Gaming marathons

Boardgame sessions in Klang, while fun and engaging, tend to be rather vampiric, energy-sapping sessions. Generally we start from 9pm onwards, and go game after game after game until the wee hours of the morning where everyone emerges pale, glassy-eyed and in a zombie-like trance.

A good meetup will see about 7 of us at Cynic's, where he has a (sort of) game room for all our boardgame/piano/Osim massage chair needs. Since the various boardgames we have vary in sizes we normally use the floor. Very practical when it comes to games like Carcassonne, Twilight Imperium, House on Haunted Hill and Railroad Tycoon. When there's a large crowd and a board game can't support all available players, you gotta entertain yourself (and the others) right? That Osim chair, man it does wonders.

Only thing with most of these games, they tend to be cerebral. How to tell leh? Firstly, even to set up the game you'd probably need 1/2-hour. And if no one knows how to play the game? Mebbe need an hour to explain the rules and run a quick demo.



Twilight Imperium, interesting space game with many alien races. Build, wage war, trade etc. Very diverse and time/energy/brain/life-engaging. Takes an hour to set up the entire board and pieces.

After the first two boardgames everybody's definitely opting for lighter no-need-to-think-so-much games. Brain has fizzled out whatwith thinking of strategies to win the game, what to buy, who to sabotage etc. After all for the most of us we only play these games during these boardgame sessions, not all the time.

So when last night Cynic called to say there's a marathon, a tingle of fear and excitement went through my spine. The last time we had a marathon it started at 9pm and went all the way till 7am, and I had to work in the afternoon. Ended up just three of us, though. Cynic, Ivan and me. One was busy with football and another wanted to spend quality time with Heroes of Might & Magic V. In the case of the latter I totally understood and didn't bug him about it (one...more...turn...).

Surprisingly we managed an average of and hour a game, 4 games in all: Puerto Rico, Carcassonne, Railroad Tycoon and Hotel. Everyone's pretty quick with Puerto Rico now except for finding that perfect strategy against a certain someone who practises using an Excel program of the game. Carcassone is simple fun. Railroad Tycoon...man, now this game should have been played first instead. It so happened that instead of playing Ticket To Ride we voted for 'the other train game' instead. Thankfully everyone already had a rough inkling how to play the game, (Cynic of course knew the game best having to teach everyone else how to play the game at different occasions) so we could jump-start into the game fairly quickly. Hotel's a faster version of Monopoly and thankfully doesn't require much thinking.

Left Klang at 5am stiff and starving. There's gonna be a bigger session come end of the month. Need to prep!