Now, I’m writing having survived that full work week and I can say without any reservation…that I miss my reduced schedule. No, no. It wasn’t really all that bad. I got through the week just fine, but it sure was weird being in the office on Friday.

One of the impacts of the schedule change is that I didn’t draw as much as I had in previous weeks. I completed one flashback and started work on a second, but that’s it (and boy did that second one give me trouble). With the fall TV schedule about to begin and more importantly, the fall season of board gaming at La Crique o Jeux starting tomorrow, I suspect I’ll have to tighten back up from the easy-going way of doing things I had going on over the summer.

Speaking of games, I tried out two new games on Friday: Potion Explosion and Bill & Ted’s Excellent Board Game. One was great while the other was only okay. Any guesses as to which was which? You have until the next paragraph to think about it. Okay. Time’s up.

Potion Explosion is a game which I think will hold some appeal to fans of those gem-matching game apps that are all the rage these days. There’s a dispenser of ingredients (marbles) and players take turns choosing one marble from one of the columns. The fun part is that if taking your marble causes two marbles of the same colour to clack together (referred to in the game as an explosion) you get to take those marbles and any adjacent marbles of the same colour as well. And if taking THOSE marbles causes two marbles of the same colour to clack together you get to take those marbles also. So picking the right marble might net you many marbles. What do you need these marbles for? Well, each of the four colours represents an ingredient you need to complete magic potions. Each player can work on two potions at a time. The potion cards will tell you which colours you need to complete them and have little holes in them to set the marbles on. Completed potions are worth points at the end of the game and give you special abilities you can use on your turn. You can also ask the Professor for some help which allows you to pick another marble on your turn with the caveat that the marble you take using the Professor’s help does not generate any extra marbles even if you cause marbles of the same colour to clack together. You can ask for the Professor’s help, drink potions and make your regular pick in any order you want, so generally you’ll use the help and potions to set up the best possible regular pick. There are bonus tokens for completing three potions of the same type and completing five different types of potions. The game ends at the end of the round where the last bonus token was claimed.

Bill & Ted’s Excellent Board Game is a programmable movement game. Each player starts with five cards and on every turn, they’ll play two of them and at the end of the turn draw two more to bring their hand size back to five. These cards will determine your movement for the turn. The first box on the card tells you whether or not your phone booth token will turn and if so in which direction. The second box tells you whether your phone booth token moves forward or backwards. Finally, each card has an initiative number. The player who’s played the lowest initiative number that turn will go first. Looking at the board, you’ll try to figure out which cards will best move you around to pick up tokens representing the personages of historical significance you need for your oral history report (just like the movie dude!). These tokens you pick up will also add to your movement line in subsequent turns always from the first token you picked up to the last. The final twist is that there are two villains, a Far West Dude and a Medieval Knight Dude who are out to stop you and the cards you play will also determine which villain moves and how (the same direction you moved with that card). If you land on one of their squares or they land on yours, you drop a historical figure token. The game ends when there are no more cards left in the deck. The player who has the most historical figures at the end of the game wins.

So both of these games are a little more “thinky” than I thought they’d be. In Potion Explosion, you’re trying to set yourself up to get the most marbles in the colours you need. In Bill & Ted, you have to try to figure out how best to use your cards to get to the historical figures tokens, but also keep the evil dudes away. This said, I enjoyed Potion Explosion a lot more than I did Bill & Ted’s Excellent Board Game (and not just because I lost both games of Bill & Ted).

In Potion Explosion, it’s just very satisfying to parcel out a plan and wind up with a handful of marbles, even more than you can use or save up. It’s clever and doesn’t overstay its welcome.

In Bill & Ted, the more historical figures you pick up, the more moves your token will make on your turn, which just gets too chaotic to follow without taking way too much time for how light the game is. My mom and I only bothered mapping out the movements from our cards and just let the historical figures take us wherever we ended up and even then it could take a while as you have to rotate the cards to figure out how your phone booth will turn and move. I’d hate to play with someone who actually mapped out all those moves because the turns would end up taking forever. You’re also at the mercy of the card draw. In our second game, my card draws always seemed to turn the wrong way or go backwards when I really needed to go forwards. And then when I’d finally figure out the safest move possible, my mom would get to go first and her cards would move one of the bad guys right where I was going. It’s definitely a game you can’t take seriously or you’ll end up frustrated. Really, I only bought the game because it was Bill & Ted and I’ll keep it in my collection for that same reason, but it’s not a game I’m going to reach for very often and definitely I have to have the right people at the table.

Okay, those reviews went a little longer than expected so I think I’ll end things for this week. Have a good seven and we’ll do this all again next Monday. Carja V.

