Are you a nerd? Do you love board games, strategy games, social games, games of skill, games of chance, drinking too much, watching your friends drink too much, or getting injured? Then you would love Nerdstock. Now in its fourth year, this Mecca for local game geeks has inexplicably and accidentally moved away from roman numerals and gone with tally marks. Next year I expect we will see a diagonal slash through those four vertical lines, except where is the font for that?
My job, as usual, was to bring dessert. And I had a great plan for making some very detailed zombie cookies. The only problem was, I was off by two hours in regards to our departure time. I was just starting to frost the cookies when I got the call asking where I was. Whoops. So the zombies didn’t all get faces, and they didn’t all get shirts, and they didn’t all get pants, and none of them got the little details I was going to add. Luckily they were delicious, so nobody complained too much.
Actually I think the half finished look is appropriate for zombies.
Every year at a Nerdstock, the formula is tweaked just a little bit in an attempt to get it just right. This time I think we did it. There were plenty of tournaments and games, with some fine scheduling, but also with just the right amount of flexibility in terms of what we were doing. Sure, sometimes we didn’t eat lunch until 3 PM, but there were board games to be played!
I was the first one onto the tournament board, with the win at Dominion. Actually, I had a statistically unlikely bit of luck this past weekend. I beat the odds and one way more often than I should have. I actually managed to get into the finals in every tournament, except obviously corn hole, because that involves actual physical skill.
First blood is MIIIIINE!
No one was more surprised than I was, when I was the last man standing in our Avalon tournament. This netted me the king bed for the night, which was awesome. And it was doubly awesome because last year I lost every single game of Avalon that I played. I guess I was saving all of my wins for this year.
Sittin’ on top o’ the world!
Lest you think it was all just table-top nerdary, we also played some two hand touch football outside. It was during this brief hour that the majority of us were injured. I was knocked flat on my back with an open hand punch to the face, while others received twisted ankles, footballs in the eye, possible rib separations, and other exciting and manly wounds. Most of this was caught on video for legal purposes, but I don’t have access to that footage right now. It’s in the hands of the lawyer.
Did I mention that we all got matching orange shirts? And did I mention that we were nerds?
Over the course of 48 hours, I played Dominion, Avalon, Coup, Ticket to Ride, Sentinels of the Multiverse, Mysterium, Say Anything, Cards Against Humanity, Spyfall, Codenames, Pandemic, and 7 Wonders, the last of which I won in the final tournament round, to become the ultimate champion of the weekend. Like I said, it was a good weekend for me.
Nerds don’t like having their pictures taken
To keep the king bed for the second night, I was going to have to win the final social games tournament, which culminated in a round of Spyfall. But I did not win. That game has some scoring issues I think. anyway, my magnificent brother-in-law, Cave Dain, was the eventual winner. But since he has his own room in the house anyway, he decided to award the bed to someone else. And because he is the best person ever on earth, he decided to let me keep it. Everyone else involved was very very excited about this decision and supported him unequivocably. At least that’s how I remember it.
Look how smart Cave looks! He is the best!
Most of them probably won’t remember anything about it anyway. After several growlers of IPA and an entire bottle of Fireball whiskey, i’m assuming that none of them really remember who won anyway. Let’s just pretend it was me.
Inappropriate games with the Wrookie
So I walked away a winner. No, my team didn’t win trivia, even though we really should have. But that’s OK, we won football, even though we really shouldn’t have. And really, anybody who gets to spend two days in the mountains playing and having fun with this group of guys has already won anyway. Can’t wait for next year! (which will hopefully fall on daylight savings weekend again, so that I can get one more hour of sleep in before I have to get up super early and drive home to church)
Candid shot of Kylo Ren and Jonny (G)enius