New year's gaming galore

Dear Gaming Diary,

There was plenty of gaming during the holidays! Quick impressions, if you please:

- Betrayal at House on the Hill -- quite enjoyable tile-placing with a horror theme and role-playing aspects! We played a two-player variant with Satu and ended up with a Ouroboros scenario. Will definitely give it more tries!

- Alfapet (aka Scrabble) -- Played with Satu and my father and mother-in-law. This classic was more fun than I remembered!

- Samurai -- Reiner Knizia's game has intereseted me for a long time due to its theme, but now I finally got a chance to play it. It was more than ok, but sadly the theme was quite weakly implemented - only the board (with a map of Japan) reminded me that I was supposed to make decisions of a Samurai warlord.

- Pirate's Cove -- we played this over at Oxford with Heidi & Syksy after watching Pirates of the Caribbean on DVD. Easy to get into, nice board, little too much dice-rolling to my taste, but quite a good fellowship journey on the Caribbean seas.

- Modern Art -- at Oxford, again. I definitely like it - for once, something other to bid for than medieval barrels or other boring stuff ;)

- Scarab Lords -- tried to learn this under our hosts guidance. Quite sophisticated, I believe, but rather too strategic for my taste. Playing started to feel like working - too heavy on the challenge and problem-solving pleasures. Give me explosions!

- Fearsome Floors -- Had a go at this once, should've tried another time. The first effort was kinda grim as we misunderstood the monster's movement phase...we did get a decent game going on another try, though. Promising but I wasn't left with an urgent need to get it.

- Fluxx -- I've had this for some time, but finally we managed to play it. I liked it quite a lot: quick and fun emergent gaming!

- Carcassonne: The Count -- Mixed bag of feelings with this extension. I think it makes the game just a bit too complex for its own good, and also the game becomes nastier. Still, the tension remains to the last tile, as our session illustrated. Yet I don't think we'll give the Count many more chances.

I believe I remembered each and every one :) We did get the Da Vinci Code game for Christmas too, but did not get around to try it yet. When you consider the list above, I guess it's no wonder!