…but not really. I’m too busy blogging, right? Let’s get to it.

My summer schedule is coming to a close. This is my last shortened week. I’m back to 5-day work weeks starting next Monday. That is going to be rough. I wasn’t nearly as productive as I was hoping to be, site-wise. I felt for sure I’d be able to close out Bandit Baby and I didn’t work on it at all. I’ve got a HUGE lead on Flashbacks though, so when I finish the Masters of the Universe set, I’ll really have to dedicate myself to finishing Bandit Baby and/or possibly work on another project. This should be the last time I mention this for a while.

L’Imaginaire had a huge anniversary blowout to celebrate 30 years of being in business. Every day in August they had a different 30% off special. Last Monday was board game day and well, I had to take advantage of it. 30% of a $20 game is nice and all, but 30% of a $60 or $90 game is even better. It made some games and expansions on my want list MUCH more interesting. I picked up the last expansion for Mice and Mystics (until they come up with a new one) and Favor of the Pharaoh at big discounts. Bill and Ted’s Excellent Board Game and the Tokaido Matsuri expansions were more modest savings, but savings nonetheless. I rounded the order out with Takamachi, which is a cute little observation dice game that I’m apparently terrible at.

Matsuri is the second expansion to Tokaido. This is important, because for the first time I’ve come across a game expansion that requires the purchase of previous expansions to be able to play. Crossroads wasn’t in stock, but I thought I’d be able to play with Matsuri anyway. Guess I should have read up on that. Now I have to track down Crossroads so I can use Matsuri (and Crossroads itself of course).

I’ve been playing a lot of the Pokemon trading card game on my computer lately. It’s a pretty good port. I played the physical card game when around the time of the very first expansion MANY years ago. The cards are…somewhere. I actually only got to use them a couple of times since the one friend I knew who played the game lived in Montreal. I did play through the Gameboy port and had a really good time with it. The game has evolved a lot since those days as one would expect from a CCG. The digital version manages to make it relatively easy to acquire new cards without spending any money (big plus), though as one would expect, you can be at a pretty big disadvantage when paired up against players who’ve been playing longer or who HAVE spent money on the game and therefore have access to the bigger and better cards.

My greatest accomplishment in the game so far came last night when I was paired up against a guy who asked if he could record the game for his YouTube channel. I said sure and the game started. Not surprisingly, he had a pretty solid deck, while I was playing my trickster fairy deck, because Jigglypuff. Honestly I felt like I should have been destroyed and about the midway point, he said “Well played” which is either a sign that someone is about to give up or is about to unleash the full force of their deck on you. In this case, I think it was the latter as he started getting his big guns working and took out the Wigglytuff that had been my one hope of victory.

Since he said he was recording the game for his channel, I decided I’d be a good sport and play through to the end instead of conceding. Or maybe I was just being stubborn and making him earn the victory. At any rate, that’s when something funny happened. I drew a couple of key cards and was able to field my Clefable which had an attack that allowed me to choose which enemy Pokemon I’d have to face. I then kept switching out his Pokemon for those who had no energy attached. About the fourth time I did so, he said he was starting to get annoyed with the power, as though I were being a poor sport and just delaying the inevitable. I didn’t respond and just continued playing.

Weird as it was, I was actually managing to whittle down his forces and keeping alive to see if I might be able to draw into something good. Then he made the mistake of fielding a Pokemon that had an item equipped that drew him two cards every time I hit it. He had no energy attached, so he couldn’t attack me. Instead of letting the Pokemon die, he kept healing it so I kept hitting him and making him draw cards. Then, instead of attaching the energy which would allow him to switch it out or attack me, he kept building up the rest of his forces (maybe to show me all the ways he could beat me). I guess he was really upset by this point because he made another comment about how all I was doing was wasting time. Not so.

If at the beginning of a turn, a player cannot draw a card from his deck, he automatically loses. Maybe he didn’t know that or maybe he wasn’t keeping track of the number of cards left in his deck, but ultimately I just wanted to see how long I could stall before he was able to crush me. And it WAS coming. He did finally take out the Clefable and none of my other Pokemon had any powers that would keep me going. I just put my highest HP Pokemon out to withstand as many hits as possible and hoped he didn’t have the card that would allow him to put his hand back into his deck, which he didn’t. So I won. After his “well played” comment that I actually think came off as a little patronizing given the situation, it felt really good to beat him. I sorta regret not taking the name of his Youtube channel down to see if he posted the game.

Well that’s all for this week. Have a good seven and we’ll do this all again next Monday. Carja V.