It Is Alive!

Wow, it's been a week already since my last post!  I apologize for the lack of posts lately, I promise that I am still alive, but we have had a lot going on (building a new house, two kids under five, and numerous meetings with friends and for church)!  There hasn't been much time for gaming much less writing about gaming.  But here are a few highlights from the last few weeks.

Logan, Jenn, Sharayah and I have started a campaign of Charterstone.  For those of you who don't know about this game, it's a competitive, village-building, legacy game.  We are three games in and (I won't spoil anything) but we've written on cards and placed stickers into books and onto the board.  Even though this is not usually my favourite style of game, I'm really enjoying the legacy aspect of it, especially because of who we're playing the game with.  After three games, here's what I've learned.

• I suck.  Consistently.  In three games, I'm the the only person to not win a game.  But, I've got second in every single game.  So, I can't win, but at least I'm usually close (guess how many benefits the second place player gets...).  
• Don't plan TOO far ahead.  It's good to have a plan for a few turns ahead, but big things can happen to change the rules on you between games (especially) and even within games.  Have a plan, but have some backup plans as well.
• I LOVE opening sealed boxes!  It's so exciting!  Every game we've got to open a new box and get something new that changes the rules!

I was involved in my first ever math trade!  How exciting is that?  If you've never done a math trade, here's how it works (from my limited understanding).  You go through a website (I don't know if there's only one site or not, but ours was done through www.abecorn.trade.com).  You add all the games you want to trade and then you choose off all the games you'd want to receive in a trade.  After that, you decide which games you'd be willing to trade for which games.  Then, when everyone has done that, the magic of math (some crazy algorithm) puts all that information and maximizes the number of trades.  I only ended up trading one game this way.  I gave FUSE to one person and received Dungeon Roll from another.  

After the big trade, though, you can do some side trades.  I found someone who was interested in The Grizzled and At Your Orders! expansion.  They had offered Myth to trade.  I didn't check that off originally, but now it interested me, so I contacted him and we made the trade.  Math is amazing...

Ever since I've started working a lot more on my most own board game, I've been having a hard time not obsessing over it.  Not only that, I've had NEW board game ideas pop up in my head that I ALSO can't stop thinking about.  How does anyone have the time to both make and play board games?  Oh, and also be a husband/father/teacher/etc.  Anxiety aside, I'm finding it all very exciting!