Chaldanya

We've played a couple of games of Gloomhaven. TheGamePitPodcast has Seany's take on it. Mine is: I'm not a huge fan of co-ops or D&Ds however the card mechanic that serves as actions AND health is new to me and very interesting. It puts you to game changing decisions fairly often so I find that keeps my interest. We haven't really played enough to serve as a campaign but I'm looking forward to seeing how my character develops over the next few games. I'm sure we'll get some time in over Christmas to get this to the table. Can't say much more for fear of spoilers

That's yours? I was eyeing that up. There hasn't been a decent christmas game that I've seen so I've got high hopes for this and I do love a worker placement.

I'm not crying, you're crying!

I like the post. I would question Arkham sitting at intermediary, tbh. It's heavy on set up time which can be off putting for those just dipping a toe in more complex games . I would also ask: Why no love for the humble worker placement Euro?

I was always going to get it being from Birmingham N

oh shit, I forgot we just backed Brass: Birmingham on Kickstarter yesterday - so excited. And two more boarders are coming to spend the weekend and play games this weekend. And we will definitely be playing Zombiecide.

I'm guest starring on the most recent episode in which we cover Gloomhaven, Empires of the Void and Octodice. There are 82 episodes so I hope you'll give 'em a listen. huge boardgame enthusiasts in this house. Ser Sean and I have a lot of games and Ser Sean runs (along with Ser Barry) The Game Pit mentioned above. We're a mixed household, Seany likes your standard Ameritrash games like Arkham Horror, Castle Ravenloft. Any kind of dungeon crawler/co-op type extravaganza. Gloomhaven is the newest one to make it to the table. I'm not normally a huge fan of these games but I liked this. There's a interesting mechanic whereby not only do you have hit points but your action cards are also linked to your health and exhaustion levels. I don't believe it's an actual legacy game - you can easily reset. This is very much unlike Pandemic Legacy where the nomenclature of Season 1 and Season 2 is right on the money. Wert: I would say that if you enjoy Arkham Horror up don't like the upkeep/set up you should try something like Elder Sign or the new edition of Mansions of Madness (there's a app with it that does all of the upkeep for you). If co-ops are also your thing you should give T.I.M.E Stories a go - it's truly a co-op without having an alpha player problem that so many co-ops do. I'm more into Euro type games - favourites are Lords of Waterdeep, Aquasphere, Great Western Trails. Oh, and how could I forget, Terraforming Mars - the sleeper hit from last year's Essen. We just about managed to get our hands on a copy - they are like gold dust right now. Ser Barry saw a copy in Australia for $120. We also play a lot of boardgames with our son - he's just under five and there are some fantastic games for his age group: Spinderella, My First Carcassone, My First Stone Age, TTR: First Journey. I could go on and on and on. We are going away to the London on Board gaming weekend on 28th in Eastborne. It happens twice a year and we go every time. Highlight of the calendar year with Essen a close second. We do love us some boardgames (we bought a house with a garage so that we could hold all of our games collection )

I started the first Charming book by Elliott James. The premise is v. interesting but god almighty did the technique suck. So so so many infodumps. Also why were Charming and Sig 'in love' I couldn't see any kind of interaction with them that would lead to that. However, I was intrigued and went on to the second book. The author seems to have learned or at least leveled up his editor. THIS should have been the first book. It did everything you needed it to do with more panache and the romance made about as much sense so we're in the same place. The remaining books are £3.99 so I may get the other two to round it out depending on how I feel at the ending of whatever this one is called.

What's for dinner? What we have most work nights some sort of slow cooker goodness. Tonight is a bolognaise sauce - normally turns out quite well and very flavoursome. We use very lean mince so I don't bother with browning beforehand - normally running out of the door while putting it on.

I find it dehumanising tbh. Male and female are also adjectives so Male What? Female What? And we have two decent nouns for male and female humans: men and women.

Yeah, I kind of switched off a little bit for the romance in Hidden Legacy. It reminded me a bit of the Rachel/Trent romance which took 12 or 13 books in The Hollows series. But everyone knows my feelings on that so I'm just gonna leave that alone. I saw someone mention Nalini Singh on here and I had the books knocking around so I've given both of the series a whirl. And whooo-boy are the rapey. Let's tackle The Guild Hunter series first. Super God like Archangel meets ordinary(ish) woman and the power imbalance is huge, HUGE. But someone how they fall in love and at the end of the book The plots are provided so that Ms Singh can write soporific sex scenes that left me about as aroused as being hit round the face by a wet haddock. Suffice it to say, I can't even hate read it and gave up half way through book 3. I then tried the Psy-Changeling series. This was marginally better. The world makes more sense and actually is quite intriguing but oh please god can we STOP calling men and women males and females it grates on my something fierce. And the sex scenes are once again just poor. All soft feminine this and hard male that. bleurgh! The first one was ok. The second one was very very rapey. The dude in the second one just blows by the boundaries set up by the woman and that's supposed to be sexy and something to love???. So I chucked that one out 40 pages in. I'm on the 3rd which is marginally better and not as rapey but I suppose we will see. It appears to me that Ms Singh is still writing romance straight out of the 80s. Fuck it, I'm going back to my non-fiction.

I'll give it a whirl and let you know. Currently giving something non-fiction a whirl. We'll see how long it lasts.

Yay! It's only 186 days to Christmas. Gotta get my skates on I'm just about to finish the 2nd one so I'll head on over to read the 7 chapters today. Thanks for the tip. N

@Mandy I've started the Inn Keeper series. So far so good. Normally I would have burned through the two books by now but cross-stitch has taken over my life currently and I'm busy making christmas decorations

I think the arc wrapped up very well, however there is more to explore if it is the apocalypse as Mike Carey has said in a recent interview. It looks like he's thinking of writing another one in due course. I'd be here for all of that.