games — surprisingly without video- prefix!

On New Year’s day I went to a board/card game party with my friend Beth, who has moved to Australia for her engineering job. She wanted to hang out that night, as she was leaving to go back to Australia in the next few days, and didn’t have much time left in the cities. The party was at Roo’s place, and he seemed surprised when, after giving me directions, I told him who he was talking to.

At the party we played Chez Geek, and this awesome pictionary type game called Squint. I had a great time, and now wish I had a way to get a hold of Roo to ask to be invited to future parties.

Coincidentally, I was invited a while back to a “war games” party hosted by this guy I know from some of JasonJ’s parties. (Hosted by a guy also named Jason.) Nate, Derik, Jason and I all went out there around 4:00 yesterday, and ended up staying till 11:30. (Yes, there were at least three Jasons at the party. I think there may have been four when we first arrived.) We played a really awesome card game called Guillotine for at least a few hours. Then we played Groo, The Wanderer–another card game. It was not quite as fun as Guillotine, but I would play it again. Before we left, I tackled the game Illuminati, which was particularly frustrating, mostly because none of the four of us had played it before. About two, maybe three hours later, I had to leave before the game was anywhere near ending. (None of the other people I’d arrived with were playing any more games, and it was getting pretty late.)

Jason is planning on having more of the same parties at his place, and I know I would definitely be interested in doing it again. I want to pick up one of those four-player chess boards for next time, as I think I could have convinced Derik and Foster to play for sure, and hopefully there would be at least one other in the crowd willing to play it with us. It strikes me that that would be the kind of party to get a game of 3D Chess going at too. I should build a board for that.

Earlier, I got to watch Nate scream, “Suck my nuts! Suck my nuts!!” at the TV after he beat a particularly difficult boss in Ape Escape 2. Now I’ve got to go join him and AJ for a rousing game of Mario Cart Double Dash.