Old Guild mates: an impromptu gathering.

Left to right: Jon, Mike, and Tuna 9/1/2013

It is but a couple times a year that Tuna, Mike and I, are lucky enough to spend time with our old WoW Guild mate Jon. For you uninitiated out there WoW is the acronym for World of Warcraft, an online video game which we all played endlessly for many years. Sadly Jon and his lovely wife Deb live the life of ex patriots on the west coast so our "in person" meetings are few and far between. Thus, when Mr. Clark recently announced his arrival in our fair state on business we jumped at the chance to indulge in our favorite past times i.e. having a wee drink and playing tabletop games with good friends.

As luck would have it Tuna and Mike both had new games for us to try out and I of course pushed a couple of new drinks upon my willing guinea pigs, ahem, I mean hapless guests.

The first game we got in was Tuna's new addition; Smash Up! It is a deck building card game in which you get two "factions" randomly and then have to use the various strengths of both to take bases. The faction combos can be really interesting. For example; Jon ended up with Pirates and Dinosaurs, and I had Wizards and what I'm calling fucking Racist Leprechauns. Anyway the game play was pretty good, because it encouraged you to be ruthless. I was really enjoying this game, even though the art on the racist cards was getting on my nerves, until Jon played a "God" card. He was able to remove all my minions from a base and spread them out anywhere he so chose. I don't mind losing, hell I lose most of the time, but I really dislike being beaten by an overpowered game changing card. Am I being childish? maybe just a bit, but even so I do see real potential with Smash Up! and I think with a bit of practice even the "god" card business can be handled. In the end Mike won and Tuna took second, me and Jon spent most of the game just trying to screw each other over which is normal for us.

The next game we got to play was Mike's newest purchase Cutthroat Caverns. This is a semi cooperative game in which you all need to work together but also have to "stick it" to your team mates at the same time to win. A very interesting concept, but designed so that the duplicity of it works out really well. Essentially each player tries to get points by landing the killing blow on the monster in the cavern, and yes there are more than one. The player with the most points at the end of the game wins. However, dead players, which does happen, can't win. Thus I deduced early on that I should try and get a couple folks killed towards the end of the game. After they had done some of the heavy lifting that is. Finally with much laughing and backstabbing by all, Tuna pulled off the win by playing a crit 100 points of damage on the last monster. It was too late for Mike and Jon as both had mysteriously taken much more damage than me and Tuna and they perished. Jon called Tuna a "Sneaky bastard" which of course he is, and we all agreed I should come up with a cocktail and name it after our friend Tuna, i.e. "the Sneaky Bastard".

After a break for two different Southside cocktails and some grilled kabobs, we moved indoors for a final game and a glass of whiskey. Not just any old Irish whiskey, but a kind we hadn't had before which Jon brought called Powers single batch. If you get a chance to taste this nectar I suggest strongly you do so for it is one of the smoothest I've had in some time.

Nectar of the gods!

The last game of the night was Zombicide, which looks like it's becoming one of our primary games.

 The beginning half of the match was pretty easy going and we grabbed the first objective painlessly. Jon jumped right in with both feet and did a great job of picking off hordes of undead with a rifle, sweeping the streets clean round after round. But, then bad things started to happen and the survivors fell behind in killing zombies, spawns got bigger, and then... the zombies got the dreaded "extra move". At that point we all thought we were goners. Mike and Tuna were off by themselves holding a corner open for our escape while the others were trying to get the second objective three blocks away in a building.

Zombies overran the far outpost and Tuna's survivor Phil went down in a pile of rotting flesh. Ned (Mike's toon) didn't give up though, while the undead feasted on his former friend he searched the police car and found a chainsaw. Yup nothing like a nice old husky to clear out a mass of brain eaters. Ned fired that puppy up and cleared the board. Definitely the play of the game, after that Jon (Wanda) roller skated right up the block and into the bunker which won the game.

Wanda in the Bunker for the win.

Overall it was an excellent day for the Booze and Board Game bhoys, made better by having a good friend and Guild mate to spend it with. I hope that the next time Jon comes a calling that he will get to bring his better half Deb and more of our players here in Maine get to meet these fine folks in person.

Cheers
AL