Game Night!

For the first time since the pandemic started, I had a face-to-face game night with my friends! We had all been talking about the possibility of finally getting together in the same room to play board games once the Omicron surge abated and after we all got our boosters. Almost everyone in the group had already started going out so many of us had already gotten used to less physical distancing. We figured we were ready to meet up and so we did. And I gotta say, it really was such a blessing.

I couldn't stay too long since I had an early day the next day but I did get to play three new games. First was Canvas, a beautiful art-themed game where you compete to produce the most highly-rated paintings. What's unique about this game is that it makes use of transparent art cards that you lay on top of each other to form your painting. You need to choose the right cards and you need to figure out the best sequence to maximize scoring. I had never played a board game before that made use transparent cards so this was a really interesting experience. I did quite well for my first time and my final three paintings were called Risky Anxiety, Heavy Moment, and Liberated Expanse. I look forward to playing this game again.

My Canvas "paintings" and their corresponding awards

We then played Wavelength. I'm not sure how to explain how this game is played in just a few sentences hahaha so let me share the description on BoardGameGeek: "Wavelength is a social guessing game in which two teams compete to read each other's minds. Teams take turns rotating a dial to where they think a hidden bullseye is located on a spectrum. One of the players on your team — the Psychic — knows exactly where the bullseye is, and draws a card with a pair of binaries on it (such as: Job - Career, Rough - Smooth, Fantasy - Sci-Fi, Sad Song - Happy Song, etc). The Psychic must then provide a clue that is *conceptually* where the bullseye is located between those two binaries. After the Psychic gives their clue, their team discusses where they think the bullseye is located and turns the dial to that location on that spectrum. The closer to the center of the bullseye the team guess, the more points they score!" I am not good at these games so my team lost badly haha but it was still fun to play (albeit a bit stressful at times haha).

The third and last game I played was New York Zoo. Players compete to build the best zoo. Part of the game involves breeding animals in the different enclosures. It has a simple mechanic but it requires a lot of strategy and forward planning. The game ends when one player fully builds their zoo. I made the mistake of choosing the wrong enclosures and leaving chunks of spaces open, which meant I couldn't complete my board. Nevertheless, it was still very entertaining to play.

It was great getting to play actual board games (and not their online version which we had been playing for the last two years) but even more amazing getting to spend time with friends. Hopefully, the worst of the pandemic is over and we can continue playing board games face-to-face without significantly risking our health.