I’m back with some more gaming. Still Onirim, but I wanted to one live stream before I got the set-up in place for doing some Pandemic Legacy Season 1. Expect to see that start up on Saturday as I have some time at home.

Join me this time as I drink some Crazy Aunt by Insight Brewing and play a couple games of Onirim.

Bottoms up!

1. Going to AcadeCon. This was my biggest highlight, I got to meet so many people whom I listen to their podcast and talk with on twitter and to actually meet them was really awesome. Plus I got to play in some games.
2. Playing in the Star Wars RPG at AcadeCon was really cool. I really love Star Wars and getting to play in that system was great at AcadeCon.
3. Going to Fantasy Flights store for the first time was fun. I really want to go there and play games sometime this year.

   

4. Pandemic Legacy! Playing through that with Kristen and some friends was a huge highlight of nerdy stuff this year. It was a ton of fun and we’re wrapping it up tomorrow!
5. Running Dungeons and Flagons. The quality has gotten better, and I think we have gotten better at our game. I feel like I know what I’m doing better telling interesting moments for the players to go through and we can create a really fun story together.

Now, there has been more stuff I’m sure I could come up with that has been nerdy fun this past year. But what do I want to do going forward that is nerdy.

1. Sea Fall is going to be fun this year, a new Legacy game to play.
2. More playing games at Insight Brewing. It’s a lot of fun to play outside of our house.
3. Run some Star Wars RPG trilogies for the website.
4. Work on my own D&D setting/classes and maybe start to run a game there
5. Go to AcadeCon 2017! (You should too)
6. See if I can find a local Twin Cities gaming con to go to.

Alright, that seems like a lot of things to do this year, and I have so many more that I want to do. It’s going to be fun to see what nerdy adventures Kristen and I get into, and hopefully we’ll run into some of you along the way or make new friends for Nerdologists!

Happy 2017!

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For our most recent game night out, we took it back to a classic and went with Carcassonne as our game of choice. Peder’s played this one quite a bit, but I had only played it once, over two years ago, and was due for a refresher course.

In addition to being a real live (and extremely old — we’re talking pre-Middle Ages) city in France, Carcassonne was one of the first European-style games to be released. Many, many others have followed in Carcassonne’s footsteps since its release in 2000, and the style is in large part responsible for the board game renaissance we’re happily experiencing these days. In spite of its many descendants, though, Carcassonne is still one of the best-loved and well-known Euro-style games out there.

The beauty of Carcassonne is in its simplicity. The gameplay style reminds me a lot of Tsuro, just with several more elements involved. Using tiles that represent areas of land, the players (numbering from two to five) build a map around a central river, piece by piece. There are several different types of tiles — the principal river pieces, monasteries, sections of towns, and road pieces being the main ones. And just like in a lot of other Euro-style games, Carcassonne players use meeples (small, wooden, vaguely people-shaped markers) to claim tiles, and thus rack up victory points.

Points can be won in a few ways. You can put a meeple on a monastery tile to act as a monk, and you get points when the monastery is completely surrounded by other tiles. You can put a knight meeple in a partially completed city, and when the city is walled in from all sides, you take the knight out and score some points. You can place a thief meeple on a road, and remove them for points when their section of road is intersected at both ends. Or you can set a farmer meeple in an area of empty land between roads and cities and such, and then score points based on how many completed cities are connected to your meeple’s land area.

In true Euro fashion, you can kind of tell who’s winning based on who’s ahead points-wise, but it ain’t really over ’til it’s over because some types of points aren’t scored until the end of the game. This is my favorite Euro-style game mechanic — it means you have to employ at least some strategy, but regardless of what strategy you choose or how well it works out for you, it’s basically anybody’s game until the very end.

Carcassonne is a great game for those new to Euro-style games and who want to try them out. It’s also an excellent choice for evenings when you want a game that’s fun and fast-paced but that isn’t too involved or strategy heavy. It was certainly a great game for a relaxing evening at a favorite brewery!

Have you played Carcassonne? What do you like about it? What other Euro-style games are you a fan of? Let us know in comments!

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