Just about two weeks ago we participated in the Extra Life Game Day! This organization raises money for the Children’s Miracle Network through video gaming and table top gaming all year round, but the have a special event every year in which they ask gamers to have a 24 hour marathon of gaming. This year, we participated by having our own!

We asked Dicey Business to host our event, and they agreed to stay open for the full 24 hours (which was really 25 hours with the daylight savings time). So we put the word out, gathered some friends, and played games to raise money for Toronto’s Sick Kids Hospital. We set up our team website and got to playing.

 

Starting at 9am on Saturday, November 2nd, we got out Boggle first.

We followed this with Smart Ass,

 

and Geek Out.

 

One of our guests brought along a game called Era of Kingdoms that he wanted to try with us, so we gave it a go. It was quite a bit of fun! You gain cards to place in your kingdom, such as buildings and people, who then give more resources that you can use to purchase more things for your kingdom. It reminded me a bit of both Dominion and 7 Wonders for its building qualities, but with a cool board to place your buildings. You have limited space, so you need to choose and place wisely to get what you think you’ll need.

 

After this, we decided to get into a longer game, since we had the time. While Bill talked with other patrons and showed them Mathemagician’s Duel and Sinoda, I got into a game of Britannia. We had only previously played the shorter version, but thought today we could to the full game. What the heck… we had 24 hours!

 

We set up and prepared for a thousand years of conflict in Britain. I got to be the Welsh and Caledonians, which was cool.

 

Six hours and one thousand years later, the Welsh still existed! But, they didn’t hold as much territory. The Saxons and Normans had fought each other until there were very few of either left, and the Caledonians were all gone.

Sticking with the “fighting in Britain” theme, we played 878 – Vikings: Invasions of England by Academy Games. The system was similar to the games in their “Birth of a nation” series, 1754: The French and Indian War, and 1812: Invasion of Canada, which I have previously played (and written about). So we picked it up pretty quickly. The differences were cool, though and gave the game its own unique flavour, even though the core mechanics were similar. Also, I love that the board was labeled in Old English!

 

It was pretty late by this time, so many of our guests had to leave. My son and I stuck around for more games, and to be honest with you, I can’t remember what order we played them all in, so I’ll just list them.

We played Memoir ’44! I hadn’t played this before, although I have played Command and Colours, which uses a similar system of playing cards to determine which section of the board you can use and attack with.

 

 

We also played Battle Line:

 

This is a set collection game in which you try to play different combinations of cards at different parts of the battle line. Certain types of sets beat others. If your set is a higher hand, you’ve pushed back that part of the line. The player who wins either five spots on the line, or three adjacent spots on the line, wins. There are tactics cards that you can pick instead of number cards, but my brain wasn’t doing well at keeping track of how the tactics modified the spots they were played. It works well without them, and it probably works well with them if you haven’t been up for 17 hours before trying to figure it out.

 

We played Innsmouth Escape:

 

 

We played Zertz, an abstract strategy game in which you place marbles on rings then collect them by removing the rings to isolate them.

I tried making a 3-Dimension version. It didn’t work out too well.

 

We played Stone Age, which I hadn’t played in quite some time, so was at a disadvantage, because I’d forgotten the strategies. In the end it was over 100 points of disadvantage, because I lost by that much. I did, however, get hot chocolate in a Funky Monkey mug!

 

When I first played this next game, it was a Korean game called Toc Toc Woodman. This version is called Click Clack Lumberjack, and has extra rules like different points for the different colours of bark, and the pieces of bark with grub stickers on the inside. We ignored the extra rules and played it the way we remembered. Hit the sections of tree trunk to know off just the bark pieces which are worth one point each. Knocking of a core section is negative 5 points. Interestingly, the axe it comes with has the words “Toc Toc Woodman” on it.

 

This is how amazing Connor is at this game:

Not really at all. I won by a lot.

As the sun came up and it was getting close to the end of our day, we played Hungry Hungry Hippos, but I didn’t get a picture of that. Since there were two of us, we modified the rules (because that’s what I do; I make games). We each played one hippo but at 90° to each other, holding the other hippos’ mouth open. The object of the game now was to score points by pushing the marbles into the mouth of the hippo directly across from you. Any that you ate with your hippo scored as a point against you. We  played that a few times.

Then, the last game, as 8:45am rolled around was Hi-Ho Cherry-O! We have this game at home, and in fact, it was one of Conn’r’s favourites when he was a toddler. In this game, you spin the spinner to see how many cherries you can take from the tree and add to your bucket. But, you might spin and get the bird, which means you lose a cherry, or maybe you’s get the “spilled bucket” result and have to put them all back. This helped Connor with his early counting skills when he was about 2 or 3 years old. By the age of 6, he could multiply in his head. Oh nostalgia! He’s now 22.

 

And that was the end of our adventure. It was time to go home.

I should mention that Larry came by to show his game Camelot 101, which is a 4- way chess variant. Thank you Larry for your support!

 

At the beginning, having not done this event before, I set an ambitious goal of raising $1000. Dicey Business pledged to donate half of all the playing fees they collected from patrons that day. Altogether, we raised almost $550 USD for Sick Kids Hospital. It turns out though, that our team page lasts until the end of the year! So if you still want to donate, the page is still up and running, and totals will continue to be totaled until December 31st! Check it out: www.extra-life.org/team/48409

We will definitely be doing this again next year, so look out for the announcements so you can join us!

Thanks to everyone who stopped by, and thanks to all of you who stayed to read this through to the end!

Keep checking here and our news page; we’re expecting some exciting news and updates soon!