Matt's Blog

One of my new school year's resolutions is to post more regularly (read: at all) to the blog. Since we started the podcast, the blog has pretty much been a place to pick up the cast and maybe some show notes. At first I think our fear was that we would cover the same material in both the show and the blogs. I don't know if that will happen or not, but writing is different that speaking, and I need an outlet for writing, even if it's just bits and pieces of my day to day life. So let's go.

Had a game night last night. Most of the people that Danny and I play games with are college students and this will be the last session before they all head off to school, god bless 'em.

We started the night out with two games of Cosmic Encounter, a five man game and then a six man game with double powers. Danny won the first one. And Caleb took me along for the ride for a shared victory in the second game, but I don't think he really had to. A number of comments were made last night about how geeky this game is, and I guess there's some truth to day, but the game is so dang fun! It's a silly space war game with crazy alien powers, negotiation, smack talking, and pretty coolers. And because of the huge number of alien powers, no game is ever going to be the same unless you play it 9-billion times. Now that the boys have gone off to school, this is one that Danny and I are going to have to teach our wives to love.

After that I played two games of Battleball with Gerold. I picked this up at the goodwill yesterday, and was pleased to read good reviews on the boardgame geek when I got home (unlike the Quidditch game I purchased and then found on the "Worst Games I've Ever Played" list. Anyway, Battleball is a futuristic robot (I guess they're robots, maybe they're some sort of cyborg) football game. It's kind of what the XFL wanted to be. It's a bit of a dice rolling fest (reminded me of Risk this way) and at first Gerold and I thought it was just ok. But by the overtime of our first game, we were screaming and cheering just like the goofy kids on the bottom of the box. It's a silly but fun game and well worth the 2-bucks I paid for it (unlike the Quidditch game . . . ) I'm going to check out the extra rules and variants for this one on the geek.