Sunday, 28th August, 2022

My friend’s brother came to visit yesterday. We were trying to remember the last time we saw each other. We’ve spoken online since then but actually in person? It was before he was married, and they have four kids now, so a good 10 years, if not 20. Neither of us could remember.

Playing Magic the Gathering with them all last night. That was fun. There’s a new (well since I last played…also about 20 years ago) format called Commander which is a 100 card deck but you can only have 1 of each card. You also have a commander creature which can be played. It’s a fun format. You basically stick together a whole load of ridiculously powerful cards and just see what happens. It makes replaying it fun and your deck isn’t just a one trick wonder, trying to do the same thing each game. Every time someone casts something (we were playing 4 players), everyone reads it and goes “omg that’s insane”, think they’re going to die next turn, but then they cast something equally insane and so it continues. Also the 4-player nature of it means you’re not quite sure who to attack or not, and risk leaving yourself open.

My friend had a dinosaur deck, which means getting enormous creatures and making them even more enormous and overwhelming you. His wife’s was a green creature (also equally large creatures) rapid spawning deck to overwhelm you, their daughter’s was a controlling, interfering deck that would make everyone else fight each other, and make it annoying to attack her, and mine was a annoying, make you discard lots of cards and take damage because of it.

I ended up winning by a very tight margin at the end, was just their daughter and I left. I had a sneaky card that you didn’t notice how much damage you were taking from it, until someone did a board cleaner and wiped out so many creatures. It was fun, and not just because I won 😅

It reminded me how much I like complex games like Magic the Gathering. The specific wording of cards is important, properly managing each step and turn, and then remembering to do everything and use all the abilities - that last one is particularly fun when someone forgets to do one of theirs!

We also played a fun kids game called Machi Koro, which I’ve written down as I’ll never remember. Could be a good one for a Christmas present for ours.

Today I’m off to London, with the intention of visiting the Leica of Mayfair store, for “educational purposes”. The good thing about visiting there is that I’m never going to buy anything from there as they’re much more expensive than other camera stores (except brand new M11 - but that’s not even an option so I’m okay there!). Their used stuff is £500-£1000+ more than everywhere else so it would be silly. However, they have a lot, so depending on what I can do, I could have a play 😁.

Then off to the family party. I’m sure it’ll be fine, but I’d much rather stay here and play board games all evening. 🤓

Hopefully there are no more train strikes too.