The return of the semi-bi-monthly blog!

Sort of, I guess.

Shut up. I blog precisely when I mean to.

Basically, I just really wanted to make sure this got onto the internet:
Now that you've had a chance to at least try and process that devoid of context, let me provide some the best way I know how: by assaulting you with a flood of verbiage.

The above was the end result of Game Day at Jedi's house, a gathering I managed to get into which involved being at Jedi's house, and also playing games. Looking back I only actually played a few games, but these games are definitely worth mentioning.

1. Galaxy Trucker
If you've never contemplated what it might be like to be a spacefaring redneck trucking cargo throughout the known cosmos, then I posit that you have not truly lived, good sir. The way this game works involves having everyone build their ships out of tiles under a time limit at the very beginning. The process works very much like scrabble, in that the tiles start face down, and you can only pick them up one at a time to look at them and decide whether or not to add them to your ship. Discarded tiles go back into the pile, but face up so everyone can see them. The tiles represent everything from cargo holds to batteries to crew quarters to shields to laser beams, all of which are necessary to some degree or another if you want to make the most money while simultaneously avoiding becoming a hunk of floating debris. Events are dictated by a deck of cards which gets larger and more sinister as the game progresses through its three rounds. Players move around a board, but your position only matters relative to the other players, as it determines who gets the first shot at flipping the next card to find fortune, or perhaps the first to deal with Smugglers, Slavers, Space Pirates and the odd meteor storm or three. At the end of each round you cash in your cargo and pay for any broken ship parts, and once the space dust settles the richest man wins.


2. Dominion
I'm not really sure that I can add too much to the praise that this game has already gotten, but for the three of you who have been spending your nights under a rock at the bottom of the ocean, I suppose I can try and give you an impression. This was my first time playing Dominion, and it really is as good as everyone says it is. I'm a sucker for strategy-heavy cards games and get downright excited by the prospect of resource management, so the idea of a game during which you strategically assemble a deck of cards to maximize your resources while trying to keep everyone else from doing the same gives me a straight-up nerdgasm. Add to that a wide range of different cards to choose from to generate constantly varying gameplay, as well as a recent expansion of entirely new cards, and it was all I could do to keep from popping wood. Ridiculously easy to learn, but with a rewarding depth of strategy. Bottom line, this is a game that should be in the collection of even the most casual of tabletop gamers, and is an absolute necessity for the hardcore.

3. Curses!
Towards the end of the night, our eyes were getting droopy and our minds a little dull, and the prospect of playing another long game where we had to think a lot was beginning to sound unappealing. Enter Curses!, the appropriately punctuated game best played by the easily excitable. The premise is simple: every turn, you draw a card from the challenge deck. This card will tell you to do something, whether it be explaining how to shave your invisible cat, pretending to be a cop and pulling over the player to your left, or playing a game show host and announcing that night's guests. After completing the challenge, you give the top card of the Curse deck to the player of your choice. Curses dictate how you act, weird shit from howling like a wolf whenever anyone claps to saying everything through your invisible CB radio. If someone breaks a curse by forgetting to behave in the way it describes, another player can ring the bell in the middle and call them on in. Break three curses and you're out (although you get to hand any of your remaining curses to whatever player you wish).

Last man standing wins.

Now, I don't mean to brag or anything, but I sort of fucking rocked at this game. I think it has something to do with how my bizarre sense of humor combines with my complete and utter lack of shame (and how the two of them mixed so wonderfully with the addition of alcohol). By the time I won, the list of curses I had acquired were thus:

- When the player to the left talks, constantly interrupt them.
- Talk like you have an invisible golf ball in your mouth
- 1 inch long arms (you must keep your wrists in contact with your chest at all times)
- Talk like Elmer Fudd
- Act like a Rock Star and strum your invisible guitar whenever you speak.
- Pinch your nose whenever you talk.
- Talk through clenched teeth.
- Whenever anyone touches you, hunch over your invisible pot of gold and cry "They're always after me lucky charms!"
- Talk like a pirate
- Every time bell is rung, cry like a baby.

The only curse I broke is when I once forgot to cluck like a chicken before I spoke.

Towards the end of the game it basically boiled down to me hunching over the table whenever anybody did anything, repeatedly grunting nasally through clenched teeth followed by an Elmer Fudd laugh, all while pantomiming something that looked very much like a Tyrannosaurus Rex desperately trying to masturbate.

So you can see why this is my kind of game.

Shortly after the game was finished it somehow came to the attention of Pixie (whom I had previously met playing Galaxy Truckers) that I used to be Mormon until recently, and therefore had yet to get laid (as it turns out over twenty years of willing abstinence combined with a sheltered upbringing really puts a damper on your sex life). Determined to help me in the best way she knew how, she dutifully collected crack team of women from among the Enforcers there and compiled a beginner's guide to sex using a series of offbeat analogies combined with inside jokes about zombie movies, comic books, and Strongbad. After a solid half hour of alternately laughing helplessly and turning inventive new shades of red, the studious note-taking that River had been doing produced the image at the beginning of this post, which I'm prepared to call one of the greatest thing that has ever been committed to paper.

So that was my Game Day. Hope they'll have me back next time, too.