Geekery

Tuesday night has become a consistent evening of trivial fun for us, and I like it that way. We're attending (and winning) the Littleton Geeks Who Drink event on a much more regular basis than we were able to attend (or win) the one we were going to in the DTC. It's very fun. The quizmaster is really cool, much easier to understand and all that jazz, and he really seems to like our team. The blog he writes for the event is always an entertaining read, not least because it tends to mention me and my friends in a positive light. You do know that I'm susceptible to flattery, right?

In any case, we won again this week. Hard. We beat the second-place team by 20 points. In a quiz where 6 of the 8 rounds are worth 8 points each, 20 is a lot of points to have. We're still getting pint glasses (one each for Jenna and I) and are now having to find space in our cabinet for them. They're nice than some of our other glasses, so we may be replacing sometime soon. We're also getting gift certificates worth $25, which just happens to be precisely the amount of money we tend to spend between the three of us for an evening at the Celtic Tavern. We're also getting a few folks who are simply aghast at our knowledge. One of the rounds this week was "stalking fictional characters." It essentially gave you a description of a character from TV, books, etc. and you had to identify the character by name. One of the descriptions was something along the lines of "This dispossessed dwarf and his family won't stop whining about how a dragon stole their inheritance and their mountain." I knew immediately that it was from the Hobbit, but couldn't remember the main dwarf's name. Thankfully Adj was there and told me the correct answer. When the round was over and Student Doctor Awesome (our quizmaster) was reading out the questions and answers (at which point you are supposed to yell out the answer if you know it) I yelled "Thorin Oakenshield!" at the appropriate time. The guys who took third looked over at me, flabbergasted and said "How the heck do you know that?" To which I could reply only "We're actual geeks." That concept seems lost on most of the participants in the pub quiz, unfortunately. Though it is called 'Geeks Who Drink' I think there's more drink than geek on the average team. In any case, we had a fantastic time as always and you can read all about it here: Geeks Who Drink Blog

Last night, Jenna and I went to the monthly game night my cousin and his wife are hosting and had a blast. First off, it's just great to see them. John, as he so eloquently said in his toast as my best man at our wedding, is more like a brother than a cousin. We've been close our whole lives, even when we've only been able to see each other a few times a year. Having a regularly scheduled hang-out time with him is awesome. Last night some of his friends (who I have also known for quite a while) were there as well and that just made it even better. We played some "Wise and Otherwise," a game we first played with Jenna's family at their house on our last trip to CA. We really enjoyed it a lot and, because that's just the kind of people they are, they sent it to us recently so we could keep enjoying it. Have I mentioned before that my in-laws are the nicest people ever? If not, please make note of it. After we finished that game, John busted out a game called "Shadows Over Camelot." It was freaking cool. This game deserves a new paragraph. Maybe several.

First off, all the pieces of the game are extremely well-made. It's just a high-quality construction, like a Fantasy Flight game (another game company that consistently impresses me). The cardboard is thick and heavy, the plastic pieces are detailed and strong (or flexible, as needed) and the cards are sturdy. Everything is colorful, well-designed and just plain pretty. For anyone unfamiliar with the King Arthur stories (as I am, even after taking a class specifically about it in college), there are several quests that the knights go on. Finding the Holy Grail is probably the biggest one. Excalibur is another. Something about a dragon is in there, too. I think there's also a black knight. In any case, they're all in the game. You're playing one of the knights of the round table (including king Arthur) and you have to travel to these different areas and attempt these quests. It wouldn't be that bad if the game weren't specifically designed to make you cry like a little girl. Let's take the grail quest as an example, but first, some background. Rather uniquely, this is a cooperative board game. You, the players, are fighting together to defeat the game itself. Every turn, each knight has a choice of what to do for the "evil progression." You can place a catapult outside Camelot (when there are 12, you lose), lose a life (you start at four and when you get to zero you die), or draw and play a black card. The black cards are horrifying. Every time someone reached for the pile last night, it was as if they had just punched a baby seal. The whole table erupted in gasps and whimpers. The black cards symbolize Camelot's enemies making progress against the knights and their goals. There are black cards specific to each quest, and some "special" black cards. The special cards lay down more catapults, take your life, remove your progress on current quests, etc. They hose you.

The regular black cards (getting back to the grail quest) hinder your progress. So, when a "Despair" card is played, it is placed on the grail track (7 slots, if I remember correctly) in an open space. If all the slots aren't open, the despair card removes a good grail card and opens that space. On your turn, if you are at the grail quest and have grail cards in hand (you start with 5 cards and only get new ones by completing quests or hanging out in Camelot, not doing other quests) you can play them the same way. Lay down a grail card on the track or remove a despair card. It doesn't seem that tough until you realize that there are seven folks sitting around the table drawing these cards. If you get a run of bad luck on grail cards, you can lose very very quickly. If you lose the grail quest (all slots are filled with despair cards) you place three black swords on the round table (all failed quests place black swords, when you reach a total of 7 you lose the game), and anyone who is still at the quest loses life. Fun, huh? I don't know that I'm adequately expressing the terror with which this game fills you. it is a real nail-biter. We actually won last night, entirely through good luck and some good play by our players. Any one of dozens of cards in the black deck could have beaten us severely if played at the wrong time. Still, we survived. Awesome. It was one of the most thrilling victories I've had in a board game ever. It's enhanced by the fact that nobody at the table is a loser when you win. You all win together, which is great.

Oh wait, I think I'm forgetting something...oh yeah. We cheated. See, we all played as a team, trying to help each other out, finishing quests, sacrificing some benefit to ourselves for benefit to the group as a whole, and so on. The game actually calls for a traitor in the game, randomly selected. He's someone who is trying to stop you from winning, but you don't know who he is. You can accuse people of being the traitor, but you get a black sword every time you guess wrong. The traitor can guess, too. This is what I think would elevate the game to a different plane from most games. It's still a co-op game, but you've added a layer of mystery, intrigue and betrayal. If I didn't make it clear in the beginning, this game is freaking hard without the traitor. With everyone doing their very best to win last night, we still nearly lost. If one of our players had been working against us, I don't know that we would've had a chance. A smart traitor can do things that seem helpful but are really designed to slow you down, kill your players, earn black swords, place catapults, etc. it's an element the game can run without, and which I don't think it needs to be very fun. The game wants to hurt you without any help from a traitor. As John mentioned reading in a review last night, "Shadows Over Camelot is a pretty game. It thinks you look pretty, too." That's in the 'Deliverance' sense of pretty, mind you, not the ballerina sense. It's a challenge just to beat the game, and playing a game on a team with your friends is a fun and different sort of experience. Since it's best played with 7 people or so, I don't know that we'll get it for ourselves. It is extremely fun, but we rarely have that many people available.

Wikipedia:Shadows Over Camelot

Still keeping up with my situps and pushups this week. I'm doing 30 reps in each set for my situps now and will move to 35 next week, slowly and steadily increasing as I go. I think it's a good way to do it, but we'll have to see what the results show after I've been doing it for a while. WiiFit still says I'm obese. Bastard.