Hi there! As promised, I’m back to talk about things. THINGS!
First off, I’m not sick. This week’s lyrics refer to one of this week’s topics. But I’m going to bury the lead and talk about something else first.
I finished the new background for the site last week and I’m really happy with how it turned out. I had to expand to a 3X4 grid to add Skitter and Chae and Popkin got to round out things out. If you look up, you’ll see a new Barnaby banner. I’m not really happy with it, but I wanted to get something new up to go with the new comment avatars and background. I’ll have to keep experimenting to find something really spiffy.
I went to Quebec City yesterday to attend Le Salon du Jeu et du Jouet, a game and toy show. It was my first time attending such an event and I enjoyed myself. It was a welcome change of pace after a tumultuous end of week. I got to see all kinds of games, console, computer and board being played and got to participate in a couple myself. La Revanche was there with a library of games to try including giant editions of games like Takenoko, Jenga and Pandemic. I brought a couple of games back with me (shocker I know) including one from a small publisher from Montreal. You could think that the latter is the inspiration for this week’s song lyric title, but you’d be wrong.
The person I attended the event with was a volunteer for La Revanche booth and after the event ended, I helped her and the other volunteers and employees pack up their booth. Afterwards we went to La Revanche proper. For those wondering just what La Revanche is, it’s a gaming cafe in Quebec City. They’re our gaming club’s sponsor. It was my first opportunity to see their cafe in person and it’s really nice. They have a huge library of games to play and helpers to suggest games and explain rules to customers. We ate a nice little supper (I had some really good mac and cheese) while trying out some dice games with the goal of finding a good fit for the club. I got back home just in time to see the last half hour of the Survivor Series. Considering that I’d been up since twenty to six, it was quite the day which made getting through today a little more challenging than it should have been.
I got a couple of the games I helped kickstart last week. Watchmen of Destiny is a nice little card game with a cute theme of anthropomorphic animal heroes (sounds familiar somehow). Each player tries to recruit the best group of watchmen. There are six different species and five different classes. For bonus points a player will want to have the majority in a species but will get a penalty if they hire two watchmen with the same species and class (example, you wouldn’t want two Cat Rangers, but a Cat Ranger and a Cat Assassin or a Cat Ranger and a Dog Ranger would both be fine).
The other new Kickstarter game was Hero Realms which is a fantasy reimplementation of Star Realms, which I’ve talked about previously. I haven’t gotten it to the table yet, but I look forward to doing so.
Okay, so now for the explanation to this week’s lyric title. For the third year in a row, I decided to participate in the BoardGameGeek Secret Santa gift exchange. We got our targets assigned just last Monday and by Thursday I had a mail tag telling me that a package was waiting for me at the post office. I figured it was one of the Christmas presents I ordered for a friend, but no, the package was from l’Imaginaire and I’d already received my order from them. What could it be? Then it occurred to me that my open message to Santa suggested that he or she might want to order from l’Imaginaire to save on shipping to Canada. Well, my Santa took me up on the suggestion and got me the Pandemic: The Cure expansion! Woo! And that’s the inspiration for this week’s lyric title.
The Secret Santa organizers permit participants to request a local target to keep shipping more manageable but really, with online shopping being what it is, it’s pretty easy to order from a store that’s close to whoever you’ve been assigned so so far I’ve opted to leave it open to anyone worldwide. Year one, my target was from Lithuania, last year’s target was from Belgium and this year’s was from Bosnia! It’s kinda cool to think that I’m bringing some Christmas cheer to folks so far away. In the kind of coincidences you can’t plan, the person who posted right before me on the Secret Santa thank you thread on the Geek? My target! It turns out he got his present today as well. Boardgameshop.eu did a great job getting my gift to my target and at a reasonable price considering he said in his open message to Santa that it would be next to impossible to get a gift to Bosnia without spending a fortune. Cool beans!
I think I’ll close on that positive note. Have a great seven folks and we’ll do this all again next Monday. Carja V!