Almost Forgotten in the Cold(s)

Over my extremely brief Christmas break, I actually did play a few games!

While I was out doing my Christmas shopping I stopped in at Revolution Games. They're one of the smaller game stores in Calgary, but I think they have an excellent selection, and their staff are generally pretty nice people. The prices are average, but if you get your name put in their computer, you get a discount for every $100 you spend. That's not so bad, considering most games cost a minimum of $60 nowadays...

I ended up with a used (but never used) copy of a game called Colossal Arena. It's a betting game by the much-loved, much-loathed Reiner Knizia. I've a few other games created by him and have never been disappointed, but I know that a lot of lifelong board gamers have a hate on for him. Anyway, we gave this game a try one evening after our regular VS tournament. It's a pretty odd concept, betting on monsters fighting in a tournament, but was actually a lot of fun! Everyone enjoyed it and there was a lot of back and forth, "Take that!" play going on. I'm looking forward to playing it again.

I brought it along with me to the family Christmas gathering but we didn't end up getting it on the table. My mom quite enjoys playing Settlers of Catan when I bring it, so over Christmas Eve and Christmas day there were a few games of that played. I think I won the first game, but after that, people started to catch on and competition was high.

Finally, after drawing attention to ourselves by asking questions like "has anyone got wood for sheep?", we had more people wanting to play than my 4-player basic Settlers game could accomodate. Luckily I had planned ahead and brought The Resistance.

The Resistance is a social deduction game that requires a minimum of five players, and can go as high as ten. During my Monday night gaming events I had hoped to play it several times, but we only ever had enough once, and ended up playing a long game of Arkham Horror. So this was the first time for me to give the Resistance a try. It was GREAT fun. Within the first few minutes there were fingers pointing and accusations flying. My sister and I were correctly identified as the spies, but played it very cool, allowing the first two missions to proceed successfully. Having allayed some of the suspicions, and after some odd behaviour from a few other players, people started to turn on each other and we were able to bring things crashing down. I highly recommend this game!