A typical Friday night, for me, is spent playing a game of some type. For the past few weeks, it’s been all about AI War, but when Paul called to ask Justin and me to come over on Friday for board games, I was psyched. It may not seem awhile, but the last time we’d played board games was new year, so I was itching to play again!

Before I dive into the deep end, I just wonder: when people think of board games, do they think of games like Monopoly and Scrabble? And if so, are those considered casual board games? Furthermore, are games like Settles of Catan and Battlestar Galactica and Arkham Horror considered “hardcore” board games? We play a variety of both, but (much) more often than not, we’re playing some kind of insane board game that takes ~6 hours to beat–and no, it’s not Monopoly.

Anyway, all questions aside …

We arrived at Paul’s a little late, so they’d started on a game of Pandemic–which, predictably and unfortunately, they lost. That game is so well-designed that it makes you believe you can win within a turn or two, only for you to draw an epidemic card and either have you max out on your Outbreak counter, or spend all the cubes for one disease. Alas!

Then, we set up and played Settlers of Catan: Cities and Knights. Prior to this, Justin and I had only ever played Settlers of Catan, sans expansion. It was a generally mediocre time had with the game, so I didn’t feel that strongly about it, but after being told that Cities and Knights is a different game, I was intrigued, and ultimately impressed by it! Cities and Knights offers a dimension of competition that makes it more fierce than the standby SoC does. It’s pretty cutthroat, I would say, but also quite fun, when you finally know what you’re doing and have a goal. In the end, I was a turn away from winning, but Justin spied on my progress cards and took out the one card I needed the most to win–the Merchant card! Oh, that cunning bastard. Because of that, Paul won. Haha.

Then, we played Citadels. They hadn’t realized that I’d progressed so quickly, until it was too late. Oakley was trying his best to accumulate as many points as he could, but failed, because he did not get to 8 districts (didn’t have enough money to build another district). Good thing I thieved him as much as I did hahaha.

On Saturday, we went to Alhambra for lunch, then to USC-area to attend a book club meeting with Evan, Quyen and a couple of other people. It was a productive meeting, and we decided to get Orochon Ramen for dinner, afterward.

When I got home, I played a little Bioshock (thanks again, Tae!), AI War, and Psychonauts. Bioshock was getting a little stressful to play (hah ), but Paul had IMed me and asked if I wanted to play AI War, so we played that for about half an hour. We started, then, to realize that 10 planets is not a very good number of planets to play. We eliminated one planet but still had another one to go through, and it was a Core/MarkV planet, and we did not have enough knowledge or progress to penetrate them, so we decided to call it quits

Then, because I could, I decided to start on Psychonauts, which was on sale on Steam this weekend for $2! I didn’t know what to expect (I’d just bought it because Isaac recommended it), but I was in for a pleasant surprise. It’s a very well-made, creative game, and $2 is really quite a steal for such. I’m looking forward to continuing it!