Memoirs of a Board Gamer

It's amazing the number of games you don't get to play during an entire weekend of gaming. Once you account for sleeping, meal preparation, cleanup, and socializing, you're left with a lot less time than you think you have. We had about thirty five games on hand and out of all of them I think the following games are the only ones that saw the table:

Kreta
Caylus (two plays)
Hive
Jericho (two plays)
Great Wall of China (two plays)
Taluva
Carolus Magnus
Fjords
Twilight Imperium 3rd Edition
Manila
Trias

I did get to play several of my newer games (Taluva & Trias), and one of my favorite games (Carolus Magnus), and I was very glad to have gotten in my first two games of Caylus. Even with only two plays, I can see why it's ranked so highly.

We started playing Twilight at 11:30pm Friday night (pretty stupid idea) and we didn't end until almost 9am. One guy fell asleep sitting up towards the end of the game. I'm not terribly fond of the game but in this situation it was a good time to devote a big block of time to it.

I had a great time and would do it again in a minute. This is the second 'retreat' my group has done but I'm still trying to figure out how best to get people to commit to attending. We had a large group all set to attend and then at the last minute many cancelled. We still had a quorum and had a great time but those that couldn't attend were truly missed.