Culling Board Games

The premise is pretty simple, what games are in my collection that are taking up space which I don’t like or I know I’m not going to play again. The execution is harder. I like board games a lot. For me, I like to keep a collection that has a lot of games in it. I have the shelf space, but that shelf space is filling up and as I talk about at the start, I have games from crowdfunding that are coming in. So I need to find more shelf space.

So what made me decide to stream some of this. Firstly, it is more content on the channel, and I hope that seeing what I have in my collection gives you an idea of what I like in gaming. To go along with that, it keeps me motivated to go through my collection. It would be easy for me to just skim it and find a few games. Going through Kallax cubby by Kallax cubby I now am forced to look at each game. Plus there are a few other content creators who talk about it a lot.

I mention them but Max from Tablenauts has a saying of ABC, Always Be Culling. And because of that and the games I have coming, it is time for more. I need to go through my collection and cull. Plus Alex from BoardGameCo does a video showing what is leaving his collection. I wanted to be different and go through my whole collection.

The Drink

So last nights drink was finishing off a bottle of Suntory Whiskey. It’s a Japanese whiskey and an enjoyable one. I didn’t talk about it too much, but it is part of my goal to drink through/clear up room in my liquor cabinet. I’d like to get less stuff in there, since some of the alcohol has been sitting there for a while. It was something I drank more before having a kid, stuff for mixed drinks really stand out, and now, I lean towards just sipping drinks.

Upcoming Streams

So next upcoming stream is on Wednesday with a start time around 8 PM Central. I’ll try and get the video up a bit sooner than I did with this one so you know it is coming. But what will I be streaming? I am going to do a play of Spire’s End. It is a story driven game, kind of a campaign game, but one I can generally play in a single sitting.

The next few weeks on Wednesday it won’t be a campaign game. I want to get through some other games that can be played solo. I also want to create more time for just chatting as I play. Campaign games tend to be harder to chat while playing. Mainly, they tend to have a whole lot more going on in them. So expect a few roll and write games and smaller games to get played. Any you think that I really need to try?

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Join live every Wednesday in the chat, 8 PM Central time, to help me make these decisions.

The Game – Sleeping Gods

I could just talk about how the game works again, but I want to do a mini compare and contrast with another one of Red Raven Games, Near and Far. Near and Far is a game that I like, but also one I was really excited about and ready to play. And when I played it, it is a good game, but a bit of a letdown. Does Sleeping Gods fix that?

This really comes down to story. In Near and Far, there is a promise of this game with great story and great mechanics and great choices. For me, the game doesn’t manage to pull it off. There are fun little bits of story, but it’s like hopping around in tiny bits of the world. Really, though, the game is about getting as many points as you can.

On the flip side, Sleeping Gods is also just little vignettes of story. But the point of the game is the story. There are no points that you are going for. It is about the story, and the theming works well. The crew is lost in a mysterious world. You of course get random vignettes because you don’t know anything. And the more you play, the more you find out about the world.

The Drink

We were back to drinking Scotch Whisky again. This time it was a Highland Scotch which finished with a nice little hint of chocolate in the flavor. And I talked about how there are four different areas for Scotch. The two main ones that you’ll find will be Highland and Islay. And the main difference is how much peat something like Islay has compared to Highland. Highland is a cleaner taste profile, but often coming with more bite to it.

Upcoming Streams

As always, the next stream will be on Wednesday at 8 PM Central. And I will be playing some more Sleeping Gods.

And, my hope, is this weekend, or week to start filming my Crowdfunding content. If you have a good punny name, let me know. I am sure that I can come up with something as well. I don’t know when this will get released but the idea for it is that it isn’t live content.

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The Game – Sleeping Gods

So a quick recap of what Sleeping Gods is, and the story thus far. Sleeping Gods is a 1 to 4 player adventure game from Red Raven games. In this game you are the crew of the Manticore, a ship that sails from Hong Kong to New York, but one day you, the crew, see as the sun rises that you are not in a known area anymore. You transport to a new land where the old gods, not elder gods, are sleeping, and you are tasked with waking them.

The game consists of three parts. Every turn you take a ship action. This lets you heal crew members, gain cards, and take other actions. Then an event happens. Sometimes the event is a challenge, sometimes a merchant ship will appear, you don’t really know what it is going to be. And then you take two actions which can be sail, explore, go to port, or go to a market. And you are able to double up on actions.

