Ben and Trish’s 10th Wedding Day Anniversary Staycation

So… sometime about ten years ago I got married and… ten is a nice round number but… well… I’m not made of money so we couldn’t take a cruise or anything… so we got my mom to take the kids and I took some days off work and my wife and I did a bunch of the things around town we don’t tend to do because of kids and work.

Day 0: Thursday January 15th
Mom wasn’t taking the kids until AFTER school but I took the day off anyways. My wife and I walked the kid’s to school and then continued to walk to one of our favourite places for breakfast, Gabriel’s Pizza (They make excellent pizza too… we just like their breakfasts), and both had eggs benedict with fruit and hash-browned potato chunks. It was delicious… well… a little heavy on the hollandaise and spinach for my taste but still very good.

Afterwards we shopped around for a bit and then bussed home and got Subway for lunch to eat while watching Netflix… started watching The IT Crowd. Hilarious.

Later, Trish walked back to the school to pick up the kids. I stayed home and played Hearthstone (because my mom was coming to pick up the kids and I needed to be home to let her in if she showed up early… which she did… I offered to pick them up myself but, having never done so before I guess she didn’t want to risk me forgetting a kid or something I guess.)

Friday was a PD day (for those from different parts of the world a “PD” day is “Professional Development” day when the kids have the day off while the teachers and staff have training to keep current etc.) so the kids being at grandma’s all day wasn’t an issue in that regard. Anyways, once grandma showed up we all packed up in the car so she could drop Trish and I at the theater and then bring the kids back to the Aviation museum.

We saw the The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 1 and I really enjoyed it. I think Trish may have found it slow until the last half hour or so… she hasn’t read the books and I have so it’s entirely possibly my opinion was biased by better knowing what was going on.

After the movie we were just a little hungry so we went to the WalMart McDonald’s for dinner…( this was a mistake because I was up half the night with what I am pretty sure is some kind of indigestion induced gallbladder thing… oddly enough I was totally fine the next morning.) We also bought big boxes of Cinnamon Toast Crunch and Lucky Charms so we wouldn’t have to wake up to make or bus to real breakfast the next day.

Day 1: Friday January 16th
Slept in to about nine and then ate sugar cereal while watching Netflix until it was time to leave for lunch. I realized at this point that we hadn’t taken any photo’s the previous day which I found to be an egregious faux-pas so we resolved to do better.

It wasn’t quite lunch time so we took a little detour to St Laurent Mall to visit Lush Cosmetics which is a “natural” cosmetic place… we got some bubble putty for the kids (it’s like playdough but made out of soap), the weird hair-soap Trish likes and a thing called a “bath bomb” which foams and fizzles while making the bath smell nice and presumably releasing some kind of natural stuff to make your skin feel nice.

For lunch we went to “The Loft: Board Game Lounge”. We kinda walked around in a circle because we didn’t know how the two streets with the same name lined up but it was nice enough so that’s fine.

The Loft is a pub with lots of board games and the tables have a second layer to hold stuff so it doesn’t spill on them (or to hold the board games while you are eating I guess). We got soup and sandwiches (I got tomato tortellini soup and a barbeque chicken grilled cheese sandwich. So GOOD!) and played some two player games. Namely: Jishaku for three rounds, Lost Cities for two rounds and we tried to play Labyrinth: The Card Game but foundthe “trying to get cards to line up” part extremely frustrating so stopped. The waiter/host guy at the place was very friendly and explained how to play each game and we chatted with him about the place. We definitely need to get back there for some time with a bigger group and more time to spend… maybe as neutral ground to meet up with some local “Internet friends”... they also have all the standard alcohols etc but I don’t drink so couldn’t comment on the selection. The board-game selection, however, is incredible. Also really well lit.

On the way to the next place we stopped at the new “Whole Foods”... aside from a very nice selection and lot’s of free samples we were generally underwhelmed. It might be a fancy grocery store but it’s still basically a grocery store. I picked up a new “heat bag” so that I could relieve my soreness tummy issues next time without borrowing Trish’s.

After that we had a reservation at “The Mud Oven” which is a place where you go and buy blank ceramic pieces and paint them up and they fire them. Trish painted a fox mug and I painted a salt and pepper shaker. We spent a little over 2 hours there but weren’t done by the time we were supposed to be at the next place so we scheduled another reservation for the following morning.

The next place was “The House of TARG” where I met up with my High School friend Gene and his lady friend. We got there around 5:30.

