A Lazy Day at Home
by Stormy on February 09, 2008
The weather is warming up a bit, but there is still four inches of snow on the patio. What's a marmot to do?
Having predicted six more weeks of winter last weekend, I wasn't tremendously motivated to get out an do much outdoors this weekend. The temperature did crawl up above freezing, but there was still a significant difference between my burrow and the great outdoors. I opted to stay in, have some friends over and play games.
After lunch we started in on a painfully long game of Risk. We chose the 2210 edition. It involves a lot of extra rules and cards, including money/energy, military commanders, additional cards and the ability to wage war in underwater cities and on the moon. Not all the rules are an improvement from the original game. The war is only supposed to last five years. We chose to battle to the last player standing. The players bid money/energy for who gets to go first on each turn. We did away with this, too. the sequence of play was the same for everyone, making the overall turns more fair. After all, bidding could allow one player to go twice in a row or, worse yet, be the first one turn and last on the next. In that time an empire can lose everything! The game also recommended a rule that allowed you to move a single territory's forces across any number of contiguous territories. We opted to stay with the old rule that you could move units between adjacent territories only. It makes more sense. Our modifications made for a very exciting "fast paced" game that lasted four hours with the balance of power drifting across players until one player's mistake allowed for another player's strategic move to solidify the balance of power and move towards endgame.
After dinner we dove into a game of Settlers of Catan. It's actually a game of all expansion modules for Catan as well. By its nature alone Catan can be a long game. With all the expansions and added rules, including our "house rules", it tends to last late into the night. I'm partial to building burrows. Building whole civilizations is a lot more fun!
It was a great way to spend one of those "long winter days" in warmth and fun.
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