St. Patrick's Day Road Trip

Dan is the kind of person who gets excited at the prospect of thumbing through acres of old paperbacks, and so he decided to take a little trip up to the Marion/Cedar Rapids area on a used book quest. Also being this kind of person, I was excited to go along. So, this afternoon, Drew, Greg, Dan, and I converged at Dan's house, piled into Drew's car, and sped North to the land of 5 seasons.

Swamp Fox books in Marion was a bust, having apparently transmogrified into a bar at some point in the last few years. We turned around and headed back to the North side of CR, where we knew that the Book Trader and Half Price Books must be safeguarding some treasures for us.

Book Trader is small, dark, and not-so-handsome, but it does have several shelves of sci-fi/fantasy. Each of us picked up at least one book (I settled on "Inquisitor" by Ian Watson, the old GW sci-fi novel from their Warhammer 40K universe), and we headed off across the parking lot to HPB. I rummaged through the history and military history sections looking for "Broadsides" or any other Age of Sail book. Bust. I went through the graphic novels. Bust. In the RPG books, I found a cheap Earthdawn book. Score. I came up empty in Tim Powers, but selected books by Bradbury, Blaylock, and Asprin. I rounded out my trip with a Norwegian grammar text from 1970.

We motored over to a Chinese Buffet (Metro Buffet?) that Dan was kind of nuts about. Turns out, his insanity, in this instance, was justified. The place was a little too crowded, and, like most buffets, not all of the food looked great. I was thinking of the Peking Buffet by CHG, which really (for me) only has 2 really interesting dishes. This place came through on several levels. I really enjoyed the Black Pepper Chicken, and I had a hard time not going back for fourths on the Teryaki Steak. After filling ourselves to bursting, we made our way back to Coralville.

Lately, I've been in a mood to get away from Euros and roll some dice. To that end, I brought Wiz War, Kings & Thins, Lunatix Loop, and Warrior Knights with me. However, it was a little too late for any of these, so Dan grabbed Wizard's Quest, and we headed over to CHG.

I haven't played WQ before, and I definitely made mistakes this game. I was a little leary of this old Avalon Hill game, worrying that there would be too much die rolling, and too many random tangential effects. However, after a brief run through the rules, it was clear that the game was simple and quick, and would not have a massive amount of die rolling. The setup was pretty kind to Dan, as he ended up getting the city next to the tunnel. None of his treasures were in that bad of a position for him. Two of mine and of Drew's treasures got surrounded by orcs early. Drew got screwed by bad petitions in both of the first two turns, and then by the dragon. I don't think it was a very fun start for him, and he gets credit from me for making the best of it and sticking it out. I had a decent early start, but then got wrecked by a couple mistakes, notably leaving a big group of troops out without supporting them with the wizard, which would have made all the difference. Going into the late game, I had to make choices to go after my own thing or try to block Dan. It seemed he was going to win, so I opted to do the latter. Drew and I got closer while Dan got shut down, but it didn't last. Finally, he used some fortunate cards to swing the win, using boat privilege and two extra attacks to come from behind and win the game. Overall it was fun and simple and I'd be happy to play it again when the mood hits. I think it's very important, in this game, to maximize your initial setup, as future turns are not kind as far as redistributing forces goes.

Well, I'm fading fast, so I should shut this thing down. Looking bigtime forward to game night at Chris, edie, and Anna's house tomorrow.

GG, GL