dreadedmonkeygod . net

Just got back from a fantastic weekend in Bloomington, Indiana visiting some old friends from college. A great time was had by all. We're all avid gamers, and while we've left RPGs behind for the most part, we still can't get enough of great table games.

A couple years back the fixture of our gaming week was Risk 2210, which we all thoroughly enjoyed.

This time, Battlestar Galactica was the headliner. The first game didn't bode well: the rulebook is bizarrely organized (jokes were made comparing it variously to a tax instruction booklet and a Choose Your Own Adventure book), and the game played out really badly for a couple of players. We did some more deliberate set-up for the second go-'round. That really helped, and our second game was a lot of fun. I think a third would have been better still, but we wanted to make room for other stuff too.

I think a rulebook re-write, and some time spent reading character sheets, crisis cards, and quarum cards would really help first-timers with this game. It very nearly didn't get a second run-through, but I'm glad we took another shot.

I'm eternally grateful to my friends for introducing me to Munchkin, a card game lampooning Dungeons and Dragons, but fast and simple enough to pick up and play really fast. We played the original version (with several expansions mixed in), and Munchkin Booty, which turns up the backstabbing to 11.

And we had a couple of rounds of Fluxx, which was actually the most low-key game of the whole weekend.

A few of us headed out to a local BW3's (terrible food) to catch UFC 97. Some of the undercard fights were great, but the two main events (Rua vs. Liddell & Silva vs. Leites) were decidedly lackluster. I don't know whether I'm more disappointed with Leites for falling over every time Silva touched him, or with Silva for not ending the fight in the first round, as he was clearly capable of doing.

In a post-fight interview, Leites said that Silva did a good job "avoiding [Leites's] ground game". I disagree. I think that if Leites wanted to take the fight to the ground, he should have taken it to the ground. If you want the fight to go a certain way, you need to impose that plan on the the other fighter. You can't just fall over and hope the other guy falls on top of you.

It was especially really great to meet my friends' kids, and see the next seasons of our lives coming into bloom.

One of our gracious hosts, Meagan, has posted an excellent write-up as well! (I'd completely forgotten about the game of Clue!)