Year 1 Day 8: Sunday Games

Hi!

In the morning, I felt fine, but I became tired and nauseated as the day went on. Many folks are suggesting a delayed impact of the Covid-19 vaccination. I think it is the new blood pressure and other drugs. I am tired, but I am sharper than I was. It does make you wonder if you want to be a bit dulled and feel better or be more connected and feel unwell all the time. I am hopeful that I will get better soon. It could also be the hours I am working.

I was awake at 7 and then blinked, and it was beyond 10. I never wish to sleep beyond 9; the morning seems too short. I skipped food, which might be part of the cause of the issues later in the day, and had only one cup or so of coffee. Evan connected me, and we agreed to meet at Mox in Portland to play board games.

I brought Wingspan and Blood Rage and few others we did not get to.

The bartender, Charles, is a Dungeon and Dragon writer, like me, and even works for Roll20 to build and edit some of the content we use on our Monday games! I gave him my email and cell, and we will see if this will take us anywhere.

Returning to Mox, I ordered a beer, as did Evan, and I had an appetizer too–I had the tea sandwiches. We then started into Wingspan. This is an excellent game to learn, but it does take a while to understand all the mechanics–I have lost many games. The theme is you setting up a bird sanctuary by attracting birds to your set-up–represented by a board you use in the game. You also can use the birds’ abilities to get more resources, gain points by consuming cards and resources, and have events on even other player’s turns. For example, and a bit gruesome, when your Eagle catches and eats a bird, someone else’s vulture might get to gain a resource.

The game mechanics are fun, and once you get them down, you can then explore the birds and attract the best birds to get you the most points at the end of the game. For example, I am always happy getting a few owls and some grackles!

I just managed to win. It was a very close game. Evan had more valuable birds, huge ones, and I had smallish ones that gained resources, so I made up for it.

We then ordered lunch as we put away the game. The menu is still a bit sparse. It took us a bit.

I had a chicken buffalo sandwich, but nausea and exhaustion started, and I was even tired to eat. I only ate half the sandwich. I brought it back, and Corwin thought it good, except the chicken is ground and mixed with grains and reformed into a patty. He thinks it would be killer as a fried chicken breast instead. Evan liked his burger, duck, and bacon.

We brought out Blood Rage. This is a dudes-on-a-board game with resources management and combat. It is a Viking theme, with pillaging the main way to improve your resources. Cards are added to the game that allows you to upgrade your Vikings, improve your combat values, mess with other people in combat, have quests, call forth legendary monsters and powers, and call in mystics to aid your cause. The cards are attached to various Viking gods. For example, Evan used Loki’s powers by playing a card in combat to slip away some of my honor and add it to his if I won.

My version of the game has most of the bling as it was the full Kickstarter version. I have also painted every figure. I have six different tribes of fully painted Vikings; today, I played the women-only Snake tribe. This is one of my best paint jobs of the Viking clans. All the legendary monsters are also fully painted. It is one of my best-looking games.

We also used for the first time the 3D printed pillage tokens. I bought them online already printed but had to do a lot of work to make them usable. They worked well today, at least better than cardboard punch markers.

Evan started to get the hang of the game in the second and certainly in the third age. At the first age, you score no more than twenty points of honor. In the final age, I added sixty points to my score. The first age is mostly for practice and trying to be ready for the second age.

In the final age, I managed to deploy the dread frost giant. Only to have it sent to Valhalla by Evan a moment later. Lucky, I had a quest to kill lots of my Vikings and legendary creatures. Evan was quite willing to aid me on that quest and nearly cleared my Vikings from the board. I played the Odin upgrade to double my quest values, which helped me tie Evan for the final score. He has done more pillaging than me and nearly beat me.

I finished out at Mox with the cheesecake.

I drove home after saying goodby to the evening bartenders, Tatyana and Marlyn. They are now on the night team, and we were happy to see them–they were there with me before the first re-lockdown. Tayana is finding more gigs, and this is making her happy and helping her make her bills. She and Marlyn both feel that Portland is starting to recover. Everyone wants a shot to get this thing over!

I got home feeling much worse. I made Susie scrambled eggs with cheddar, her fav. We have brown eggs, they were cheaper at Whole Foods, and they have a deep orange-colored yoke. Susie said the eggs were good.

I then went back to work after resting for a bit. I skipped dinner as I am still not thinking food is something I want. Our 9:30AM India time meeting fell off our calendars (9PM PDT), but I spoke to our expert there, Archana, and she is working on getting the project going. I will not share the details, but we are both happy to see some progress. I will be back online for the shoe company for India evening and Beaverton Morning 6-7ish.

14,149 people received vaccinations yesterday in Oregon. This number will likely increase as it takes three days to get all the counts and update the website.

Four-hundred fifty-five people were lost to the virus today in the USA.

It is soon the second Passover and Easter of lockdown. I went with a Hebrew singing of Psalm 121 as it is a Psalm of Ascents. These are specially called out as a group in the Hebrew, and some have suggested they would be sung as you approach the Temple in Jerusalem. I read them as I was headed, on a tour bus, to the temple mount in Israel in 1990. I recommend reading them in numeric order if you want a little inspiration for these shared religious events.