Originally I planned on an extremely large board-gaming weekend for Rick's 29th bash, but due to my late planning, few were available to attend...however I am now thankful for that because it turned into a wonderful event with our close friend Brett, his wife Tanya, and their daughter Acacia.
I need to give a little history about our board-game adventures to explain my excitement. We have grown to love playing board games and we owe this enjoyment exclusively to Brett. He talked us into attending a board game convention during the summer of 2008. We went to San Juan for the weekend and purchased tickets to Pacificon, one of many annual Avalon Game Convention events. The entire weekend was full of checking out (via leaving your license with a clerk) and playing games to your heart's content. A few of the favorites were: Arkham Horror, For Sale, Blokus, Stone Age, and Felix the cat in the sack. These are a good mix of sorts for the intense enthusiast to the casual social gamer. Long story short, three days of non-stop gaming opened our lives to a whole new hobby and a world full of nerddom.
We attended Pacificon again in 2009 and plan to attend it along with other events in the years to come. This last year we played an epic 8 hour game of Descent (who knew 8 hours could fly by so fast!), the 1999 version of Acquire (which I got Rick for his birthday and just finding a decent copy is another blog all in itself), the hilarious Mystery of the Abbey (your gamers verison of Clue), Kingsburg, and many others.
There is no real way I can appropriately describe the joy of discovering new games! Brett brought two new games with him for us to test out, and boy were we impressed! We played Wasabi!, a delicious mix of chance and strategy with the goal of creating sushi rolls, and Chinatown, a build your empire via barter system game (similar to the classic game of 'Pit'.) where you build shops and restaurants in Chinatown, to see whose empire is of highest value in the end.
Every time we find new games, the first thing that pops into my mind is 'what holiday is coming up next?' so we have an excuse to purchase them...thus these two have reached the wedding anniversary list ;) We also use the excuse of going to see my parents as a reason to have new games, because thanks to us, they have been pulled into the board-game community and have now obtained the 'new game' itch.
Rick's birthday was a terrific time with friends along with board-games, and we couldn't have had a better weekend. With two new games to add to our list, we couldn't be happier. Even greater is the thought that once Elise starts to get older, I will have kid games to shop for as well...which will include a list of games from my past...a nostalgia I will be including in my 'joys of the past' blog, to come in the future :)
Hooray for Board-games and hubbies and babies to share them with. Right now life just couldn't be better. If anyone has the slightest bit of interest in boardgames, I will now have a page to share all our favorites, along with sites... Like I said, nerddom ;)
