Quarantine Gaming

You'd think that being quarantined I'd have more time to blog but I just haven't been motivated. I'm really good at instagram. That is why I decided to start this blog to get back to actually writing and I love games so I guess I need to buckle down and just write. 

This quarantine I have learned how to use many things to continue to play games with my community. I've downloaded a few phone apps to play with friends and tabletop simulator. I've made accounts on tabletopia, Yucata.de and boardgame arena. I have never been one to play games online and on top of these things I also downloaded zoom and discord to communicate with my TTC as we play. This has definitely been a learning curve for me but one must play games. 

On Wednesday March 25th Zack made a game show for our TTC to play. It was a trivia game and I did not do well but I still had fun. We played on zoom and sent direct messages through discord to him. As I said it was great fun there were 3 rounds and our friend Chad won. Afterwards we played "6 nimmt!" and "7 Wonders." I believe we were on boardgame arena for both games. It was fun interacting with our friends and this was the first night we saw each others faces in what felt like at the time forever so it was good.

After that Wednesday I came up with a crazy idea which was to make care packages for the Wednesday Night Regulars that way we could play games together physically not just on the computer. I bought wet erase pens, the summer expansion of "Welcome To" and more laminating sheets. I printed out a roll and write that had been shared on social media for the gang and laminated it. We had a plain white board if we needed it. Then I found out who did not have "Welcome To" and laminated it with the halloween trick or treat expansion. Everyone got the new Summer expansion with the Easter expansion attached on the back. I cut up a microfiber cloth I had so they could wet that and clean it for their boards and sent them out. It brought me joy doing something for my TTC in this weird time. 

Last Wednesday we played games via zoom. Sami and Amanda hosted and we got to play "Similio," "Just One," "Welcome To" and "Codenames." It was great. We started with Similio as we waited for the rest of the TTC to join and we actually won! "Just One" is so easy if just 1 person in a group has it. Everyone else just needs something to write on.  We had fun and got a high score. "Welcome To" was also fun until I realized I was playing completely wrong so I had to bow out but enjoyed being apart of the gang so we still had fun. Finishing the night with "Codenames" was fun as well it went pretty long but in the end my team won so I was happy about that. This game night can be easily played with a group if you have a way of video chatting just have all the information on 1 camera and play. Our friends had their table being videoed by one of their cameras and they shared the other one so we could see their faces. I definitely recommend this for groups to continue playing and having fun while being apart.

Zack and I have gotten more games since this all started and we learned "Trial of the Temples" last night. It was alot of fun even though I had a massive headache. I was super interested in learning this one because one of the designers is in Zack's playtesting group. It was super interesting basically you have an archmage or 2 archmages in a 2P game and you place them around the board where you think you can find the most crystals or components to enter the trials. After all players are done harvesting you get to enter the trials if you can divulge the correct components. You get rewarded with a spell core if you pass certain trials. Spell cores are placed on your player board to give you special powers. It is pretty straight forward and fun. The cool part is outer main board is constantly changing so you don't pick the same places for the archmage. 

Just remember to keep playing games and doing things that bring you joy during this insane time in life.