Game Retreat Recap

After much planning, coordinating, and several schedule changes we finally had our annual gaming retreat two weekends ago. I am including links to many of the games so you can check them out.

Wednesday The posse arrived and we started to get things rolling. We played Citadels (http://fantasyflightgames.com/edge_minisite.asp?eidm=31) . Citadels was very fun and easy to play. It's a card game with some interesting choosing mechanics similar to Puerto Rico or Twilight Imperium.

Then we played Wasabi (http://www.zmangames.com/boardgames/wasabi.htm). It was a complete beatdown, but I wrote a session report about it anyway, here -http://boardgamegeek.com/thread/510287/two-first-timers-new-strategy-attempted.

After that, we wrapped it up with some Castle Panic, which we won of course (http://www.firesidegames.com/castlepanic.html).

Thursday We started by making characters for Mutants and Masterminds. The character creation process was massive. M&M is by design very open and allows for an infinite number of super heroes, but at the expense of it being new user friendly. We spent too much time making characters, and still didn't finish by the self imposed deadline of 5:30.

Then I think we played Smallworld that night. I thought it was going to be a very boring game based on the description on the back. It ended up being our most enjoyable board game of the entire weekend. We craved to play it each day. I highly recommend it! http://www.daysofwonder.com/smallworld/en/

Friday We started the morning off by attempting to make it through level 50 on Gears of War 2. Last year we made it to level 49, but never made it to the final level. We tried for several hours last year, but failed each and every time. To re-familiarize ourselves with the game we tried waves 1-26, then jumped to level 40. The monkey finally was off our back as we worked solidly as a team and the four of us trounced level 50. http://gearsofwar.xbox.com/AgeGate.htm

We played M&M for a few hours after completing our characters. http://www.mutantsandmasterminds.com/

Saturday We played some various rock band games. Guitar Hero 5, Guitar Hero Van Halen, and finally a lot of songs on Rock Band 2.

After that it was time for Pandemic, which we ended up losing (http://www.zmangames.com/boardgames/pandemic.htm).

We played Small World one more time. After that we went to my place and had a large dinner. We played Wits and Wagers and Formula D afterwords with about 10 people.

(http://www.northstargames.com/ and http://www.asmodee-us.com/index.html). Update - formula D might have issues at the website, try this BGG entry instead - http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/37904/formula-d


Sunday I decided that since one of our participants had never had me as a DM before I wanted to run a quick game for him and the others. We played the Goodman Games Zero level module, "Heroes are made, not born." http://www.goodman-games.com/5100preview.html I modified the module to end at the boss fight at the Ogre. I never liked the last part of the module and we only had 3 players so it made sense. The players had a highly effective tactic for taking out the Ogre. It worked perfectly with some excellent die rolling and just by its sheer design. After being beaten by Pandemic days before, we vowed a rematch, which we won soundly.

All in all pretty successful weekend. I am missing quite a bit of the things we did, but memory isn't as clear as it once was. :-)