In the end, you look for totems in the game. But to start, you don’t know where totems are. So you explore, talk to people, and get quests. And eventually that will point you towards some totems and who knows what else.

The Drink

Last night, I was drinking Islay Storm, a Trader Joe’s branded scotch, or at least one I only see there. It is an extremely reasonably prices Scotch, which is one of the reasons that I pick it up. But like most Islay, it is very peat forward, so it tastes great. That heavy smokey flavor is something that I really love. For some people, though, it will be overpowering. Islay Storm is definitely very peat forward so can be a little like drinking a camp fire, if you aren’t used to it.

Upcoming Streaming

Next Wednesday, I will play more Sleeping Gods. You can find that upcoming stream here. This past week I had a person in chat, thank you for joining live. And I will ask for help making decisions as I play. If you join in live you can help me make mistakes and go through vapors, or maybe make good choices, but you’ll never know unless you join in live.

Also, let me know your thoughts down below, I might be starting up new videos. As I get more Kickstarters in, and look at more Kickstarter and Gamefound games to support. I want to start covering them. I am thinking that I might start doing a weekly video about Crowdfunding. It might not be live, but a video where I look at two games on Crowdfunding right now. One is a big one that you probably know about and on is a smaller game. A test run likely will happen this week.

What do you think of Sleeping Gods so far?

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The Game

As I said above, Aeon’s End Legacy is a legacy, cooperative, deck building game from Indie Boards and Cards. In the base game of Aeon’s End you are fighting giant nemesis who are coming through the breach and threatening the down of Gravehold. As a breach mage, it is your job to stop the monster, either forcing it back into the breach or killing it without letting the town of Gravehold perish, or having all of the mages perish.

Aeon’s End Legacy has been on my shelf for a bit to play. I am glad to be finally getting it to the table as Aeon’s End is really one of my favorite cooperative games, and games in general. There are a lot of interesting decisions to make in the base game, and with a legacy version, I know that I am going to have even more. So I am one chapter in now and ready to play again.

The Drink

Didn’t talk too much about the drink last night. I was drinking a whiskey from Panther Distillery up in west central Minnesota. It is one that was specifically distilled for Fergus Falls, MN, my home town. It has a nice flavor, almost a hint of a chocolate note to it and it was also the last of the bottle. I didn’t feel like having a beer last night since Minnesota is pretty cool right now after out heat wave earlier this summer. Whiskey just seems like the proper drink for a cooler day.

What’s Coming Up

Well, next Wednesday is going to be another game of Aeon’s End Legacy. See where my two breach mages end up in this unfolding adventure.

However, before that, we have a stream on Monday. It’s going to be a Topic Stream and we are going to be talking about, getting rid of games from your collection.

Plus, there should be a new 3 Reasons Why/Why Not coming out as I look at another campaign game, Tainted Grail, and give you three reasons why you should get it and three why you shouldn’t.

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The Games

So two games that I unboxed yesterday. The first was Extension 6 for Pitchcar and then Middara: Unintentional Mallum Act 1, which was the bigger part of the stream. Two very different games that I’ll talk about quick here.

Pitchcar Extension 6

So Pitchcar is a flicking game, in fact, I wrote up a review about it yesterday which you can see here. I already had a bunch of stuff for it, but I decided that I wanted more. Getting more stuff for Pitchcar basically means that you can create more different and creative tracks. This one adds in a few pieces that I’ve already seen with a thin track and some jump pieces you can put in. Definitely just means we can create a trickier course and a bit longer course or us to crash repeatedly on, but that’s the fun of it.

Middara: Unintentional Mallum Act 1

This game is a totally different animal. It is a massive dungeon crawling game, but it is a little bit different. You can see a lot of the content in it, but the box is shorter but wider and longer than that of Gloomhaven. So another crazy large box. But the theme is different as well. In Gloomhaven and the likes of Sword & Sorcery, you have standard fantasy. Middara is definitely fantasy, but they give it an anime twist to it.

The artwork in the game is amazing. It has strong anime influences on it. Now that does mean that you end up with some fan service at times, but it doesn’t seem to be a predominant part of the game. If it was everywhere, I would be less interested in the game. The sculpts are good, not as detailed as some, but there are a lot of them. You can see how many I unpack, like I said, it’s a lot of them.

