Pacific Fury and Pax Porfiriana

Mar 9 2017

Pacific Fury

Learning game. IJN cleaned up pretty good, which I'm calling beginner's luck. We completely forgot about the events, so IJN never got a chance to bring in the reserves, which turned out not to matter, but with worse die rolls, really could have.

We'll get more plays of this in the future.

Pax Porfiriana

Learrning game. We had a weird shuffle, with way too many Enterprise cards on the table, and we ended up running out the bank.

I won it on Revolution by one point, strangely enough by attempting to win on Outrage. I played Outrage cards on myself, on Revolution Enterprises just by chance, which triggered "Liberation" for victory points. What an odd twist!

I can see why people really like this game.

What to play next?

Deciding what to play next is always a tough call when faced with a closet full of games, all of which were purchased with intent to play. Here's one I'm dealing with the decision.

Something New: this means both something new to me and a game which has been published recently, within the last two or three years.
Something Classic: I've acquired a number of games properly considered "classic" which haven't yet been played. The current example would be PanzerGruppe Guderian.
Something Again: mastery requires constant practice, which means playing games many, many times to allow nuance to appear.
Something Vietnam: as I'm on a Vietnam binge. I don't have all the Vietnam games ever published, but I can say that I have a lot of them, and probably more than most people.
Something Obscure: as it's fun to poke around in the dustier corners of game design.
Something Different: break away from the same old publishers and try a game from one of the new kids on the block. Or, conversely, dip into legacy with a classic tried and true.
Something Light: once in a while it's nice to actually finish a game all the way through in one sitting, in an hour or two.
Something Heavy: if possible, it's nice to set up something big and complicated which can be left out for days or weeks or even months, for a leisurely stroll through a very large or long game.

There are surely many more ways to choose, but the above method keeps me busy enough, helps me get both breadth and depth into my play, and provides me with a sense of progress.

The odd man out

When there is an odd man out:

Have a solo game ready to play.
Keep score or advise on a game in progress.
Referee a game in progress.