Cougar

How it started: TI:4.

How it ended.

For our third year in a row, we've played TI:4 on the 4th as a family tradition.

Our youngest (11) won with Cabal (red) with an early Rex rush and a plethora of secrets catching us off guard.

Before and after pics. #boardgames #ti4

Father's Day board gaming. We call this game, "Definitely Not Harry Potter"

But it's actually called Argent the Consortium. #boardgames

After a brief delay, back to our monthly in person Blood on the Clocktower night.

Good won all four games tonight, with some surprises along the way.

The best was when an evil Bishop traveled in, foiling the good Alchemist (with Fearmonger) being able to nom their target. (Boomdandy, lol)

My youngest on a lead climbing route at the local gym.

My youngest has started learning Lead Climbing. He hasn't really enjoyed Top Rope at the gym, and usually we can't pull him away from Bouldering.

He has really taken to it so far. Flashing 5.10d and 5.11a routes like he has been Lead Climbing this whole time.

#rockclimbing

An in progress shot of Shikoku 1889. Middle child running brown edged out the wife running Tosa Electric.

After owning this for about a year, we finally got Shikoku 1889 to the table.

This was my family's first foray into #18XX My middle child won, and only my youngest didn't have a great time (got boxed out due to a failure to sell the necessary private company in the NE due to unexpected rust)

Bouldering route. Specifically looking at the red dual textured holds.

Started this red V5 today. It has a nice heel hook to get to the top right most dual textured hold. I was able to static to the far left hold which helped.

I'm a V4 climber who flirts with 5's from time to time. It felt really good to start a new V5 and send it in one session. #bouldering

There was a Climb-a-thon at the local rock climbing gym yesterday. Did 35 top rope climbs in ~5 hours. Won first place in the intermediate category. (5.10a-5.11b as your hardest send)

Then went back after a three hour break to do some night climbing in the dark.

That was a lot of climbing.

Custom board gaming shelving.

Here is a better picture of my board gaming shelves at night.

~2000 individual leds controlled by two quinled controllers using WLED software. All hooked up to my smart home so they can turn on/off in response to various automation triggers (mostly sunrise/set/bedtime)

Thanks! It was a long process (~18mo) of design and building with a local carpenter. Then I had to learn all of the wiring needed for the lighting.

We wanted a centerpiece in our living room. Not just plain kallaxes.

Willing to part with pile.

Daytime isn't the best time to capture this, but it's what I had at the time. Much more space on the shelves, much less cluttered. Also just a different batch of games on display to celebrate and enjoy visually.

Wife and I did our yearly board game shelf reorganization. This year was the first time that we've pulled things down into a "willing to part with" pile as we are exceeding our space. Who knows if we'll actually part with any of this. But it's a good start.
#boardgames

I welcome a game with lots of pictures, charts, refs, and appendix to support their vision.

I'd rather the designers take the page space to document their game comprehensively.

These ambitious projects aren't going away (and we should celebrate, not deride that), so good docs are imperative.

Family board gaming stats for the year. We didn't play as much this year as years prior, but we were far more active with rock climbing and rehearsals.

We are still playing for a few hours yet tonight (geek holiday celebrations ftw), but the numbers won't meaningfully change.

#aeontrespass #botc

I found an .stl file on either Printables or Thingaverse. There is a good 3d printing community around ATO.

Layout for the tutorial battle of Cycle III with some custom 3d printed columns.

We restarted Aeon Trespass: Odyssey Cycle III today as is our now-tradition of spending our Winter Break playing as a family.

Cycle III beat us down hard last break, and we are out for revenge. Cycles IV and V await our triumph.
#boardgames