Full and fun day yesterday!

Went to Fre­mont to pick up a new hood for the car. It’s scooped and I feel extra ricey now:

(That’s not my car, but same thing. Hard to believe that was stock on a ’97 Outback.)

Then I picked up Joe M from San Jose and we went down to Santa Cruz for some board games with Aaron L and Sue L.

Learned Agri­cola, which was a lot of fun. It’s very com­plex — here’s a thirty minute intro video:

The four of us were all strug­gling in our first game, but you could see some strat­egy coa­lesc­ing in the sec­ond game. I’d describe it as sim­i­lar in mechan­ics to Puerto Rico, but the vari­a­tion gives it a lot more in the fun-​factor depart­ment than PR, which I always felt was too stiff. We were only play­ing with the Easy deck, but I’m pretty eager to get a cou­ple more games in at that level before we move on to Inter­ac­tive or Complex.

We also did a cou­ple of games of For­bid­den Island after din­ner. I’ve been describ­ing this game as Pan­demic Light. It’s by the same designer, and has almost exactly the same mechan­ics, but it’s faster and pos­si­bly more sus­pense­ful even if it does seem easier.

We really need to get a reg­u­lar games night going again!

Any­way, dropped Joe M off in San Jose (after some excit­ing dri­ving by yours truly on 17) and picked up some La Vic’s for today before com­ing back to SF and pass­ing out.