Bunker Project Log

Mrs. G’s entire family, and their family’s families are here from across the pond. This is a lot of people. A lot of… ahem… older people.

So… of course I wanted to have a Bunker Party for them. I really want to test out the Wii on a group of unsuspecting Sexa and Septuagenarians.

Things were going pretty well. Everything was clean, powered up and ready to go. Then the second the first group arrived, the sky broke open. We?were in the middle of some sort of freak, instantaneous, in-land hurricane thingy. The house shook, the roof plinked and popped with the sound of hail, and to my horror, the lights browned for a minute, and finally went out entirely.

I’ll let you make your own caption for this one:

This weekend, I was cruising around boardgamegeek, and found a bargain thread that I couldn’t pass up. I bought a lot of games, but don’t tell Mrs. G how many, she hasn’t figured it out yet.

For some reason, I keep buying the resource management/settling/development/trading games because they are highly rated on the geek, but we never end up playing them. I guess it’s good for my games list/sex appeal, but I’d play Can’t Stop, Blokus, or Quoridor, before Puerto Rico, any day.

It’s early Summer, and I’m just chillin’ with Mrs. G, and she says “isn’t it weird that we’ll be married seven years tomorrow?”

And, because I’m a total blockhead, I say “our anniversary isn’t until Saturday!”

Remember that thing about a land war in Asia? That is like arguing with your wife about when your anniversary is, when her birthday is, where your first date was, when your kids were born, when your kids were conceived, where your kids were conceived, etc. Don’t do it.

It was a month after Version 2.0 popped out of Mrs. G’s belly, and?ma and pa had come to do the things that grandparents do when their children have children. My dad and I were sitting on his truck’s trailer hitch, shooting the breeze. Him with his Busch Lite, me with a Diet A&W Root Beer. Then he looks at me quite seriously and says, “Y’know?son, If you ever need anything, you know you can call and we’ll come out and help.”

So I think about this for a second, and I say, “Y’know dad, there is something you can help me out with.”

(Please note: for the length of this review, the word “huggermuggered” will mean duped, ambushed, suckered, or just outright screwed in to something. For example “I got huggermuggered into playing ‘Huggermugger’ with my wife”. Recent dictionary searches?have pointed out that I may have been using this word incorrectly for many years. If so, I blame my public school education.)

For the moment, my “project log”?has?turned into?anything but. However,?I’m hosting a big Bunker Party on Friday, so I’m going to have to make some progress on something.?

Until then, here’s?the beef?on Huggermugger (yick! 5.1 on Boardgamegeek). ??

For some reason, I was compelled to play something tonight. The kids were in bed, but I know Fatty McGee well enough that within ten minutes of starting a flick, he’s going to scream his little lungs out. (Actually, the sweet little monsterpop is sitting right in front of me, prolly with teethies poppin out of his 4-month old gums.)

So, I did the unthinkable and gave Mrs. G a choice. Y’see, she took umbrage with my assertion that she always picks something crappy (read paragraph 1 here) so I did this as a test. Her options were Rat Hot (6.5 on boardgamegeek), or Inkognito (5.2 on boardgamegeek). She chose Inkognito.

Mrs. G is never in the mood for anything except girly movies, cookies and Crunch bars. However, she does have very geek sensibilities. What this means is, almost every entertainment media we watch or play or whatever, has to be a surprise up to the last second, because… if she had the choice, she would never pick anything remotely cool.

So, the onus is on me to find stuff that I know she will like, even though her first instinct would be to roll her eyes and grouse about it. This can be daunting, because I’m always worried about the one time that I will make her watch something that legitimately sucks, or… that she just doesn’t like, at all.

So, Pottse and the Berserker (who just now received that name from me, upon thinking of his Zombies! playstyle) came over and made an army’s worth of crepes, which I ate a lot of.

Then I watched those two and?Mrs. G?play “Can’t Stop” while I punched out bits to other games, and attempted (unsuccessfully) to read the rules of Arkham Horror, which I am desperate to play.

So, once Can’t Stop was over,?Mrs. G?went to read the new HP, and the men committed to Zombies!.

Our final layout

3/4 Perspective:

Saturday started with the realization that the nerd surface was useless in the dark Lan/Theater Area. It was switched with the Make Trax cabinet out in the analog room. I wonder why I hadn’t thought of that before.

Anyway, with that detail and some final cleaning up out of the way, I headed off to paintball, very late. I came back dirty, bruised and coppery with sweat. All I wanted to do was take a shower. I was thwarted by the first round of guests. All told, we had 35+ people in the bunker from 4pm to 3am.

boardgamegeek link:
http://www.boardgamegeek.com/game/10547

Synopsis
Betrayal at House on the Hill is unique in that it has two personalities. It starts as an exploration game with all players on the same side. “Exploring” is accomplished by building the house room by room as the tiles are drawn from the deck. However, after several turns the “haunt” begins, and all hell breaks loose. Depending on the circumstances at the time of haunting, one player becomes the Traitor, and must leave the room with the Traitors Tome. The remaining players stay with the Survivor’s Handbook. Once the appropriate scenario is read and understood, the players are reunited at the board, and the second phase begins with completely new goals.