The Joy of Gaming - Ray's Rate A Shelf #2

At the beginning of this year, my husband started a Twitter feed, posting a different part of our game shelves and rating the games that are on them. I was so impressed by this activity, I thought it would be great to share it on my blog.

Click the Tweet to see the rankings and the games.

Rate a Shelf: @Zmangames_ @CalliopeGames @AvalonHill2 @Libellud @Kosmos_verlag @melissaanddoug pic.twitter.com/RsWvKh8lii

— Ray Bonilla (@OldManMerton) January 4, 2018

The Joy of Gaming - Ray's Rate A Shelf #1

At the beginning of this year, my husband started a Twitter feed, posting a different part of our game shelves and rating the games that are on them. I was so impressed by this activity, I thought it would be great to share it on my blog.

Click the Tweet to see the rankings and the games.

Rate a Shelf: @FFGames @Zmangames_ @maydaygames @IBCGames #boardgames pic.twitter.com/ixSQ0tR4lz

— Ray Bonilla (@OldManMerton) January 3, 2018

The Joy of Gaming - Diner and Breakfast

I woke up on a Saturday morning with a fun idea to make a new breakfast dish I'd been dying to make and then play Diner with my husband. Not that it pertains to games, but my husband and I are doing the Keto Diet, so I've got to get creative with food sometimes. Today I was going to make a sausage, egg, and cheese breakfast sandwich - like what'd you get when you go out to eat. Not quite at a diner, but I would totally eat it if a diner offered it.

Diner (2015)
Back in the day, I Kickstarted Dice Hate Me Games campaign that offered a really nice selection of thematic games. I felt they were channeled creative inspiration in a way that hadn't been seen before and I couldn't wait to have some smaller, yet challenging games. I was not disappointed. Diner, designed by Matthew O'Malley, is a real-time speed game that utilizes the fast-paced nature of the food industry. Passing action tokens in order to take tables, fulfill orders, and gather the food items keeps your mind as busy as a server. With two people, it's a quick play, but that's okay, because it's fun to go back for seconds... and thirds... sometimes even fourths.

The Joy of Gaming - Valentine's Edition Night 4

Tonight is a rough night for us. Our daughter went to her grandmother's, which means my husband didn't get home until later. This greatly cuts into our evening gaming, because I still have an early work day tomorrow, despite school kids having no school. I tried to choose two games that aren't super intense, but by the end of the evening, my fatigue had caught up with me and we were only able to get in two rounds of one game.

So here is Evening 4 of my Valentine's Week of Love Games.

The Drama Queen: Council of Verona
Once we sorted the cards, the two-player version went really quickly. It was tricky not knowing what cards were even in play, but that's part of the strategy of it all. I have to remember to get this one out for in-betweens.

My Star-Crossed Lover!!!! Luckily exile has a heater and games.

The Joy of Gaming - Valentine's Edition Night 3

VALENTINE'S DAY! 

Some people think I'm weird for loving Valentine's Day, but it's not necessarily due to all the love and flowers and candy. When I was a child, my parents and godparents would always take my brother and I to Chicago for the weekend. We'd go to the museum or aquarium and then some sort of dinner theater, like Medieval Times. The hotel would always have a pool. It was just the coolest thing. So I always remember the gift shops having Valentine's stuff and it was everywhere. So it always represents a happy time of year for me, at least in my memories.

Also, my grandfather's brother would always send me a Valentine's card and he would always put Saint Valentine's Day. He was a devout Catholic and always took the time to make sure we knew the origin of the day. Some have said this is the day that was made up to sell cards, but that was actually Sweetest Day.

Additionally, my Anniversary with my husband is on February 20, so... there's that.

So here is Evening 3 of my Valentine's Week of Love Games.


The Mysterious One: Fog of Love
Jacob Jaskov had the right idea making a game about love that a husband and wife could play together. We enjoyed playing our own little characters and dramatically sharing our scenes. It had that little bit of an RPG edge that I've been missing since we've scaled back our RPG play. Really glad I finally purchased it.

