Christmas break
Jan. 9th, 2019 12:52 pmWe had a lovely Christmas. We cooked Christmas dinner, roast potatoes which turned out exceptionally well, and made at Rachel's inspiration a creamy mushroom pie, which just felt perfectly "right" as a vegetarian centrepiece for a roast dinner.
I got several lovely presents, but the most notable was Scythe, the Polish-designed central-european economy-building territory-control game. The aesthetic is best described as "farmers working in fields while giant mechs stride past in the morning mists", and the mechanics back up the idea that mechs are useful for helping workers, and always threaten to turn to combat, but you don't have to be. Each faction (Russviet, Nordic, Crimean, Saxony and Polish) also has a single character "hero" with an appropriate companion animal, who can fight like mechs and also have adventure "encounters" on certain hexes on the board.
We managed to squeeze a lot of games in here and there! It's the sort of game that's two hours long, but actually two hours with minimal set-up and scoring, and faster in games that end quickly, rather than constantly threatening to run longer.
Then we went to Nice in France for a week for Rachel's birthday which was really good. Photos and write-ups on facebook and twitter. We visited several obvious tourist destinations, including a couple of trips to Monaco seeing the exotic gardens and the vast, vast aquarium. The Nietzsche footpath at Eze, climbing steeply from the water to the higher village, where apparently Nietzsche used to walk and think. The Chagall museum, constructed during his life -- so many goats, so many bold, impressionistic, paintings inspired by streets, by life, and by biblical stories. And we all managed to coexist in a small apartment for a week.
And afterwards, despite possibly difficult things coming up, I do feel more in control of my life and able to spend some effort on the things I want, rather than constantly fighting the most-overdue problems.
I got several lovely presents, but the most notable was Scythe, the Polish-designed central-european economy-building territory-control game. The aesthetic is best described as "farmers working in fields while giant mechs stride past in the morning mists", and the mechanics back up the idea that mechs are useful for helping workers, and always threaten to turn to combat, but you don't have to be. Each faction (Russviet, Nordic, Crimean, Saxony and Polish) also has a single character "hero" with an appropriate companion animal, who can fight like mechs and also have adventure "encounters" on certain hexes on the board.
We managed to squeeze a lot of games in here and there! It's the sort of game that's two hours long, but actually two hours with minimal set-up and scoring, and faster in games that end quickly, rather than constantly threatening to run longer.
Then we went to Nice in France for a week for Rachel's birthday which was really good. Photos and write-ups on facebook and twitter. We visited several obvious tourist destinations, including a couple of trips to Monaco seeing the exotic gardens and the vast, vast aquarium. The Nietzsche footpath at Eze, climbing steeply from the water to the higher village, where apparently Nietzsche used to walk and think. The Chagall museum, constructed during his life -- so many goats, so many bold, impressionistic, paintings inspired by streets, by life, and by biblical stories. And we all managed to coexist in a small apartment for a week.
And afterwards, despite possibly difficult things coming up, I do feel more in control of my life and able to spend some effort on the things I want, rather than constantly fighting the most-overdue problems.