Shrimpy shrimpy

 A few days ago I played first rounds of Mantis, the party game sort of thing. 

We had two players, and I have a hunch the game functions far better with more players. There aren't a lot of options and no special cards to shake things up. With two players this leads to rather repetitive flow. But with more players who knows? 

But on the bonus side, the game had me look for information about mantis shrimps and gosh darn, they're an interesting species.

For the longest time a round of Word Winder was played a few days ago.

Confession

 I have a serious confession to make.

I haven't been faithful to the general idea of this blog, which is to make at least some kind of a note about each and every tabletop game I play.

Well, I haven't been doing that with Exploding Kittens. The reason is that I didn't want to fill the blog with irregularly regular rounds of Exploding Kittens that consist of exactly one game with two players.

So, maybe some twenty or so Exploding Kittens have faded into oblivion, and in the following years to come I will never be able to know for sure if I played Exploding Kittens on May 2022. Oh no!

(But I will know that one round was played 28th of September.)

Proper eight-ball

 Since it's the nature of this blog, I'll jot down a few rounds of mini-billiards. I don't understand how the thing is "travel sized", since it's still about 3ft by 5ft in dimensions.

About three or four rounds were played, and isn't that quite a change of pace from dice rolling and card shuffling. 

Sample size certainly isn't that comprehensive, but still there is enough variation during the game rounds to keep oneself interested, to an extent. I believe the variation decreases the more you play, but what do I know. I just did a few rounds of mini-billiards.  

Mittens

 A couple of rounds of Exploding Kittens to pass the time with two players. (+1 round edited from the future!)

Gameplay is passable for two I guess, but it's quite a different experience with more than two. Now it's just two players hoarding most of the special cards to survive until the end of the deck.

And again: (I added a few sessions from the end of March and beginning of April since I didn't bother to write a new blog entry.)

Two letters in no particular order

 A short update on two games of Love Letter with two players to pass long days and longer nights.

(Make that three four games.)

I'll use this blog post to also jot down four games of Labyrinth and two games of Sphinx.

Nostalgic

 A while ago I played a few board games from the childhood of Dearest. 

First one was called Taika Kengät, which apparently only has a Finnish edition. Name translates to Magic Shoes. The game had elves trying to find magic jewels from a realm torn asunder by an evil troll. Elves need to find proper shoes to travel from different area to another. Magic Shoes were the only shoes that could traverse any terrain.

It quickly dawned on us that this particular game, perhaps, had lost some of its enchantment in the latter years. The age recommendation of 5+ was there for a reason.

Another game was Sphinx, which was a bit more engaging and kept us entertained for two games. 

That Particular Effect

 I suppose I'm liable to report this in. For I had three rounds of a game of... Domino. Double 9 set to boot, with 55 slabs.

It's the baron

Before my bi-annual trip to Kuhmo I was involved in delivering Love Letters with two players. Once the day before, and another time before the bus left.

There must be something going on with the baron, as once again the game saw an uncanny amount of guessing the right card as the first card being played, most often involving the baron.

Word Winder

A couple of days ago me and my dearest played a round of Word Winder.

Winderoucity

A couple of days ago we played two rounds of Word Winder.

First round was the usual, but second round we decided to allow absurd compound words. Of course this doesn't translate well because language was Finnish.

However, some worthy mentions with free-form translation were Big Belly Witch and Methane Merit Syphilis.

Edit: I'll add one round of Word Winder here to this post that was played yesterday - 15th of September. After all these sessions have such a short time (about three weeks is a short time? Well, these days even a month feels like an extremely short time) so I believe these can be merged. It was another round with unrestricted compound words. This time let's mention the Fullsoul Cyst.

Race for Hearts

A quick note about a Love Letter game that lasted for eleven rounds - we chose to re-play two rounds because Countess was such an unruly troublemaker.

It was almost an anniversary for when the game was last played. How time flies and such...

Winded

A quick note about a game of Word Winder that was played some days ago. Here for statistical purposes.

Word Winder

Some days ago I had the pleasure of playing Finnish edition of Word Winder, a nice word game with simple rules.

Two rounds were played, with the latter getting a little silly because it was already quite late.

Since there is no point scoring, play could be fast paced if it wasn't for the desire to find longest, most complicated words on the board - disregarding words that are too short.

The Spider and the Dragon

A nostalgia game of Labyrinth with two players. This time with actually having read the rules, so game could not get locked into pushing back and forth the same column of labyrinth pieces. Everything has changed since childhood.

Everything.

But it's the magically morphing labyrinth, after all.


This blog entry was edited on 31th of October to add another game that was played to "even up" the scores - and fortunately did so.

Rose for the princess

Love letters were being sent once more a few days ago.

Though it looked like princess had already decided - none of the letters one of the players sent received any notion from her highness. Granted, it tends to affect outcomes when two times in a row the other players had princess in hand when baron showed up. This means automatic letter delivery with only two players. Princess really seems to like roses that much.

Instant Princess

Oh my, I have forgotten to make a note about last round of Love Letter that was played a week ago or so.

I remember how the round had quite a start, when the very first card that was played scored a thank you heart for one of us - Prince revealed the Princess right away.

Just a quick note of a round of Love Letter that was played a few days ago.

It was a close game of two players with the wooden hearts never being more than one point apart.

In a Night at the Court

A recent two player game of Love Letter, which was categorized by me either having the Princess in my palm every round, or Princess not being there at all. I suppose it wasn't that big of a surprise then, that in the end, it was my letters that reached the royal heart.

Her indecision

Yesterday I was a rival suitor for a princess for the first time ever.

There were two suitors, and considering how princess sent hearts for both of us, it must have been a tough decision for her to pick her companion for the end of days just on the basis of letters.

After eight rounds the situation was four hearts for both suitors. Fifth heart would be the most important decision.

And fifth heart was not mine.

Clearly there was some foul play going on behind my back, when princess herself was 'out of the game' during ninth round.

edit:

Since another round was played a day later, I'll edit that right in.

This time around I let nothing come in-between me and the princess, resorting to smear campaigns and forcing rival suitor to stay overnight at the church, buying me plenty of time to arrange the delivery of my letters, all the while taking care that no letter of my adversary would reach the hands of our beloved princess.

These lowly methods were prolific in securing me victory this time, but I'm afraid that one day princess will see through my fraud...