Gaming & Guinness XIV Day 3

Only a select few will successfully ABANDON PLANET to survive the destruction of their homeworld.

I was not one of the few.

Then, a trip to Chez Pierre as our annual "get-out-of-the-house" outing...no, not really. I just had Pete take this shot of me in the parking lot to tease Sylvia. In truth, we walked next door to GTFO for a competitive escape room experience.

Mike P, Pete, Mike T, and Jeff successfully escaped Europa. I did not, nor did Rob or Steve or Scott.

The guys did well though, finishing over 16 minutes before the deadline.

Then it was on to Captain Sonar, which Steve artfully describes as "multi-player Battleship." Except with submarines. You have to listen to the other team carefully in this game, or you'll be completely lost.

Eight players, four roles (Captain, First Officer, Engineer, Navigator), two submarines hell-bent on sinking each other.

This was shot before play actually started. Otherwise, seeing both sides of the screen is strictly prohibited.

In the end, Team Scott, Rob, Earl and Steve triumphed over team Mike, Mike, Pete and Jeff. But it was a close thing.

Once more, Jeff prepared his delicious Maui ribs, accompanied by Island Mike's succulent potatoes.

On to that fine game of paranoiac terror, The Thing: Infection at Outpost 31.

"I swear I'm not the Thing!"

As it turns out, there were three Things: me, Rob, and Scott. The humans managed to escape to the helicopter and correctly elected to leave me and Rob behind, but also abandoned poor Pete, who turned out to be human, and Scott, who turned out to be a Thing. And thus, the fate of humanity was decided...

Friday night is a good night for Rock Band, so that's how we concluded Day 3. 

Escapees from Europa

Gaming & Guinness XIII: Day Three

We began day three with Abandon Planet, in which players attempt to escape a doomed world before it's obliterated by an asteroid. No one person will ever have enough spaceship parts and supplies to escape, but neither are there enough resources for everyone. So players have to evaluate who has what, and teams quickly align before the final cataclysm. I was not one of the escapees.

Here's our first glimpse at the official Gaming & Guinness XIII artwork, commissioned to the formidable Jeff Shyluk. It's in rather debased form here, on a car magnet thrown in for free by the printer. You'll get a better look at the art in my next post.

Each G&G features an outing of some kind; this year, we ventured into one of Edmonton's many escape rooms. Our mission was to escape a space station filled with alien artifacts. Another 45 seconds and we would have made it, and I have to take a lot of the blame - I had the caps lock key off when it should have been on when entering the final codes.

We returned to our home base for round of Timelines to start...

...and then returned to a long-absent favourite, Battletech. My side got massacred!

This text says it all. (Sylvia's concern above stems from my fight with a bout of double pneumonia that coincided with G&G.)

Even though I'd last played Battletech five or six years ago, and before that at least a decade and a half, the rules came back to me quite smoothly. They're really quite elegant.

My defeated mech. I had a pretty good plan - charge headlong at the enemy, unload my weapons, then jump into a lake to cool off and evade return fire - but, as seen in the text message above, the dice were not kind and my ammo exploded.

Pete, Rob and Jeff strategize. Jeff doesn't look impressed - probably sabotaged by unlucky dice again.

Scott consults the rules.

Steve painted these. I love the Spider-Man-themed mech.

Next up was another new game for G&G, Captain Sonar. Teams of four operate two opposing submarines, with each player serving as captain, first officer, radio operator, and engineer. Players must cooperate to hunt down the enemy sub - before the enemy sub does the same to you. I think of it as "fancy Battleship."

We finished off the evening with Formula De, a familiar staple at G&G.

Who won? The answer will have to wait until my next post, for the race wasn't finished until after midnight, consigning the result to Day Four.