The Joy of Gaming - Valentine's Edition Night 2

I think my husband is on to me after last night. So tonight I'm going a little bigger, because tomorrow I have something else planned. Poor guy had to, short notice, plan to play one of the games. I'm just glad it worked out tonight and I hope it doesn't become overwhelming as we go into the rest of the week.

See, my husband loves playing games and it's something that has always been very special for us. He can play games all day every day, but I can't. So as I went through some personal things the last two years, I fell out with gaming a bit. I was really into RPG and switched to writing, but after some talk, we started a schedule just to get back some sort of semblance of shared game time. Lucky for him, it's been good and it's fitting well into my own life.

So I thought this would be a really fun thing to do for the two of us during Valentine's Day. My only concern is the evening dedication, but so far it is going very well.

So here is Evening 2 of my Valentine's Week of Love Games.

The Sensitive One: ...and then, they held hands
 We did not win this time... it got rough in that inner circle and we couldn't make the move to get the last emotion. It plays quick and is so much fun.

The Pragmatic One: The Pursuit of Happiness
This worker placement went rather quickly and was something quite enjoyable to play on a work night. Sadly.. despite definitely dying at least a day ahead of me, my husband won this one, too. My pursuit, though, was pretty great. I even had a job as a teacher!

I didn't pick this as my child trait, but I laughed that I got it.

He has his collection...                                         I have my RPG.

The Joy of Gaming - Valentine's Edition Night 1

I love Valentine's Day. There are many personal reasons for why I love Valentine's Day, but let me just say it's not about the roses and diamonds and the like. It's totally personal. Yet, when it comes to themes, I do like a holiday to give what I do a little extra sparkle.

Since I'm finally investing myself in gaming again, I decided to attempt to plan a little V-Day game night-week-weekend type thing. So of course, I started looking for Valentine's Day games for us to play. What I found was just a long list of 2-player games to play with your Significant Other. And if it was love, it was Love Letter. I was really disappointed with what I was finding.

So I decided to do some of my own research and look for games that were at least 2-player, were not party games, and also had "love" type something as a theme or something like that. I made a list on BoardGameGeek, but then I realized I needed to have some fun with it.

So here is Evening 1 of my Valentine's Week of Love Games.

The Cliche: Love Letter
We absolutely love this game. Pack in a purse and pass the time away whenever you're stuck waiting. We have a few different versions, but we still love the traditional. Even got the little custom hearts instead of just the red pieces.

The Trick: Woo
I am terrible at trick-taking games. This one came in our Pack-o-Games 2 from Chris Handy. I really liked it, even though I was thoroughly trounced by my husband. But we both agreed, it was just so romantic wooing each other. Teehee.

Despite my losing both games, love was still in the air. 

#IggleDailyJournal February 5th

Theme: Geometrical

The Vatican Museum in Rome has these amazing stairs... it's so strange to walk down them, because they slope and the steps aren't really steps, they're like... barely there steps. I love the architecture of it. Granted, I love Rome in general, so this was an easy theme to do.

#IggleDailyJournal February 4th

Boy... do I want to feel ashamed or excited that today's post of "Latest Movie." I was in a movie-watching mood yesterday. Saturday is designated as my "me-recharge" day. Sadly, the two movies I watched were so epically disappointing for so many reason. Attack on Titan changes so much from the anime that it really is disappointing. It's slow moving and, at times, rather confusing to deal with. One is subtitled, while the other was dubbed (for reasons). It was just frustrating all around. I wouldn't recommend them if you enjoy the anime. It really is an example of trying to make it the most live action anime, complete with over-the-top performances.

#IggleDailyJournal February 3rd

Today's prompt was hearts. I love Catana Comics! The geeky obsessive love is so much. I always share them with my husband, because I love him to bits and pieces. So I found some of their stuff with hearts to share the love.