Time Flies When You're Having Fun

What happened?

Life got busy. I really poured myself into work, kids activities in the evenings, and I just got out of the habit of posting. When I took a break from playing Magic the Gathering and did not pick it up again, it really started to feel like the blogging life was done for me. 

But I did renew the domain registration for two straight years so I did not let go entirely. It was always there, lurking in the back of my mind, the blog calling me...

I tried to fill the blogging urge with twitter for a while until Elongated Muskrat bought it and I left after that went through. I have made a Mastadon account where I've been posting some images but I feel like I am starting to require more space again.

Now, what have I been up to?

As I mentioned, my obsession with Magic the Gathering drafting died down. It was a combination of a release I was not excited in (Boo Alchemy) and the terrible market that forces you to pump money into the gems every month to keep drafting if you are not a good player. 

I've been doing a lot of board gaming still, both with my growing boys who are 15, 15, and 13 and with my friend group weekly both online and occasionally in person.

Our group has several games we like to play online via Tabletopia or Table Top Simulator or Board Game Arena. The big favourite is Tapestry with all the expansions.

So many paths to victories, so many different civs and city boards, its fresh every time. 

Another favourite is Dune Imerpium.

Intrigue, fighting, tech research, worker placement....  its an amazing balance and every game is anyone's up until the end.

Not complicated enough? Well let's bring in Ark Nova:

Its a game with so much going on that your first few games are an exercise in "what the hell am I doing?" but once you start to get it you find yourself begging for more.

Some other games we have tried an enjoyed are Expeditions, Heat: Pedal to the Metal, and Brass: Birmingham.

In other news, my urge to paint miniatures overcame my desire to have money and I've been sucked back into the 40K universe for real, harkening back to the origins of this blog. Fortunately, I've only dipped into Kill Team, the small squad action version of 40K so you have a completed kill team with 8-15 models instead of needing armies of hundreds including vehicles.

I started with a basic starter kit that came with Guardsman and Orks:

And after that I bought a Eldar Corsair kill team and started on those which you can see the progress on in yesterday's post.

And that's where we are at! Let's see if I can keep this thing going this time...

Board Game Review: Tapestry

From the website, Tapestry is described as "a 2-hour civilization game for 1-5 players". Which is a lie; its not a civilization game, its a victory point generating mechanics game with a fake veneer of a civ game. Don't get me wrong though, you could change all the civ game trappings to gibberish and you would still have a great fun game.

At its heart it is a game where you compete to put together the best engine at generating victory points based on the civilization you start with. There are four different engines and you can invest in any of them but its usually best to invest heavily in one to get the most benefits.

The first time you play it is overwhelming. The sheer number of symbols, options, mechanics, it is truely gobsmacking how much there is going on. Even though the game starts slow and simple, the actions and choices build up until you either find your engine humming along or stalling in the starting blocks. There is some element of luck too, based on the civilization you start with and the tapestry cards you draw that give different bonuses throughout the game as you go through the rounds.

There is some player versus player interaction. On the map itself you can do a little "fighting" over tiles and controlling tiles is one of the engines you can operate for victory points. And on each of the four tracks there are three landmarks you can earn to place in your capital city for more points or resources that you can spend, but only the first player to get to that landmark's spot on the track gets that landmark. This is the biggest source of competition as those landmark buildings are invaluable to building up your city and not only gives you more resources, but is another one of the four victory point engines.

Besides conquering tiles and building up your capital city, the other two engines are developing technologies and exploring tiles. Each of the engines is closely tied to one of the four tracks and often a player will pick one track to invest heavily on and a supporting track to supplement growth and development as it gets more and more expensive to climb a track as you proceed.

This game is available on Tabletopia and Tabletop Simulator as well as a physical board game. My friends and I have been playing it recently on a weekly basis on the latter and it is a big hit with my group. I have definitely added a physical copy to my wish list for Chirstmas.

Rating: 4.5 stars out of 5