by Dave Mullen
Well this week in the meeting of the Haverbrook Sewer Swim Team we decided to play board games, because it was my birthday. We had quite a bit of people that just popped in and out through the night so we go quite a few games in.Formula D
We started out with 7 people so we played an epic game of Formula D. I only have the base game, so we used the Monaco Grand Prix side with the street racers.
Honestly I have played this game 4 times before this and ... well ... uh ... I have never made it around the track once. I usually press my luck too much and go crashing into a wall or my tires explode.
Now this was the first time I have played with that many people on the track. I will say that the more people that are playing this game the better it is. The tight corners are much more chaotic with everyone slowing down and there is a traffic jam there. I might take this game to family stuff around the holidays ... I think it is light enough and it isn't that complex.
Two really funny things happened during the game. First one of my friends who decided about 3/4 of the way around the track got bored with the game. So he came around a corner and up shifted into 6th gear ... and used his nitro. He ended up blowing through one corner and halfway through the next corner. We just pictured him like the old Looney Toons Cartoons when someone wrecks and the driver is just sitting on the ground holding a steering wheel. The guy that was going behind him decided he would do the same thing ... cause he could make his crash go longer .... he did.
I came in second ... I was honestly glad I made it all around the track. We were talking though and I might look and see if there are some variants where the cars have weapons like Car Wars. I used to play that game all the time.
Say Anything
The friend that crashed first in Formula D left, but two more friends stopped by. So I broke out one of the game I picked up for my birthday, Say Anything.
This game was so much fun, we played it 3 or 4 times in a row. Noticed a couple things about this game. The last question on each card is always the best one. And this game ... I am sure there are some people here on BGG that don't like it ... but this at least for my group turned into Cards Against Humanity ... but you write your own answer.
One of my favorite question & answers was "What would Gandi do if he was invisible for one day?" Best answers were: Eat a Hamburger, Spend a Saturday night playing Say Anything ... but the winner was Mother Theresa.
Dixit
A couple more people took off, which left us with the correct amount of people to play a maxed out game of Dixit.
This took a couple rounds for everyone to get into, but once we did it was great. This night was the most fun that I have had playing this game. Everyone got into and really flexed their creative muscles in describing the cards.
King of Tokyo
The night was wrapping up and there was only one left, other than my room mate and myself. We broke out King of Tokyo with the new Halloween expansion.
We didn't use the costumes, cause I am not really keen on that whole idea. But the new monsters and a new set of dice were well worth the buy.
On the first roll the friend that had never played before got an evolution for Boogie Woogie. It was mean, it was a "gift". Basically he gave it to another player and they had to pay him 1 energy each round or he would take 1 damage.
They were busy beating each other up while I was collecting energy and bought the Shrink Ray card. I moved into Tokyo and just unloaded on everyone. That card is mean as well, whenever you hit someone they get a shrink token and they get one less dice to roll.
That Shrink Ray helped me win the game and we wrapped up the night.
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Overall one of the best birthdays I have had in awhile. It had been a really rough week. My closest friend and my daughter's closest friend lost her battle with depression and passed away on Monday the 4th. This was a good distraction for me and helped out quite a bit. Something that board games do better than anything else. Get you together with good friends and have a ton of laughs while making you forget the outside world.