&games

... I was gaming under the midnight sun in Denali Nat'l Park.

The weather was warm. The river was cold. The kids had a blast. The gamers had even more fun.

Arrived Thursday afternoon. Left Sunday evening. Slept for a total of 9 hours. Played boardgames the rest of the time.

We had a mixture of Anchorage and Fairbanks gamers, although the Fairbanks contingent was disappointingly small. Not counting kids and spouses there were 7 adult gamers (and one teenager who participated in a couple games) for the entire weekend and two other gamers who were there for a day each.

Game designer Martin Wallace was the unexpected hero of the weekend. We played 3 seven-player games of Struggle of Empires (I participated in two), a couple games of Age of Steam, and a game of Brass. Great games, all. On Sunday afternoon there were 4 gamers remaining, and the call went out for another game of Brass, but one person was adamantly anti-Brass (even though he had never played), so, sadly, I was limited to one game of Brass. Instead of Brass, we played a second game of Hamburgum, which wasn't a bad second choice.

Took me an entire day to recover from the boardgame orgy.

Already planning for next year.