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Stig Morten
Norway
Kvernaland
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This week I've played a couple of bad games, but still I've had fun.
Does that mean that the amount of fun isn't linked to how good a game is?
This week was the week me and my wife went to the south of France for a few days, or more correctly, we played Carcassonne. I had played that game oncce before and it gave me a definite meeh feeling. Nothing particular about the game made me want to play it again that time.
My wife played Carcassonne for the first time and we had a close game that I won with a single point. Woohoo! That would be my last win in that game. The second game we played was better and we included the river. We are not sure who won this one, because we didn't remember how many rounds around the scoreboard we had done. But it was fun to play it, and we quickly played it aggresively and tried to block each other. My wife said "This is probably the closest to a wargame you will ever get me to play." A fine comment. Later that night my wife, yes, my wife asked to play Carcassonne again. Sure, and she went on to crush me with a huge win.
The game was definitely better as a cut throat game than the nice way I played it years ago.
The next day we played another game of Carcassonne and again, my wife won, although by a closer margin this time. Fun times, and it works as a 2-player game. My wife said she found it better than Ticket to Ride as a 2-player game.
And then coming home from work the next day, I found a package on the kitchen table, and it turned out to be for me from my wife.
I opened it to find the best expansion ever, and I mean ever, released in the history of boardgaming.
We figured this needed more than two players so I called a friend.
We played a standard game with the river first and then we added the catapult. And what fun times we had ahead of us. Most of them related to the badness of the expansion, and not so many related to the game. Mostly badness.
We started playing and when the first Fair tile came up, we were ready for the fun that lay ahead. We started with the shoot and catch option, but those that launched up were caught and those that didn't gave the reciever points, so 5 points for each and that one wasen't chosen more.
We then tried knocking of Meeples, but the catapult wasen't good enough to hit anything, or was that us? Anyway, we didn't try that more.
And the closest to the last tile played option was tried once. I launched my counter backwards, my wife hit an empty glas. (Yes, I allow drinks on the table.)
But most fun would be had my the Abduction option.
Abduction????
Abduction, my game doesn't have an Abduction option.
Image by Toynan
Clearly this counter can have nothing to do with Abduction? My rules have a Seduction option, but no Abduction option. What are you talking about?
Well, all very valid questions, but let's say it like this. In Norway, we do a special kind of Seduction called Abduction.
That is at least how the Norwegian rules are translated, and we had tons of fun with this option after we figured this out.
We had lots of fun trying to Abduct the other meeples in a sexy kinda seductive way, but mostly it was just a hilarious translation mistake.
Our one big city that had a missing CCCC tile in the middle changed hands a number of times due to Abduction, and in the end we had 1 meeple each in that city and scored 32 points. Had this large city not been there I don't think the catapult would have had much impact on the game. But it made the game last longer, but that isn't really a positive thing.
So to sumarize the best expansion ever released in the history of boardgaming let's say this.
Cons.
Crappy construction.
Didn't add anything significant to the gameplay.
Badly translated rules.
Pros
It's fun to fling things up in the air with only a smidgen of percieved control.
It's fun to Abduct meeples.
Eeh, I guess that's it for pros.
Not something we will bring out for 2-player games, but can be fun once in a while. But thefun won't be gameplay related, but shouting "CATAPULT!" when you draw a Fair tile is fun.
Later in the week I played more bad games.
Flinke Flitzer
This is not a good game. There is no thinking involved what so ever. You roll a die and do what it tells you. You can't make a strategy, you can't plan ahead, you have no control over your position or over how many cars you get in your carpark, but I had fun playing it, because I played it together with my lovely daughter.
We played it twice, won once each, and then she tired of the game and found a Dominoes and we played that once. Then the 5-year old mind took over and the Domino pieces became a 2 bed house. The Domino box bacame a swimmingpool, meeples started living in the house and they even got a diving board with the Catapult.
The Kindness of geeks.
1. My wife can hardly be called a geek. I think she would protest it openly, but nevertheless, she bought me a game. Thank you.
2. When Days of Wonder confirmed that Memoir '44: The Invasion of Crete would only be available as a download for us Europeans, I said thank you for making it available for us too on the forum over there. Shortly after a kind geek send me a message saying one printed booklet would find it's to my mailbox if I provided a working address. It arrived this week and I can only say thak you very much.
So thanks to these two kind people, this is the new stuff that arrived this week, and that without me having to turn my resolution into a lie.
And another kind act came in the form of comment that was posted on my previous
David Knepper
United States
Huntsville
Alabama
Aging One wrote: I'm sure I have an extra copy of Paying the Peiper I can send you.  In fact, I think I have the complete set with die-cut counters. 
So thanks to David I am going to get a complete set of the Bulgethemed postcard games from ATO Magazine.
Thank you very much. Campaign game coming up.
I think that was my week.
Still not a lie, bad games can be fun to play and people are kind to me.
Hopefully next week will be as good as that.
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