Friday, March 21, 2014

Rough Month


It's been almost 5 weeks since I last posted - I've had a pretty rough month. Or year so far, come to think of it.

I fractured my foot on New Year's Eve, and just when I have recovered I found that I had a cavity in my remaining wisdom tooth (which will require surgery), on the same day that my father was diagnosed with a heart attack.

The past three weeks saw multiple trips to the hospital and some stressful moments getting things organised for my father's discharge, but this afternoon he came home safe and sound.

One side-effect of this ordeal is that I have been forced to finally get a smartphone so I could be on Whatsapp with my family during this period, and with smartphones come gaming possibilities...

So far I have bought and played Steve Jackson's Sorcery! for android (coincidentally released in Android the day before I got my phone) and two Risk-like games, one of which is Age of Conquest Europe pictured above.

Age of Conquest Europe is a pretty straightforward game that is basically Risk-plus. I lost 6 games in a row before I realised what the secret to victory was (hint - in the Anno 1200 campaign play Novgorod). The diplomacy system playing solo isn't too sophisticated, but I suspect if played multi-player things get a lot more interesting.

I have just now downloaded Star Traders, which looks interesting. Hopefully this new modality of gaming will not take too much time away from my tabletop time...