Ludocracy Now

Jeff has turned on the movie Little Monsters (of which I have never heard.  How many movies has Fred Savage been in?  Why is Jeff so into Fred Savage?  These questions will probably not be answered in the following interview!) and agreed to appear as a guest star in a tumblr-based Interview.  Little does he know, there are two board games coming in the mail from Amazon today…

Joe: Jeff, Hello and welcome to Ludocracy Now!  Did you ever think you would appear in a blog about board games?

Jeff: No.

Joe: Ok…?  So, I want to get your opinion on some of the board games I own that you’ve played.  I wish I could remember them chronologically so we could do some type of narrative like the portrait of the boyfriend as a board gamer but we/I celebrated a little too hard last night and/also I haven’t kept track of my board game plays before May 7th.  AN-Y-WAY.   The game that started it all was Battlestar Galactica.  What do you remember of that initial foray into board gaming madness?

Jeff: I had had a very long day at work but had told you that I would play that game when I got home.  And I didn’t want to go back on my word.

Joe: You were miserable.

Jeff: It was a miserable experience.  And if you thought that I seemed disinterested in playing—it was worse.  I was just putting on a nice face for Annie.

Joe: Let’s see, what else have we played?

Jeff: We played Dominion, remember?We first played this on April 3rd.  I remember, because it was my last day before I went back to work after my week off, and I was feeling sick that day but we ended up playing 4 hours on Sunday evening.  And I enjoyed it.  We’ve since played it several times and I think we’re pretty even—you have a 52% winning average, right babe? I’m personally thrilled or impressed that you invested all that time and money in getting all those card covers even though you’re kind of “over” Dominion.

Jeff takes phone call from his sister and niece and nephews singing him happy birthday

Joe: Ok, so, yeah I am kinda over Dominion, but I like that you like it.  Another game you said you liked was Campaign Manager 2008.

Jeff: I like it because I won.  I did know a lot about that election cycle.  It was kind of a silly game, and it didn’t really have anything to do with the actual campaign but that was the guise under which we played a game.

Joe: And Founding Fathers, that wasn’t too bad, outside of Scyler taking forever.

Jeff: I think that the picture of me in that, says it all.  I felt bad, at the end of that game I was just trying to lose.

Joe: But I thought you said you liked that game?

Jeff: I didn’t hate it, I didn’t dislike it, but at the end of that particular session I said “This needs to end.”  We also played that game with the, the trolls and stuff.  You and Annie played that a bunch—Manoeuvre?

Joe: No, that’s Small World.

Jeff: Didn’t I win Small World?  I think I did win.

Joe: I don’t think you did, babe.

Jeff: Wasn’t there one that I won?

Joe: That was Manoeuver.

Jeff: What’s Manoeuvre?  Joe, What’s Manoeuvre?

I am trying to catch up with the typing.

Joe: Manoeuvre is with the different nations on like a chess board.

Jeff: Oh, God.  That game?  I had no idea what I was doing.  I feel like I won completely by chance.  So that’s like the most expensive version of Candy Land you own.

Joe: Hilarious.  Remember playing the game…

Jeff: We also played Ticket to Ride!  Isn’t that the Scandinavian one?  We’ve played it a couple times… it was fun.  A couple times was enough.

Joe: I was actually thinking of Race for the Galaxy.  Do you remember that one?

Jeff: I don’t think I played that one.

Joe: To be fair, you might have wiped that from your memory.

Jeff: Like a traumatic experience from my childhood that I don’t remember at all.  God, I have played a lot of games.

Joe: We also played Pandemic with Jacob.

Jeff: Oh yeah, that was like a team thing?  I remember being surprised how into it you guys were.  I enjoyed that it was a team effort so I didn’t have to create my own strategy.  That was fun to do, I guess.  I don’t know.

Joe: And Cribbage which doesn’t really count as a special nerd game.

Jeff:  Cribbage is fun, but only if we are watching a Meryl Streep movie with the directors commentary with some Meryl hyperbole.

Joe: You got two 20 point hands in a single game yesterday.  There is an inordinate amount of skunking when we play Cribbage.  What would you say your favorite board game is?

Jeff: Dominion.  I like the pace of it, usually.  There’s like actual action which keeps me interested.

Joe: Is there a game I have that you haven’t played that you think looks interesting?

Jeff: Well, I feel like I haven’t seen a bunch of them because you hide them right away.  If I looked under the bed…  To answer you question, simply: No.  I’m just not enticed by those types of games.  And I’m not a huge board game person anyway.

Joe: What is something that makes you like a board game?

Jeff: I’d like it to be a little more passive.  Like, Trivial Pursuit, they come to me with the questions, I don’t have to formulate my own strategy.  Where there’s not a lot of chance to things.

Joe: So, you don’t like games with strategy.

Jeff: Yeah, I feel like they take too long.  Maybe if I had more time on my hands.

Joe: So you don’t like strategy and you don’t like games with chance.

Jeff: I guess.

Joe: Well, I guess you’re just not a board gamer.

Jeff: Is that blasphemy for a Ludocrat?  Happy birthday, Me.