October 2017 Round-Up

Between creating this blog and going to PAX Aus, October was a big month for games at our house. Although we mainly blog about pub-weight games, we also play bigger games and RPGs. So, we’ve included those here for posterity, too.

New Additions

We picked up 15 new games for our collection during October. The seven we also played this month are in bold. Reviews are linked as we complete them.

• 

  Citadels

• Codenames Duet
• Fate of the Elder Gods
• Get Bit
• Hanabi
• Hive
• King of Tokyo Power Up (2nd edition)
• Kingdomino 
• Lanterns 
• Onitama
• Pandemic Legacy Season Two
• Paperback
• The Ravens of Thri Sahashri
• Schotten Totten
• Unspeakable Words

So, we played almost half of our new games. Not bad considering we picked up several of those during the last week. We won’t play Pandemic Legacy Season 2 until we get our Legacy team together again, too, of course.

New Favorites

We picked up some fantastic two-player games, including Hive and Onitama. I’m especially in love with Hive and try to get people to play it with me as often as possible.

I also loved both Unspeakable Words and Paperback. Both are light word games with a bit of strategy, but nothing so heavy you can’t enjoy your beers and chat during the games.

At PAX, we tried Kingdomino with groups of three and four and thought it was a great game. When we got it home, we played it with two and were even more impressed. For a single mechanic game, Kingdomino is very satisfying to play. We’re eager to play Queendomino next. I’d wager there’s an excellent chance it appears on our new games list for November.

Other Fun Stuff We Played

We had some other great games sessions this month both at PAX and with games already in our collection. We played:

• Adrenaline
• Burgle Bros.
• Chrononauts
• Dead Men Tell No Tales
• Dreary Hamlet
• Don’t Mess with Cthulhu
• Gloom
• Heckmeck am Bratwurmeck
• London Dread
• Machi Koro
• Raptor
• Samurai Spirit
• Spirit Island
• Star Wars: Age of Rebellion
• Tales from the Loop
• Tokaido
• Unbound
• Welcome (Back) to the Dungeon*

*These have long since been amalgamated in our collection.

That makes a grand total of 25 different games played in October.

Favorite Venues and Game Sessions

In addition to PAX, we hit up eight other venues this month for games and drinks, mostly pubs around Melbourne.

Bar Josephine in Footscray is one of our mainstays since it’s game-friendly and they always have excellent beers on tap. We’ll do a full write-up of it soon, but I thought it at least needed a mention for this first round-up since we’re there so often.

One of our new discoveries this month was The Creators Lounge, also in Footscray. We went there because they were rumored to have Jedi Juice, one of our current favorite beers, on tap. They usually feature excellent beers, just $8 a pint during happy hour. We’ve not explored their menu deeply yet, but their sandwiches are delicious.

PAX Aus was great. It was my first PAX ever and I loved every bit of it. My favorite bit was raiding the games library with friends. We tried Machi Koro, Lanterns, and also gathered a group for an attempt on London Dread, one of our favorite cooperative games that we haven’t won yet. (We know, it’s not called London Picnic.)

Another that I enjoyed was Dreary Hamlet, which we picked up somewhat randomly from the table featuring games by Australian designers. I loved the artwork and the coins were ridiculously pretty. We played with both two and three players during PAX and ultimately, I’d probably buy a copy if I could track one down. My fingers are crossed for a second printing someday.

My favorite session, however, was our trip up to Woodend to see friends, drink beers, and play games at the Holgate Brewhouse. Over the course of the afternoon, we played Hive, Onitama, and Gloom over many tasty beers.

What made it most special to me was that Josh had taken me there the first time I visited Australia, since historically it was one of his favorite breweries and he knew how much I loved good beer. It turns out we were there just a little over a year after that first visit. ❤

My favorite pint of the afternoon was their Hop Tart semi-sour pale ale. I also liked the Alpha Crucis Australian XPA and the Hopinator quite a bit.  And did I mention we played Onitama?  More on that soon…