But what really blew me away was the books. Gloomhaven has a decent sized adventure book, Solomon Kane has a lot of small adventure books, MIddara has one huge adventure book. I think it was just shy of 500 pages. Now, I could read that all, and I might as I go along, or I can use the Foreteller app which has full narration for it, as well as games like Gloomhaven and Frosthaven when that comes out. I like that more of these massive adventure games are creating narration.

The Booze

So last night I didn’t end up having a beer. I started sipping on an Old Fashioned during the GloryHoundd “Should You Back” stream and decided just to stick with that. Of course, I got to talk some about what I’m drinking. This time it was about the different types of Old Fashioneds that you see around. Mainly talking about the simplicity of the normal Old Fashioned which is just whiskey, bitters, and simple syrup. I don’t want any Maraschino cherry in my Old Fashioned, maybe an orange peal.

Next Week

So next week will be a stream free week unless I decide to do one on Monday. I am busy on Wednesday evening, so no stream happening then. The following week I plan on getting back to Arkham Horror: The Card Game and sipping a beer. So I’ll see you in two weeks as the following Monday is Memorial Day so no stream that day most likely either. Keep an eye on my Twitter and Facebook for upcoming streams.

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The Games

Bloodborne

Bloodborne is a game that I’d glanced at on Kickstarter. However, like many CMON Kickstarters, there is a ton of stuff in it, and it’s kind of a risk backing it. Not that CMON won’t make a good game or that they won’t deliver, I’m confident on both them them. Instead, the concern is how expensive it gets and what expansions are needed. I held off on backing that Kickstarter, especially since it’s an IP (intellectual property) that I don’t know that well. Instead, I just grabbed the base game.

The base game comes with at least four different scenarios, I believe each in three parts. So that’s a good amount of content, especially since the game, while it has campaign aspects, isn’t a massive campaign. I can see playing it more than the twelve times to get through everything with different people and different characters. Add in things like different characters, and I’m assuming variety in how you progress a character, it’ll keep me busy for a long time.

Solomon Kane

Probably what everyone came for. Solomon Kane is a game that is just fulfilling it’s Kickstarter right now. So there are unboxing videos popping up all over the place. I decided to do my own because I am really excited for this game. The concept of this big adventure is interesting to me. Like Bloodborne, it gives you scenarios or stories to go through, but the stories don’t form one giant campaign. Instead, you can go through each story separately. While I love my campaign games, I have a lot coming in, games like Midarra and Oathsworn, plus ones I already have like Folklore: The Affliction, Reichbusters, Lord of the RIngs: Journeys in Middle Earth, and more. So I want some epic games that won’t be a year long campaign.

Plus, it has an interesting mechanic. All the players are controlling different virtues. Those virtues together control Solomon Kane. So it isn’t like one person gets to be the main character and everyone else is a supporting role. It reminds me a little bit of how that is one thing people didn’t love about Conan from Monolith, how the person playing Conan was just better. Thematically, it makes sense, game play wise, less fun. So this, I hope, keeps everything balanced in a cool way. And just the concept seems unique.

My only criticism is about how it was packed. The two boxes were packed vertically in the shipping box, on a side, and that makes sense because they are heavy. However, some of the minis shifted, and I had three that were off their bases and one that the staff was breaking. And apparently there is a sword issue as well for some people. That said, the minis look great, and I can glue the breaks and it’ll work just fine.

The Malt

So, Saturday was International Whiskey Day, so I wasn’t drinking a beer. Instead I poured myself some Talisker 10 year that I had picked up that day. From the Isle of Skye, the scotch had an amazing flavor. The peat was pretty strong in the flavor, but not as strong as some. Now, I like scotch that tastes like a campfire, but I don’t want that all the time. Sometimes I just want a better balance of some peat and picking up more whiskey flavor. This scotch gave me that.

Did you drink anything for International Whiskey Day? Which of those games sounds more interesting to you?

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Today’s game that we’re theming food around is Ice Cool and Ice Cool 2. The games are basically the same, but Ice Cool is a four player dexterity game where you are flicking penguins around a school. Some trying to catch truant penguins, and those students trying to just get a snack of fish.

