What's going on?

Lots of gaming, that's what's going on!

In order, Twilight Imperium, Munchkin, and Guild Wars. All over the span of a few days, and I've managed to not win at anything in weeks. Steve, on the other hand, keeps kicking everybody's ass at everything we play. I think he's cheating.

We played Twilight on thursday. It was supposed to be a fairly standard crew, myself, steve, Cid, Kyle, Brian, and we were going to teach Srol how to play. That part went according to play, but Kyle and Brian both bailed, so it was a 4 player game. Fortunately I really like the 4 player version of the game because it uses all the strategy cards in every round. Although I like to get a card with a stack of bonus tokens on it, it makes the game go a lot better when every strategy gets used.

But I digress. I wound up being the humans, who are a war race that's not a war race. They aren't very good at anything, really, but they can put free ground units on any planet by spending a strategy allocation. If I had done that at one crucial moment in the game I might have won, but I didn't. Lousy humans.

Steve and I quickly allied, loosely, an alliance that was helped by the fact there was an asteroid field between our home systems. I had a lot of useless planets nearby, he had a lot of good planets, and Srol had a bunch of wormholes. He placed them both, so he obviously had a plan. We kinda screwed him by passing the "close the wormholes" law, but he did really well without them. In that he didn't get destroyed by the might of Steve's armada.

Steve wound up with the technology race, and he made very good use of them. I think he had every technology possible, except for maybe one or two of the really advanced ones. I don't think there was any way to stop him, now that I think about it, which makes me feel slightly better about losing the way I did.

I'm going to gloss over a lot of the game, but essentially Steve and I weren't meant to be allies and we kept chipping away at each other. Srol kept calling diplomacy on Cid and then not doing much else, so all the fighting was on our side of the galaxy. I managed to fend off his biggest fleet, so that was an accomplishment. And by "fend ff" I mean "got destroyed by him in one turn and then I mopped up his survivors with my next turn".

Even though we were fighting constantly, we still managed to work together. We both had to hold Mecatol Rex (the centre of the galaxy) for our secret objectives, and we had a gentleman's agreement. He'd complete his and then vacate, letting me complete mine. I kinda screwed that plan up by playing a Signal Jamming action card on him (as revenge for his attack on me in the previous round, if I remember correctly). Signal Jamming activates a system, which basically shuts down a system so nothing can move in or out of it, and any space docks inside the system aren't allowed to build anything. I thought it was such a clever move, making him wait a full round to complete his objective. Turns out he had the action card that let him move ground troops from any planet to another, and he didn't hesitate to use it. Of course, with his objective complete and the system activated, he couldn't leave, so I just wound up screwing myself.

The next round he called diplomacy on me and then took over two of my empty planets, thus denying me the sweet 2 point public objective, while taking it for himself. Because of the diplomacy, I couldn't activate the system because he had units in it, and he could activate it because I didn't have units in it. If I had used my free ground troop ability the turn before, he wouldn't have been able to do it, and I'm still kicking myself about it.

So, Steve won Twilight, again, and I pouted and sulked and yelled at him, and then flipped the table and punched his cat.

Well, I yelled at him at any rate. Imagine me doing the rest if you want to think I'm a sore loser. Imagine me doing that and then burning his house down if you want to think I'm a lunatic. And now I've regressed too far into the realm of fantasy.

Following Twilight, we played some Munchkin. Specifically, Munchkin-Fu, the kung fu-themed version. It was myself, Steve, Cathy, and Cid for the game, and Cid and I had never played before. Munchkin is too awesome to describe, but I can summarize it. It's essentially a tabletop role-playing game without the role playing. You fight monsters and get treasure, and whoever gets the most powerful the fastest wins. Since it was my first time playing, it took me some time to figure out what I could and couldn't do, and it turned out I could do pretty much anything.

Any game with a card that lets you cheat is a good game. Seriously, the card is titled "Cheat" and it lets you use an item that you ordinarily couldn't use. Although the situation never came up, I played it on a weapon that only males could use, just in case I fell into a trap that would turn me into a woman. Cathy got one of those, but she didn't have any female-specific items so it didn't matter much.

I got a dual-class card right at the beginning, and I ended the game as a level 4 Ninja-Monk. I wanted to be a Yakuza-Monk, but I got a bunch of ninja-specific items from a monster, so I switched so I could use them.

Anyway, Steve won Munchkin as well. He was a Samurai, and they get an extra level if they kill a monster alone. He got a monster that gave 2 levels if you beat it, and then switched to Yakuza so he could discard some of the cards in his hand to pick up the last monster in the stack, then switched back to Samurai and fought it again. That's 6 levels in 2 turns. The game is a race to 10, so the rest of us never had a chance.

During the Twilight game, Cid mentioned he'd started playing Guild Wars again, and he was quite amused by the message I had left before leaving the guild. I essentially said "Not that anyone will ever read this, but I'm leaving". Two months later (maybe 3, I forget when I left), someone did read it. Hooray.

Someday we'll have to get together and finally get Srol through Thunderhead Keep. I just got my necromancer there the other day, so whenever he's ready, I'll be ready. I have him on my friends list, but I never see him online. I need to get Cid there too, so if either of you read this, add Scott The Green to your lists if you haven't already.

I guess that goes for any other Guild wars players who read this. The more the merrier!