Look Out! A Flyin’ Goblin!

We first played Flyin’ Goblin back in January, the day it was gifted to Mom, and we’ve played it many times since. This is mainly because there are catapults involved.

Yes, you heard that right. Catapults! The “Flyin'” part of Flyin’ Goblin is quite literal; gameplay involves launching your Goblin meeples into the castle so they can pillage the Rooms they land in. Coins are used to recruit more to the cause, be they more soldiers to fling, the Captain, to fling with doubled effects, or Robbers, who chill on Roofs and burgle a Diamond a turn. Diamonds are one of the victory conditions; your other option is to build all tiers of the Totem without your opponents knocking it down. (The Totem also sits on a rooftop, and costs Coins to build.)

The actual catapulting is a mix of accuracy and speed – you want to land in specific Rooms, certainly, but you also want to launch all your Goblins! Everyone starts this step at the same time, and continue at their own pace until all but one player have called out “Finished!” The last player then gets one more launch.

Alongside resource Rooms, there are a couple that have penalties, and several that simply have effects. Whether they’re good or bad depends entirely on what you were looking for! They are not, however, optional. If you land in the Pantry and you have two Coins, you must trade them for two Diamonds.

The “honeypot” of the arrangement is the King’s Bedchambers, which give you three Diamonds for landing there. If you gained the Balcony by knocking the King off it (not visible in my pictures, as the King has already been displaced and given his consolation prize of a lower Roof; at the beginning of the game, the Balcony balances over the top of his Bedchambers) you get five instead! Knocking the King down from his lower Roof will also gain you the Balcony, later in the game, but now you’re just bullying the poor guy.

If you’re not familiar with the serotonin rush of flinging little game pieces at the board for points, I highly recommend it. Good for the soul. Try not to hit the other players, though!

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A Day At The Fair

Scarf-N-Barf is a vomit-humored game from Steve Jackson Games, and both very simple and very quick. It’s exactly what it says on the tin; you’re going to (in card game manner, thankfully) eat lots of junk food, then go on crazy rides and try not to hurl.

For breakfast, lunch, and dinner each – you’ve spent all day doing this, vomit not deterring you – you’ll pick three of the six cards you’ve been dealt, representing the food you eat. Some of these sound really good: Cheese Curds! Some do not, like the Chowder Pop. All foods have a color-number combo associated with them; the more points its worth, the more of these criteria they have. After everyone has picked their meals, three Rides are dealt (with names like “Tilt-A-Hurl” and “Hork-A-Tron”) which all players will suffer together. One Ride at a time, the corresponding color dice will be rolled, and any food items that match both the color of the die and the number rolled are lost; you throw up straight into the discard. Any foods that survive all three Rides are successfully digested. At the end of the day, the player who’s retained the highest point value wins!

This is one of those games that’s about luck in a variety of ways. The cards you’re given. The dice indicated by the Ride cards. The way you actually roll. Doubles on your cards are a pain; doubles on your dice are a gift. There are several ways to strategize and none of them are guaranteed to work. The chaos is palpable. And your actual stomach’s contents are safe, unless the concept (or the cards) makes you queasy.

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The Owl-venture Continues

I love The Owl House, so I was delighted to discover the top-tier fan comic by MoringMark on Tumblr! They post regularly, with multiple ongoing plotlines and standalones set before, during, and after the show, and it’s been fantastic for getting my fandom fix. They seem to have captured the whole essence of the show in the very best way!

Note: There are, unsurprisingly, spoilers for the canon material. If you haven’t seen it yet, you have been warned.

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Detective Holmes… the Cat

That’s right! The cat, the myth, the legend: Purrrlock Holmes! Purrrlock Holmes: Furriarty’s Trail is, you’ll surely have deduced, a deductive reasoning game. The goal is to work together to catch Furriarty before he can escape London, while simultaneously competing to be the best Inspector!