The Drink
I thought about doing a Bloody Mary with fish sauce, but that doesn’t actually seem to fit all that well. Instead, we’re going to save the fish for later and go with hot chocolate. That’s the drink of choice when you’re a cold penguin on a cold winter night, and if you are old enough, you can spice it up with Baileys or Kahlua or whiskey.

The Appetizers
We’re going back to the fishy theme here. I’m going to recommend that we go with some fried calamari. It’s easy for finger food so it’d be easy to eat while playing a round of Ice Cool. And you can get them frozen and they are fine, so it’s easy to get them to the table without much prep work.

Main Course
Sushi is going to be my choice for the main course. We got something fried to start, then we’re going with something a little bit fresher. Again, it’s a good finger food, if you want, so you can continue to play throughout. Otherwise, set the game aside and add to your party by rolling your own sushi which can be a great group activity. You’re keeping with the fishy theme, and you can eat your fried calamari while doing this as well. I probably would save the hot chocolate though for later.

Dessert
For dessert, I’m going to suggest we go away from anything fishy again. Instead, make black bottom cup cakes and make little penguins out of them. To do that, make a chocolate cup cake, but before you bake them, you put a dollop of cream cheese with chocolate chips into the middle of them. That sinks down into the batter as it cooks and leave a white center. You could then cut them in half and frost the top to look like a penguin head, so you’d have a dark cake, built up frosting to look like the head, and then the cream cheese in the middle would be lighter to look like a penguin’s stomach. This would be the ideal time to break out the hot chocolate as well.

I’m sure there are other fun and fishy food ideas. You can definitely use things like Swedish Fish and Gold Fish crackers to add in as snacks if you don’t want to go all out for a meal.

Let me know what your ideas are in the comments. Would you want to eat the themed foods for Ice Cool?

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So, as an exercise in insanity, I’m going to come up with menus/ideas for three different events that nerds get together around, and how to create an appetizer, main course, dessert, and drink(s) for them. I’m going to intentionally shoot for things that are a little bit out of the norm, as people can probably come up with an old fashioned meal for Game of Thrones and Lord of the Rings, or do a sweet “fish finger” (finger cookie) and custard for Doctor Who, but what do you do when you want to show a lesser known film or show? I’m picking on idea to start, but I would love suggestions over on the Facebook page (search for Nerdologists) for the next two.

Arkham Horror

This is going to be a very challenging one to start off with, a couple of things jumped out at me right away.

Drinks:

Old Fashioned & Martini

Root Beer

These are a couple of classic drinks that can take you back to the turn of the century when Lovecraft was writing his works. If you’re a skeezy private eye who is tracking down some weird goings on, you drink an Old Fashioned at the bar in the evening after a long day on your feet. The Martini works well for that time period and gives you a bit of that dangerous feel thanks to James Bond. I don’t think it makes much of a difference if you use Gin or Vodka for your Martini as both will give the desired visual affect which is what you are going for.

Root Beer is for the part of your group that might not drink or may not be old enough to drink yet. It’s one of those old time drinks that makes a lot of sense, and you can even turn it into you dessert and do root beer floats if you want.

Appetizer:

Peanuts in the shell

To me this kind of keeps that old time feel going. There is something about shelling peanuts, while it is messy, that brings in a classic stake out, something to do with your hands while you are watching for something strange to happen.

Main Course:

Corn Chowder and biscuits

You could also go with a seafood chowder here, but a creamy corn and potato chowder seems to go well with the theme. Arkham being based off of Danvers, MA would have had different types of chowder and the biscuits would give it a nice rounded feel to the meal, more so just than the soup. If you think that the people who are showing up would all like clams, I would recommend doing a clam chowder instead of corn, but corn chowder is probably safer for most peoples taste buds.

Dessert:

Cranberry Apple Crisp

This keeps with your New England area theme, any desert with cranberries would be pretty typical. The reason for doing a crisp is that you can make it gluten free if you desire, so it’s safer to serve everyone. Also, New England has plenty of apples of their own, and crisps, to me, have that more classic dessert that would have been more common from that time.

So there you have it, an idea for more fun foods to eat to keep the mindset of 1900’s Massachusetts in a Lovecraft world, what would you do?

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