As someone who enjoys his free time at home, mostly playing video games, the shutdown brought upon by the COVID-19 pandemic has been made much more tolerable. But I understand the impatience to have things back the way it was so that people can recover both financially and emotionally on top of keeping themselves healthy. This is the reason why we have to do everything we can to get us back there, including getting the COVID vaccine. I was finally able to get my first dose yesterday and had to travel far to get it even, all in the name of quelling the spread of the virus. The arm was mighty sore when I got home and still is now but I am feeling fine. I did get a weird headache on my way back home but that could have been because of the ride than anything else: I normally drive and I am hardly, if ever, a passenger and I think my body couldn't handle that very well, especially since it was a long trip. I know the whole situation with the Johnson & Johnson vaccine is concerning but the speed in which the CDC/FDA caught the situation and took action is commendable. To be honest, I would have gone for the J&J vaccine just to one and done it.
Now I can't remember the last time my arm was this sore. Even though it is comfortable enough for me to hold a controller and use it, or type on a keyboard to get this post done, I did notice that my reaction time is definitely impacted by this. I was playing Natsuki Chronicles, a fun shoot-'em-up, yesterday to do my usual high score chase and I was bumping into a whole lot of bullets, enemies, and the environments. It wasn't pretty and I got very frustrated. I knew at that point that it was the appropriate time for me to start playing Edritch Horror, the board game that I have acquired recently. I just read through the rulebook a couple of days before, and boy it was quite the intimidating read, so I felt a bit underprepared, though willing, to start playing this rather complex game.
during the Nintendo GameCube years... To house monster tokens!
Setting up the board and then playing it for the first time while following the step by step instructions found in the manual actually cleared a lot of things up. The box indicated that an average game would last 2-4 hours and I played about 2 hours of actual gameplay last night, very slowly that is. I started organizing the board around 9 p.m. I believe and had to stop myself around 1 a.m. so you know what that means? This game is very good indeed! I wish it was in digital form though because well, what a clutter! I would gladly pay the same price for that digital version, but I suppose Fantasy Flight Games is capitalizing on physical tabletop players. I decided to do the solo play with 2 investigators and basically in this game, you move about the global map seeking clues to defeat an Ancient One before it destroys the world. What I love the most about this game is that the board itself is actually alive! You don't know which monsters are going to show up and what is going to happen next because everything is based on the luck of the draw. There is even satisfying combat that tests both your investigators' sanity and constitution. The characters have stats and they can get buffs, debuffs, items, allies, and I learned that they can also die quite quickly: Jacqueline Fine, the psychic, died on the second round from a battle against a nasty Gug, her dead body now lie rotting somewhere in London. The bodies of incapacitated investigators stay on the board and you can then bring another investigator into the game from the remaining characters in your pool. But bear in mind that there is a doom countdown that is ticking down ever closer to the awakening of the Ancient One. Not everything is luck-based however since the main structure of the game is determined by the Ancient One you are fighting against and they each come with their own unique cards plus their own unique cocktail of the Mythos deck that you draw from near the end of each turn to bring significant changes to the board and all the affected elements currently in play. I can't wait to see how this ends. The fate of the world will be determined when I continue the game... sometime today!
3 comments:
I wish I had a little nook area with a table just for board games. Digital is an easy cleanup, but physical board games are still worth the extra steps.
This game could have easily been converted to digital form but I can definitely see the allure of all this complicated physical setup. You do feel more involved in the game. Speaking of a little nook area, you have inspired me to move board gaming to another room. Sometimes, I am just hell-bent on keeping all gaming activities in the Game Room but I am going to set up a long table + chairs in another room because you are right, it's worth the extra steps.
If you do set up another area, we definitely need a picture :)
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