Tuesday, July 26, 2011

Yarr Con 2011

Our Awesome Travel Game Closet Filled to the Brim!
Group Camp Site - Check
Screen Tents with Picnic Tables - Check
Awesome New Travel Game Closet - Check
Games to fill said closet - Check
Friends to play games with - Check
9 Days in the woods playing games - Double Check!

July 12th marked our 8th annual Yarr Camping Trip and another great gamer gathering in the woods. Here's a break down of this year's gaming fun.

After the initial set up on Tuesday and Wednesday morning, it was time to get down to the good part - Playing Games!!

We kicked off the trip with our first ever play of Survive! Escape from Atlantis.  I had been looking forward to playing this since we interviewed Stephen Buonocore of Stronghold Games at the Alliance Open House last fall.  It did not disappoint!  In fact, it quickly became one of our favorites of the week and has now found a permanent place in our home game closet.



Glen arrived at the conclusion of Survive, so Dan, Jule Ann, and Valerie joined him in a few games of Eleminis.  I went to go get us some snacks.  Who knew an almost 3 year old would be so good at Eleminis!  Valerie loved the game so much that she asked to play multiple times during the rest of the trip.  I sense a birthday present for a lucky little girl!



Next, we climbed aboard our pirate ships and gathered doubloons, all the while racing to be the first ship around the island of Jamaica.  The winds were not in my favor as I came in third.



After our excursion we decided to go a little old-school and took a trip back to our humble gaming beginnings with the 10th anniversary edition of Carcassonne.  Those fields are still tricky, tricky, tricky.  Jule Ann beat us all easily with a whopping score of 101!  I was in a distant second with a score in the mere 70's.



At this point, we were feeling pretty good about our gaming success, especially us mommies.  With a ratio of 4 adults to 3 kids, we were getting steady game time in.  Some of us didn't even think we would be able to all sit and play a game until more adults arrived to lend a hand.  We broke for dinner and bedtime for the kiddos before our final game of the evening: Star Trek Expeditions. For some reason cooperative games just did not seem to be our forte this trip.  We did succeed in beating our mission on medium, but discovered we had forgotten a crucial rule by re-shuffling the energize cards when the pile was depleted.  For this reason, I do not think we should count it as a victory.

And thus began our mission to play as many games as possible.  Some of us had the luxury of being there the entire time, while others only managed half that time.  In any case, it was another successful Yarr Con and the following is a break-down of everyone's plays.

We played a total of 28 unique games, with a total of 72 plays all together.  Glen was the winner of the most games played.  He had an impressive grand total of 51 out of 72!  Tim came in a close second with 42.  Dan played 33.  Jule Ann and I both had a respectable 20 games each and agreed that we managed more than we expected.  Perhaps it was partially our use of Jule Ann's Crappy Housewives Tips that allowed us to gain more freedom, or the fact that the weather and our children cooperated with us this year.  In any case, our kids decided to nap at reasonably close times and for decent stretches of time making it far more feasible for us to get some games in uninterrupted.

Here are the rest of the groups recorded plays:
  • Ali (15)
  • Jeremy (10)
  • Phil (7)
  • Rachel (5)
  • Valerie (5 - all Eleminis)
  • Eppy (2)
  • Emily (2)
  • Mary Alice (1)


Other notable highlights from the weekend included:

Our terrible run of coop games:
  • Star Trek Expeditions - Loss on Easy due to destruction by Klingon Battlecruiser.
  • Witch of Salem - Really does anyone ever win this one???
  • Buffy the Vampire Slayer - Buffy was turned and all hope was lost!
  • Lord of the Rings LCG: Journey down the Anduin - Man you really need Gimli for that Scenario!  Big Trolls = FAIL!
Dan, Tim, and Glen's epic day of Star Wars Dueling! Seems the dark side was the winner in most matches.

A surprise visit from local friends (Eppy and Emily) on our last night.

And Glen and I managed a perfect tie in our first game of Nightfall: Martial Law!

In the end, the games that won our hearts and time this year were Star Wars - Epic Duels (with 15 plays), Quarriors (8 plays), Eleminis (6 recorded plays), and Survive! (4 plays with one or two other games started and not completed).  It was a load of fun and I can't wait till next year!



2 comments:

  1. CORRECTION! =)

    In that game of Star Trek: Expeditions, we actually destroyed the Klingon Battlecruiser...we just lost because almost every mission was one that really only Spock could finish, so when the rest of the Klingon fleet arrived on Stardate 30, we hadn't finished our missions yet. Man, even though we lost, it was soooo satisfying to blow up that damn cruiser!

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  2. Thanks for the correction, Glen. I had to duck out of that game early, so I only had Dan's notes to go by!

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