Pretentious Board Games

This week we had a meeting of the Sandy Utah Board Game Designers group. We played some Moar Moai, some Polynesia, and a game that Ryan Laukat started making (it was named something like 'Tale of the Swords'). It was lighter than most of his games that he has made so far, and Alison and I both liked it a great deal more than his previous games (we like light strategy games, so it was closer to us as an audience.) The game seemed pretty much like a redwall adventure/strategy game. You get a race of sentient furry/slimy animals and go around gathering mystic swords and other artifacts and then you destroy 'monsters' with them (where monster is defined as a predator animal). We actually finished an entire game of it (which has never happened in the game night time frame that we set up.) When he finishes this game I am looking forward to the kickstarter. I picked cats (figuring that I'd be playing as feisty tom cats, but they ended up being fat lazy lap cats), Aliso...

Though I haven't yet got my cards back, a few things of interest have been happening recently, so I thought I would post. I played Acquire for the first time. It was really great. I intend on playing it again. It is exciting to find an old game that is still really fun. I drew a new map for MOAR MOAI. I tried to combine the score tracks with the resource tracks for the first time. I think that it looks awful. For this reason I talked with Dave about drawing me a better map. He has some good ideas, and I like his art style, so I am looking forward to his product. I set up a new game night for the Sandy board game playtesting group. It is next Wednesday. We are meeting at the Barnes and Noble near fort union, so come if you can. I also found out that my Uncle is an artist . I like his artwork style, and I could see hiring him in the future.

We had six people show up (not counting my three children whose babysitter was absent). Two games were played: An unreleased expansion to Eight Minute Empire (I think out was called Lost Lands), which improved the already good game a great deal in my opinion. An unreleased dungeon crawl called either Venture or Entrada. Both games got some feedback, and we ended at about nine (it went about two hours). It seemed to be well enjoyed by all (I personally had fun). We arrived to the group late because when we tried to drop our children off at the baby sitters house they were entirely absent. This was sad because it was our first meeting and I was hoping that it would go really well. I didn't get to show off any of my games, but hopefully at the next one we will arrive on time and be able to.