Board games at Allen's

So, it is not miniatures, but four of us got together on our usual Sunday gaming evening for some board games. Our group readily substitutes in a board game evening when no one has anything prepared miniatures-wise for our entertainment. We hadn't been to Allen's for gaming in awhile, so it was nice to show up and relax there. It used to be our "go-to" spot when his children were younger and his wife worked evenings.

We began the evening with a game of Pandemic. I've always loved this cooperative game, and to this day, can still count on one hand the number of times we've won. We still play the "introductory level" version (read = easiest), and still don't win all that often. This time was one of the exceptions, and we b-a-r-e-l-y squeaked out a victory. If it had taken one player's turn longer, we would not have cured the last disease in time. I played the "Scientist" role, and oddly enough, cured no diseases. I kept drawing event cards or a variety and others were better at doubling or tripling up. So, I fed them the cards and they cured the diseases. It worked out, and we won...though I think Joel will insist we step it up to the next difficulty level when we break out this game again...!

In honor of the nostalgic location for our game, we broke out the venerable, old Empire Builder train game as a follow up. Mike S had never played it before, and was interested in giving it a whirl. Joel advised we play the "fast" version, but Allen was having none of that. It had been so long since we'd played it, we'd forgotten how long of a game it actually was. Needless to say, 11:30 pm rolled around and nobody had attained the $250 million victory conditions. We counted up our profits, and they declared me the winner since I had the most by a fairly comfortable margin. My routes between the southeast (New Orleans/Atlanta/Savannah) and the Canadian border were lucrative and seemed to come up often enough to cash in. Throw in my lines to the New York area and I always seemed to have two decent train loads on board.

I really want to get back in the groove of running some miniatures games, myself. The last couple years I've been a slacker and not staged much for the guys. I'm painting a decent amount, and building a lot of terrain, but I don't seem to be running much for the Sunday night guys. Hopefully, the reduced workload at school will allow me to do that soon. Stay tuned, and we'll see...!