This week involved some gaming with the kids, online, with friends, and at the FLGS. Can’t complain.

After doing an unboxing video for Maki Stack, I played a few rounds with the kids. Online I finished a game of Terra Mystica. At The CG Realm, I played Istanbul: the Dice Game and Hamsterrolle. I also got to try Timeline for the first time and take part in a playtest for The Earth is Ours! Back at home we also got in a scenario of Gloomhaven.

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I’m still playing around with streaming things live. We’ve fixed the internet bandwidth issues and I got my cell phone repaired (badly), so there should be no problems streaming. I’m still figuring things out myself, trying to learn OBS and Streamlabs. To this end, I recorded an unboxing of Maki Stack from Blue Orange Games. It seemed to go pretty well. I still need to tweak the camera position.

The next day I broke the game out and played it with the kids. First I was just playing with Little G but then Big G noticed and wanted in on the fun. Maki Stack is a fun dexterity game all about stacking sushi and sushi-related things like bottles of soy sauce. It has some great all wood components, some of the best I’ve seen in a game.

The actual gameplay is very simple with two players. You flip a card and then players rush to try to stack the various wooden components in the order shown on the card. To make things harder you have to do it using finger chop-sticks. Which means you are only allowed to use your two index fingers to manipulate the pieces. There are a few other ways to play, the most interesting is the four-player team game where one player on each team has to wear a blindfold and manipulate the playing pieces, while the other player sees the card and has to direct the blind player. At this point, I’ve only tried the two-player mode.

It’s a cute, fun, game and one I expect will be popular with adults too. I think it will be great for gaming in pubs, the topic of our latest Ask The Bellhop article.

I’ve been too busy organizing our Extra Life event lately, to game much online. I did finish up a game of Terra Mystica, but that’s it. I continue to enjoy playing that game. Playing online has really made me want to dust off my physical copy. Something I may get to do tonight.

Friday night Gloomhaven didn’t go so great, but we did have fun.

As mentioned last week, we decided we were going to go back up to normal difficulty. I’m not sure this was a good choice. I’m not convinced it was a bad choice either. The scenario we played was interesting and I think would have been just as difficult on easy as it was on normal. The goal in this scenario is to run in, grab three treasures and get out. At the same time trying to avoid waking up certain enemies. It’s a very cool scenario and one that felt beatable, but we failed.

My particular character, the Savvas Cragheart is not all that fast. Between me getting stuck far from the exit and mobs moving to block our escape I don’t think we ever had a chance. Now that we have tried once I think we will do better next time. We all know to hoard movement cards next time and be more wary of the winds.

It’s also worth noting that, for the first time, we left the map set up down in my game room. It’s still sitting there now waiting for this coming Friday.

Saturday, I spent the afternoon at The CG Realm. There I got in quite a few games.

Ian, one of the store employees, taught me Timeline Discovery. I’ve heard of Timelines before but never actually sat down to play a game. I knew it was a light, family weight, filler but didn’t realize just quite how light it was. You start the game with a card on the table. Each card represents some historical event. Each player then gets four cards. On their turn, a player plays one of their cards before or after other cards on the table whether they think the event happened before or after the other cards. That card is then flipped to show the date. If they are wrong the card is discarded and a new card is drawn. The first player to play all their cards wins.

Timeline was fun enough but it wasn’t much of a game. I expected more. Though I don’t know exactly what. After Timeline I taught Ian and another player Istanbul: The Dice Game.

I’m still really digging Istanbul: The Dice Game. I talked quite a bit about it last week and my opinion on this version of Istanbul hasn’t changed. It’s still a great, quick, version of Istanbul that manages to feel like it’s big brother despite being much quicker.

After Istanbul: The Dice Game I broke out Hamsterrolle. It was talking about it on my Top 20 Games of Right Now that made me really want to play this amazing dexterity game again. We played first with three players, and then four as people convinced other people at the store they had to try it. I still love this game. One of the best dexterity games ever made. By the end of the night, Ian had ordered in a handful of copies to have in the store, one of which will be going to The Windsor Sandwich Shop for the public to play.

The other big deal going on at The CG Realm was that Krishada Games was there showing off their new game The Earth is Ours!

The Earth is Ours is a lightweight take-that team based game. One team is playing the Nefarians trying to take over the world. The other team plays the Benevolites trying to protect the world. Gameplay is fast and furious with one team trying to launch a project and then the other team attempting to stop that launch with defense cards. This goes back and forth until either the attack goes through or the project is defended. The interesting bit is that there are five different colours of cards and cards played to launch or stop a project must be the same colour. The colours represent different fronts the battle for the world is being played on, Environment, Economy, Industry, Politics and Technology.

I played in two six player games and had quite a bit of fun. There are not a lot of rules but I enjoyed the cooperative team-based play. Players on each side are free to share any information but you can overhear the other team talking. This made for some fun interactions where you try to get your team to do something together without giving away the plan to the other side.

It’s awesome to play something designed by local gamers. The three-member team that is Krishada games are all right here from Windsor.

Krishada is trying to crowdfund the game and it’s live on Kickstarter right now. Check it out.

Well, that was my #WhatDidYouPlayMondays for last week. What did you get to your table last week?