Extra Life Charity Challenge Penultimate Update!

We are in the home stretch of our Extra Life Charity challenge!  So far Rachel and I have raised $450 of our $500 goal in support of Sick Kids hospital.  If you would like to donate there’s still time to do so here.

This is our penultimate update!  Rachel has already won the Bowsullivan Cup, our family board game trophy by winning 3 out of the 4 weeks played so far.  I still can win the most games in the month and that quest will be the focus of today’s update.  Let’s get to it.

Week 4 – Night 5

Now that the pressure is off and we’re playing for fun I decided to choose a game we have never played before but I’ve owned and wanted to get to the table for quite some time.  Hero Realms!  Hero Realms is a deck building game where you build an army with the goal of killing your opponent and their army.  There’s several factions that allow you to build synergies between your cards, some focus on healing, some on doing damage, etc.  For a full break down visit this Geek and Sundry video.

We played a best of three.  Rachel managed to destroy me in the first game.  She built to a really big burst turn and managed to do a huge amount of damage to me in one turn.  Game Two I was more aware of how much time you have (the game is a balance between building your deck and going after your opponent) and managed to just barely squeak out a win.  In Game Three we had a really tense back and fourth but I managed to pull off the win!  At least I managed to finish week 4 on a high note.

Week 5 – Night 1

As I won last night Rachel gets to pick the game and she’s feeling confident.  She’s got the trophy in hand so she’s going to showboat a bit.  She’s selected Onitama, a more accessible version of chess and a game where there’s no clear person with an edge in our house.  In Onitama you have four pawns and a king.  There’s 5 movement cards that define the way any of your dudes can move, each player has two.  Once you play a movement card you take the one from the middle and the one you just played goes in the middle and is now accessible by your opponent.  It’s a brilliant back and fourth and highly strategic.  You win the game by defeating your opponents King or moving your King on to your opponent’s throne.  For a full breakdown of the game you can view this video here.

In a best of three I managed to take the first round by getting killing Rachel’s King.  We both played very aggressive and I managed to corner her.  Rachel managed to come back in Game Two with a solid check mate.  In Game Three it was really close.  I managed to get my King on to Rachel’s throne a single turn before she would have done the same.  Close as you can get.

Week 5 – Night 2

After a very thinky Night 1 Rachel decided to swing the difficulty pendulum in another direction by picking NMBR9, a stacking puzzle game.  In NMBR9 players draw a card with a number between 0 and 9 and then take a corresponding piece and build a little puzzle.  Tiles placed on the bottom level are worth 0 points, and then as you go up its the level number times the number on the tile.  I’ve done a horrible job explaining it (its highly visual) so check out this episode of Game Night that explains it much better.

I have a confession to make up front.  I’m shit at this game.  And boy did it play out that way.  Rachel took Game One 60 to 51.  We both kind of stunk it out in Game Two and Rachel won 56-40.  With this win in the bag for Rachel I can no longer lose a game or I can no longer win the most games in the month.  It’s the last thing I can win, a consolation prize so I’m going to go hard in Night 3!

Week 5 – Night 3

Alright.  I can’t lose, this one is important.  So I decided to pick our old standard: 7 Wonders Duel.  7 Wonders Duel is the two player version of 7 Wonders and if you remember last year this was our favourite game (still is) and we played it a few times during the competition last year.  Somehow we’ve managed to go the whole month without pulling this out.

7 Wonders Duel is a game where you draft cards from the board to build your civilization.  There’s various types of cards: resources to build more things, commerce to grow your wealth, science to advance your civilization and war to take down your opponents in military victory.  For an example of how the game goes, check out this Yogscast video.

In Age 1 Rachel managed to take all of the resources cards and dabbled in science.  I was very commerce and society focused.  So far, so fairly normal for us.  In Age 2 there was a made rush to build our wonders and there was a solid back and fourth.  I probably had more points but Rachel had so many resources and the ability to control the game.

In Age 3 there was some very intense turns trying to solve which paths would result in the most points.  In doing all of that math I took my eye off the ball and in the very very last turn of the game Rachel managed to push the military track to its conclusion and she automatically won a military victory.  We did count up the score and Rachel won 71 to 63.  So no matter how it went down Rachel won a very solid victory.

And so with that I’m mathematically eliminated from my consolation prize of winning the most games in the month!  Congrats to Rachel for closing out a very well played month of games.

With that we have two Game Nights to go and we’ll be back with that blog post in a day or so to wrap things up.

Thank you all again for following along, your support through this challenge has been very much appreciated!