A surprisingly game-y week, even for me.
- I ended up at Fercott on both Tuesday and Wednesday evening for boardgames, which was quite nice. Tuesday we played New Frontiers, which is the “traditional board game” version of Race for the Galaxy, one of my favorite games of all time. It was fine, but felt… unnecessary? That could be my huge bias in favor of Race speaking, though. Or the fact that I lost. We also played some Hokm; it was nice to get some traditional card gaming in. Wednesday had us playing a couple of Lost Cities/Keltis-family games, plus Grifters Nexus (which seems more interesting than the original) and proper Race. That last game was a tie broken by cards in hand, a very rare outcome. I got to hear someone say that they finally felt they actually understood the game as well, which is definitely one of the biggest hurdles it has.
- Besides the real-world tabletop gaming, I’ve also continued to make fairly heavy use of dominion.games. If I were still gainfully employed I’d buy a subscription, but as-is I’m actually pretty okay with my base set + Renaissance set-up (thanks, rulebook!), to be perfectly honest.
- After finally finishing A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius (which I wrote about earlier this week), I’ve moved onto State Tectonics by Malka Older. I’m enjoying it quite a bit, but I keep putting it down to do other stuff. It’s a fast read, it’s just not quite… engaging enough to make me sit in my chair and tear through it. I’ll be done soon anyway, though, given how zippy it is.
- I finally decided to start watching season 2 of Westworld, mainly because of how terrible the most recent episode of A Game of Thrones was. It’s been enjoyable, more coherent than the first season, and still gorgeous as all get-out. I’m about halfway through and curious to see where it’s going to end up with several of the plot threads, along with wondering just what a third season of the show will look like.
- On the videogame side, I went from playing Monster Hunter World heavily to becoming disenchanted with the game pretty abruptly. It started to feel way more mechanical than genuinely interesting, and I’ve put it aside for the time being. That still leaves Borderlands and Portal Knights, both of which are also pretty repetitive in their structure, but for whatever reason they don’t bother me as much.
- I’m back on keto for the most part. I treated myself to the amazing “molcajete” at the local Tex-Mex place last night, a skillet full of delicious sizzling meat, onions, and even cactus. I ate every bite. Plus some tortillas, I’m afraid, hence the “for the most part.”
If this next episode of A Game of Thrones is as bad as episode four was, I may have to break out my emergency TV rations and finally start watching Fargo season 2 or The Deuce. Here’s hoping I don’t.