Distant Confines Expeditioning

Saturday was free of regular things.  As had nothing earlier in the day, got some present shopping done.  Birthday presents as four family members celebrated birthdays Sunday for being late year birthdays when everyone was in town.

Eventually, I headed over to DC for a gameevening.  With terrible traffic for a Saturday, I got there at 5:30PM rather than 5PM.

Food had already arrived as we ordered earlier in the day, but I just watched for a while as others set up the game.

Expeditions (Scythe)

So, people often think I’ve played more boardgames than I have.  Even though I played stuff in the Bay Area with my friend in Palo Alto pretty often before I moved, I actually pretty rarely play boardgames.  I knew nothing about this game, only knowing it used mechs and had stuff that was survivalistic by looking at what got put on the table.

I played Scarecrow with Matthew and the dog, Caesar?

I should have probably gotten a map token on first turn as I went first (of course), but I had exactly enough map tokens in this game to work with my special ability.  I thought workers would be important as they are in Eurogames, but I never once used my golden worker.

Evil mech came out and built up a huge stack of cards, where maybe I should have gone after it early on as I was pretty high in Guile/Power.  When I moved next to it to try to get enough Guile to do what I wanted, that’s the one turn it of course attacked and, of course, instead of costing me dollars that I didn’t have like the previous two cards, it sucked Guile from me, wasting an entire turn where all I netted was 1 Power on the turn.

I didn’t understand scoring, so I only did one quest the entire game.  I was told stars multiplied in some way, but I didn’t know it was only for quests.

Early on, largely because of vanquishing stuff I could vanquish, I got upgrade actions, so I quickly had two upgrades – the one that gives core value whenever gain meteorite or item card, then one that gives 1 Power if I get 2 Guile in a turn.  Not useless, but not remotely as important as doing quests.

Because of the upgraded item, I picked up meteorite cards, and they produced most of my points as I did four melds, triggering gain $1 per player three times.  I could have melded four and still had more quests to try to complete.

By the time I got my first star, the eventual winner already had 3.  He also beat on the evil mech to get enough corruption to get the star for 7+.

I never got close to 8 cards, as I got my upgrades early, then just didn’t care.  I did get 7 workers to do that star.  Seven corruption for that star, and, obviously, the four meteorites for that star.

Winner had 84 points.  Second – player who got fourth star first – scored 70.  I got 67.  Player to my right 65.  Player to my left less.

So, what did I think?

I was concerned because the theme doesn’t interest me at all, and the game looked like a lot of more thematic games I’ve ended up playing in terms of needing to understand a lot about cards.

It actually played pretty easily.  I had some really long turns as I thought about different possibilities, but that had something to do with lack of experience.  Without any real plan, I still did stuff okay.  Maybe I got lucky to score so many points off of melds.  But, the play felt fine.  I didn’t feel screwed by lack of options or by other players being too much in spots I wanted to move to, though player to my right researching one turn late in the game did screw me as he would have, otherwise, been forced to move, opening up a spot I was planning on moving to as I did three sexy actions.

I didn’t hate endgame scoring.  I could largely ignore the other players, though main reason I probably should have punked evil was to prevent winner from getting his corruption.

I think it’s the sort of game that one more play would make sense to see if I play better to what matters.  It doesn’t feel like it has depth I care about to play much more than that by choice.  But, then, I rarely choose to play any boardgame, so whatever.

Would a different theme interest me more?  Perhaps, but unlikely.  Like, let’s say it was fantasy with art I liked and we had cool creature minis.  I’d be more engaged with the game on an aesthetic level, but the gameplay doesn’t appeal to me that strongly.  Without some expansion, feels like it would feel pretty similar every play.

As for food, we got stuff from a Korean place.  Also can see in that picture Christmas cookies where I ate a fair number.  I also finally had Malört.  Finally?  It gets talked about all of the time in the True Dungeon community as so many of those players are from Chicago.  I could have tried at one convention I was at and missed other conventions when it was available.  It was … clingy.  Kind of medicinal.  Reminded me a bit of certain wines.  Does what I think of it matter?  Only alcoholic drinks I ever have any interest in trying are ones that sound exotic to give my opinions as someone who doesn’t like alcohol.  So, yup, even less relevant than how I feel about other drinks or food.

After 10PM, traffic was still heavy.  Now, I get that there’s Christmas shopping to do this time of year and there are events going on like shows, but I used to try to be asleep around 10PM.  Admittedly, that was in the Pacific Time Zone.  It’s hard to get to sleep that early in the “why is sports on so late?” time zone.

Thanks to host and fellow players.  My main in person gaming is with the old DC Methuselahs.  Besides hanging with buds and getting chewed on by a kitten, it’s just a good thing for me to do in person gaming, do in person any sort of activity outside the house.