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. 

Gaming & Guinness XIII: Day Two

Thursday morning began with a round of Bang! the Dice Game, in which a group of good guys and bad guys attempt to shoot each other down, except no one knows which team they're on.

I was Black Jack--an outlaw, this time around. But the sheriff prevailed.

Next up was the first marquee game of the event, Wits & Wagers. We started Wits & Wagers at G&G X, and each year since, a different member of the group has come up with the questions and served as manager of the game. This time around, Rob presented the questions. He did such a good job that I only snapped a couple of photos of the game. Here, Steve, Scott, and Mike prepare.

Up next was Fortune & Glory, now with painted miniatures! I spent the better part of a year painting each of the two dozen or so 28mm figures, and while they're not great, they're better than unpainted! I find painted minis really help with immersion.

Fortune & Glory is a 1930s pulp adventure game with a really nifty cliffhanger mechanic, but it suffers from a badly organized rulebook. Luckily, Steve found a fan-created rulebook on Board Game Geek; we used that in a playtest a couple of months before G&G, and we found that it really improved the game's pace. Poor Pete and Jeff still found up stuck in a jungle for four or five rounds though, much to Jeff's frustration and our amusement.

Paranoia ruled at our next marquee game, new to G&G: The Thing: Infection at Outpost 31. Based on the John Carpenter's brilliant 1982 film, The Thing casts players as the characters of the movie...but one of them is actually The Thing, and he's out to infect the other players before they can escape on the helicopter. The Thing won, dooming humanity.

Oh great, more miniatures to paint...

"I'm going to be stuck in the jungle this entire game, aren't I?" 

Gaming & Guinness XIII: Day One

Our 13th annual Gaming & Guinness adventure began with a round of the messy and humiliating Trivia X, in which everyone wins except the first person to get five incorrect answers (and five xes stamped on the forehead). Island Mike and Scott hadn't shown up yet, so they escaped unscathed.

Wednesday night is an appetizer of sorts for the full-day gaming shenanigans to come, so we tend to choose games that take an hour or less to play, such as Mountains of Madness, a cooperative game that tests the very sanity of the players as they attempt to confront dread Cthulu without losing their sanity.

Each player has a secret madness card they must keep to themselves. During one phase of the game, every player has to act out their particular malady, while at the same time trying to collect the items that will let them progress up the mountain.

It can be quite a challenge, particularly for poor Rob, who at one point had to hold his cards over his head, limiting his ability to see them and use them effectively.

Of course, some of us still have those xes on our heads. But we're supposed to be insane in this game. In any event, we did not escape dread Cthulu.

In a surprising first, Scott's wife Margaret sent over a surprise game for us to try, which turned out to be a fun, fast-paced tile-based cooperative racing/puzzle hybrid called Magic Maze.

Moves are timed in Magic Maze, and each player can only make certain moves, so everyone has to coordinate their moves carefully to escape the maze. However, you're not allowed to talk to one another..!

Here are our meeples on the first tile, along with a couple of tops used for a drinking game.

To my great surprise, I was the victor of the giant Jenga game. You win by being the last person not to send the tower crumbling down. It was a near thing.

Last year, Steve found some simple rules for medieval arena combat. We use his collection of old Dungeons & Dragons miniatures to compete in Old Miniature Deathmatch.

I chose this fellow and named him Stovion the Flamboyant. By "Flamboyant," I mean that I chose a rather craven playstyle this time around: I simply ran to and fro in the arena while everyone else killed each other, then I dove in to tackle the last remaining player, Stephen's monk.

Karma being what it is, I was punished severely for my calumny; Steve's monk dispatched me handily, consigning me to second place (and the grave).

The victor and the vanquished. So ended Day One.

Accidental Masterpiece

I came across this charming tableaux while retrieving my mail after work today. I suppose someone could have done this deliberately, but I prefer to believe the wind deposited the bag on the hydrant. 

Pakhet and The Alderman

Here are Pakhet and The Alderman, two miniatures designed for play with the Villains & Vigilantes roleplaying game. Sean painted The Alderman to quite good effect; I think he looks like a superheroic David Lynch. 

No Woods

Mom wanted a photo of her sons for Mother's Day, and I suggested standing here, not realizing that an overhead drain pipe would create a diagonal shadow across our bodies. Not Dad's fault! 

Bindertoons #4

THE STORY BEHIND BINDERTOONS:
The truth is, I don't remember drawing these. But Mom and Dad asked Sean and me to clear some of our old stuff out of their basement, and my Math 30 binder was among the things we discarded. I drew one of these little people on each page of my notes, a couple of hundred of them. I didn't photograph them all, because frankly, my art is not that deathless.