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Finally had a day of FtF gaming on Sunday. It’s been about half a year, with half the time wasted to me procrastinating, and the other half with me having projects that either chewed up weekends, or I was afraid they would spill over into the weekend. The plan was for four people, but Jason didn’t make it (not sure why), so it was me, Dave, and Mark to try out a set of lighter games I got through a SJG Kickstarter around June.

First up was SPANC—Space Pirate Amazon Ninja Catgirl, which I’ve wanted to get ahold of for a while, and Dave has been really eager to get to try. Each player has a crew of… space pirate amazon ninja catgirls who go on capers to get loot and poolboys, with the first to a combination of ten of them winning.

It went a little long as far as I was concerned, but that would shake itself out with some more play. Certainly, the loot (and poolboys!—my crew had three for a brief time) piled up at a good clip after a slow start. It was an amusing game, as you try to match your crew’s skills (as space pirates, amazons, ninjas, and catgirls) against the challenges of the caper and be the first through. The rules cover if no crew can make it through, but that was not generally a problem, and there were a couple capers that we almost passed in the first go (on the other hand, there was a suspicious kid who nearly bested everyone).

My main problem was not having anyone on the crew with a good catgirl score, nor toys that could help. I was too slow to try and do something about that, and never did solve the weak point. Dave and Mark tied at 11 VP… and the rules just say to ‘play another caper’, without specifying if it’s a sudden death round between them, or if it’s just a normal round. We tried the latter, and Dave and I tied at the end of that. We called it there instead of an endless set of two-way ties, with Dave winning for being the only one at 11 both times.

After that was Wiz-War, in the new ninth(!) edition, the main point of the Kickstarter. We ended up going two rounds, which both went very quickly; not bad considering I haven’t played it in well over a quarter-century (poof! another hundred grey furs), and the others had never played it. I miss the old three-player setup (with the curved warp), but the production values on the new version are great, though the box is an inconvenient 11-inches square.

I had a fairly good hand in the first game, and kept getting number cards to move faster… but not fast enough. Dave managed to nab two treasures for a fast win. The second game didn’t go much better. I had some nice spells, but couldn’t get enough number cards, and could never get line of sight to use those spells. (At the end, I had the ability to kill either of the other two, thanks to depleted health, and good spells—if they didn’t get countered.)

Mark and I tried to corner Dave, but he rotated my sector, and traipsed back to his home base for his third win of the day.

That brought us just late enough that we couldn’t reliably get another game of anything in, so we talked a bit, and called it an early day. We’ll have to try out Greed Quest at some point, but both Wiz-War and SPANC were successes.