It comes down to a lot of smaller cases, like pulling threads. Each player has an Investigation, stood facing away from them so only their opponents can see. This card, like all the rest, features one of five characters, and one of twelve times. The goal is to guess one or both correctly. Not without evidence, of course! Each turn, you’ll Investigate two cards from your hand, revealing them to the other players, who will tell you if each is a Lead or Dead End. A Lead is a card that has the same Suspect, same Hour, or an adjacent Hour to your Investigation. You also draw and Investigate two cards when you draw a new Investigation, so you always have something to work with!

You may guess once per turn; if you’re right, you take tokens from Furriarty’s trail equal to the aspects you deduced and place them on the Investigation, discarding the Leads and Dead Ends. Note that if you guess both, you must get both right; otherwise, you’re incorrect, and your opponents are disallowed to tell you why. If you guess incorrectly, the Investigation stays open, and you draw no cards this turn. Usually, you end your turn by passing your two remaining cards, then drawing two new ones; instead, you’ll have no choice but to Investigate the cards you’re given next turn. This isn’t always the worst thing – I’ve found that if you’re down to two times and you know the suspect, or vice versa, it’s often worth taking the guess and, if necessary, taking next turn’s guess before you Investigate.

The goal, ultimately, is to catch Furriarty, who functions like a token and moves one spot forward each time everyone’s had a turn, revealing the token he passed. Furriarty is worth three points, while the other tokens range from one to three. Once closing an Investigation snags him, the game is over, and whoever has the most points is Scotland Pound Chief Inspector! If Furriarty reaches the end of the trail, though, and one last round isn’t enough to catch up, Furriarty escapes, everyone loses, and the player with the least points is… Litter Box Inspector. *shudder*

The timing is well-balanced, so it tends to be pretty close. You can call on Holmes for help, once per game, to take an extra guess and a one point penalty. Absolutely worth it, to not get stuck on box duty. And to catch that crook!

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Spring…?

It’s been unusually warm for “winter” these last couple weeks, in between drops below freezing. I very excitedly went to curate a plant photos post accordingly, and realized I focused all my pictures on the same plant, so I’ve expanded the criteria to “green things,” featuring: purple crocuses, pea soup, and Ramen Fury! (There are vegetable cards, it counts.)

A cluster of five purple crocuses grows in mulch, with striking orange stamens just visible in their centers. Their grass-like leaves are dark green and have light green stripes, qualifying them for this post.
A bowl with a leopard-print rim holds a thick, pea-green soup with diced tofu, darker on the crispy sides, and almond slivers. Given the nature of the soup, this has no trouble qualifying as a green photo.
A worn wooden game board features a deck, a face-up selection of vegetable, protein, and flavor cards, and one player's "bowls of ramen." One has a red protein card, one only has nori garnish, and the third has nori and two chili peppers. While the sole vegetable card and nori garnishes do have green on them, calling this a "green photo" is a stretch.
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Cosley Zoo

Chicago’s west suburbs have the privilege of several good zoos, and one of them is Cosley! We went recently to see their coyote, Wiley, who’s in full winter poof. Consequently, photos! Not just of Wiley.

Wiley, very fluffy for the winter, giving the impression of looking over the top of his glasses despite not wearing any.
A deer, sitting loaf-style on the ground in a way that reminds me of my cats. Watching the camera with much less side-eye energy than Wiley.
Lynxes! Two of them. The one in back is upright and, like Wiley, looking down whilst glaring up at the camera. The one in front is happily lounging in the sun and ignoring the camera in favor of licking its massive paws.
This duck looks like the Aflac mascot with an afro. White bird, orange beak and feet, and this big white poof of feathers on the top and back of its head. It stands on shore, posing for the camera, while mallards swim in the background.

A lot of Cosley’s critters are native to right here in Illinois, which has characterized it for me as the most domestic of our local zoos. There’s something to be said for bigger zoos like Brookfield, certainly, with species from all over the world, and something to be said for ones like Cosley, which taught me a lot about the animals right here. I love that we have both! (Also Phillips Park, which falls somewhere between the two… but that’s a post for another time.)

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