Heart of the Machine

(cue disco music)
You know it’s gamin’ night and the dice are right, yes it’s gamin’ night, oh what a night (oh, what a night)
(end disco music)

Another gaming night loomed. I made sloppy joes for the troops (believe it or not I actually dreamed of sloppy J’s the night before…go figure). That coleslaw and potato salad ensured we hade a room full of happy belching gamers. The beer (both root and boozy) was chilled, seats were taken and we were ready to roll.

We started with Fantasy Munchkin (as was becoming usual). Which drug on unusually long. The usual bitter infighting kept everyone from getting ahead, and the addition of the ‘Need for Steed’ expansion produced a lot of useless steed modifying cards but no actual steeds. Considering the door and treasure card stacks were both almost 25 feet tall (we had all of the expansions in there) it was not suprising we didn’t see anything to ride around on. Finally, after some quiet work in the background Sherman pulled a power combo and took the game with little resistance. (A quiet sneaky Sherman is starting to become a theme, a resistance movemant is sure to follow)

Next up was TCI’s ‘Zombietown’.

http://www.twilightcreationsinc.com/zombietown/index.php

I was looking forward to this as I had only played it once before and had enjoyed it quite a bit. The first part of the game didn’t see much zombie action with the players shifting them around towards one another rather then pulling more deadheads from the central graveyard. This lead to some player vs.player conflict in the form of a bloody gun battle between me and my neighbor Corey. (Based on some pre-zombie uprising damage to my trash cans he had done with his SUV.)

Well, I say bloody, it was-on my part. I drew I believe four jammed cards in a row leading to my demise and early depature from the game. It then turned into a fortify and sit tight situation. The players bunkered down in one or two houses and waited for day ten and the zombie horde to become untenable. Corey went on to narrowly achieve victory with a crafty end of game jump to a nearby empty house for the extra five points. Sherman came a close second from behind his ridiculously heavilly fortified pair of condos.

We decided to leave the zombie blight behind for a return to quaint Arkham, Mass.

http://www.fantasyflightgames.com/arkhamhorror.html

I can’t lie. I love this game. From start to finish it is a quality product and just gorgeous to look at. It is a quality, quality peice of work. Anyway, a few players needed the quick ‘this is a team game’ reminder and we were off. A better understanding of the rules on the parts of all the players really caused the game to click along and raised the fun factor immensely. We commenced to charging through gates willy-nilly and doing some monster stomping. I managed to dispatch a big horde of critters with a use of the Pipes of the Outer Gods followed by an immediate trip to the Asylum. Well worth it in my opinion.

Our game night host Craig really TCB’d like Elvis in the end game playing the nun (snicker). He went on to close and seal the last gate of the six we needed with Yig being a mere one doom token away from awakening and stomping us into dust. I would like to note this is the closest Craig has come to winning any game at a game night ever. So, you know, kudos to him.

After some "whews!" of relief we again breifly discussed ‘When Darkness Comes’

http://www.twilightcreationsinc.com/wdc/

But it looked to have a playtime comparable to Arkham Horror. We had lost a player back to the wilds of Northern Kansas City and it was late so it was decided on a quick couple of rounds of Munchkin instead, resulting in a win for me and a win for Mike respectively. They were pretty classic games only interrupted during round two when laughter errupted regarding Mike’s ability to ‘beat off’ some monsters. ("His hand isn’t strong enough to beat off that creature!" good times…good times…)

At that point it was after midnight and people were fading fast. Still, plans are brewing for the next night and what to play. And almost as important…what to cook (I am thinking Thai Potstickers).