This past week we celebrated my husband’s birthday by taking a few days off from work.  One of the things we have wanted to do for some time is to have a game night.

We recently bought a game called Arkham Horror… it is based on H.P. Lovecraft mythos, as in Call of Cthulhu.  It is a cooperative game, wherein, it is the players against the game itself.

Now I’ve always prided myself on the fact that I could digest and explain game rules and game play fairly quickly so that we can start playing.  I have to say that my ego was a bit bruised when it took me a few days to digest the rules.

This game is the most complex game I’ve ever encountered.  I still feel like I need to have the rules right in front of me during play.  That’s not to say that the game is difficult (although I suspect that the game will win more times than we will), it is just really involved with all the decks of cards and all the steps that you take during a turn.  It is really rather fascinating how the game creator has made such an involved game that guarantees that each time you play it will be different.

We started playing yesterday and had to quit for the night, hoping to return to it this evening after work.

I decided to take the opportunity to do some tabletop photography using natural light.  Enjoy…

The game taking over the table…

The ancient one… aka the big bad we will have to defeat.  We are already 4/10 doom tokens away from waking him… eep…

The terror track… luckily we are still at zero…

The monster cup… all the monsters that might appear on the board that we will have to defeat…

My player…

My player on the board… notice that there are two open gates both with monsters guarding them…

His player…

His player on the board… another open gate…

I have managed to defeat two monsters…

He has managed to close and seal a gate…

We have a way to go before we can ‘win’ the game… but I look forward to continuing this game tonight and will definitely play it again in the future.

If you are looking for a complex (cooperative) game for 1-8 players Arkham Horror might be the game for you. 🙂

Photographically speaking…

I used a Canon Rebel T2i with an EF17-40mm f/4 L USM lens.  The sunlight was coming in through a window and a sliding glass door.  The glare from the board was best avoided by having the sunlight at my back or just over my left shoulder.  All photos were taken handheld at 1/40 sec, f/8.0, auto ISO (ranging from 400-800… max set to 800).

I liked the photos that had unique perspectives and tried various angles with each shot.  I kept in mind what I was trying to highlight with each photo as I was taking it.  My favorite photos are the ones where you can see stacks of cards or dice in the background and are closeup — obviously, since I like macro/closeup photography.

Until next time…
~nic