I attended my first wedding this past weekend. To qualify that statement, when I was young (read, before school age) I am aware that my youngest aunt got married. I have no recollection of the wedding. I seem to recall that I was not brought to the ceremony as it was felt I was too young for such a thing. Probably a good call as I would not have been able to sit quietly through it. Also, back in 1999, I was supposed to attend a wedding that my long-distance girlfriend at the them was invited to. However, there was a scheduling mix-up and they needed someone to let the caterers into the reception hall. I had no ties to the marrying parties, so I volunteered and missed the ceremony. I got a dance with the bride out of it (and I don\u2019t dance) so it wasn\u2019t a total loss. All this to say, weddings aren\u2019t a regular occurrence in my life.<\/p>\n
The wedding was a small unconventional affair (we were encouraged to come in costume, which only half of us did) at a small private room at a restaurant in Trois-Rivieres. I was honoured but I must admit a little surprised to have been invited since it was so small and I\u2019ve never felt especially close to the groom (who invited me) or the bride (who I hardly know). Still, it was a nice to be considered and it\u2019s an experience I\u2019ll remember for a long time.<\/p>\n
But that was Friday<\/span>. On Saturday<\/span>, there was gaming! It was my turn to pick games this time around and I went with Ad Astra, a game I bought on heavy discount during Fantasy Flight Games\u2019 annual Holiday Sale a few years back. I\u2019d never been sure about it because it seemed a little more abstract than the games I\u2019m used to playing, but as I\u2019ve gotten to know my play group over the years, I thought it might be a good fit after all. It turns out, it was.<\/p>\n Ad Astra is a resource gathering colonization game set in space. It\u2019s been compared to Settlers of Catan (which I\u2019ve played) and Puerto Rico (which I have not). Everybody starts on Earth with a factory and a spaceship and heads out to make points by setting up colonies, factories and terraforming planets. There\u2019s alien technology to be found which give one-time bonuses to the players who find them. Every turn, each player sets three action cards on the board. These cards will be carried out by all players to a degree, though the player who played each card generally gets an added advantage. The trick is to figure out which cards your opponents are likely to play so you can maximize the efficiency of your own actions. If you know an opponent is likely to play a build card, you can focus on another action you need since you\u2019ll also get to build when his card is played anyway.<\/p>\n The game is simple in its gameplay, but there\u2019s still a learning curve involved in trying to figure out the best plays each turn. There were a number of turns where we had three build or move cards in a row (out of a possible five) because we weren\u2019t thinking enough about what others might play, and then there were turns where the action a player was counting on another player to play didn\u2019t come up resulting again in inefficient choices. I made a super bad move off the bat, I moved to a planet with the idea that I would colonize it for its resources, and then left before actually colonizing it.<\/p>\n We all agreed that it would be interesting to play again now that we have a better idea of how things work. However, it was getting late and we ultimately decided against playing again then and there. I have a suspicion it\u2019ll be coming back to the table sooner rather than later though.<\/p>\n That\u2019s all for this week\u2019s blog. No Skylanders news because I didn\u2019t get a lot of playing in on Sunday<\/span>. Have a good week all!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"