“The House of TARG” is basically a small club/concert venue/bar that distinguishes itself by having a massive collection of pinball machines and the best pierogies in town. The four of us split four large orders of twelve pierogies: traditional, mushroom, sauerkraut and kale served with seasoned sour cream, more sauerkraut, beet salad and topped with grilled onions and bacon. SOO GOOD!! Gene assured me that the beer was also good.


We played much pinball and many classic arcade games. There were a few “multi-game” machines with things like PacMan and DigDug but most arcade games cost 25 cents while the pinball machines were 1 game for 1 dollar, 3 games for 2 dollars. Off the top of my head there was a Doctor Who table that was pretty fun… the old Star Wars one and the Star Wars one with the video overlay… The Walking Dead one was cool… yeah… lot’s of fun. Didn’t get any high scores on pinball but I got one on a little racing wheel cabinet called Turbo (I assume it must reset regularly because the high score table was pretty empty). Generally we got the 3 plays for 2 Dollars and Trish and I would take turns and then whoever wasn’t taking the last turn would move on to the next machine to try.

We finished up before 8 because that was when the concert cover got charged and as much as I like folk rock… I didn’t like the idea of staying up for a concert that started after 9PM... someday maybe. We played a few more games and then headed across the road to Starbucks for something warm and non-caffeinated to keep us warm while we bussed home.

That night we were pretty drained so slept pretty well.

Day 2: Saturday January 17th
We didn’t have quite so many plans this day… breakfast was sugar cereal again and then off to The Mud Oven to finish our painting. Trish’s fox mug looks pretty good… I painted the salt shaker with a sea/sunset/lighthouse type deal and the pepper shaker with a phoenix… I am a little worried whether they are going to turn out like I imagined them but they should be cool enough either way. They will bake them in the kiln over the next week or so and we’ll pick them up next Sunday.

We decided to check out the Vietnamese restaurant that was nearby when we finished and I had a big bowl that was like a meaty vermicelli salad and Trish got a ginger/pineapple/beef thing.

After lunch we went to Tim Horton’s and got a half dozen doughnuts for dessert/snack later.

Then home for more Netflix, some napping and some reading of rulebook PDFs because we were headed over to a friend’s house for a nice big 6 player game of Fortune and Glory. Trish and I had played it once before and had spent half the game looking things up so figured we’d get ourselves set straight beforehand this time.

We had a great time for the most part and had some Gabriel’s Pizza (actually pizza this time… bacon and ham etc.) and some Soda Stream “Doctor Pepper Equivalent”. Then back home for me to spend the night sick from not eating properly. Oops.

Day 2+: Sunday January 18th
Being up all night slightly ill I distracted myself by playing video games… turns out I’m in Blizzard’s Heroes of the Storm beta and hadn’t noticed. So played that for the parts of the night when I wasn’t in too much pain or throwing up. Sunday morning I felt wrecked and slept in until 8:30 when grandma came with the kids and picked us up and took us to church.

But... all in all it was a great weekend. I wish we could figure out a way to do this kind of thing more often.

[Game Design] Skylanders Carpet Battle (Or, Benjie’s Toy War)

So, last night my daughter was at a friend's house after school so my five year old son was home... he wanted to play with daddy (requisite "but daddy isn't a toy" dad joke was made) and since we don't do "screen time" on weekdays that precluded his primary addictions for the most part… but he still wanted to “play Skylanders*” but had a vague, frenetic “pick them up and hit them into each other while yelling their names” concept of playing with the things.

In the back of my brain for some time I've been trying to come up with a game to play with the Skylanders figures… you know… kinda running in an idle process somewhere in my brain… and yesterday I just decided to wing it… these rules were modified slightly both during game play and after we finished so I’m presenting the rules as they stood after re-explaining them to his sister when she got home.

So, I present:

Skylanders Carpet Battle (Or, Benjie’s Toy War)

BIG UGLY FIRST DRAFT VERSION

Giant Figures are “Bosses” (I wanted to call them “Commanders” but the boy insisted on “Boss”)

Swap Force Figures are “Generals”

Normal Figures are “Normals”

Magic Items are “Items” … Items do thing... This was a fun creative exercise to come up with what they do based on what they look like and what they would do in game… I’ll provide a chart** of what we came up with for inspiration

From here forward I’ll use those terms… that way if you want to play this game with army men, ponies or action figures you just have to figure out which are which.

Every turn you have 5 action points.

Bosses cost 3 to move but any generals touching their base can move with them for free.

Generals cost 2 to move but any normal figures touching their base can move with them for free

Normals cost 1 to move.

A “move” is one index card length… you put the card down in front of the figure and then move the figure to the other side.

Each player chooses one Boss, Two Generals and 4 Normals to form their team and arrange them on one end of the room.

Spread out the “Magic Items” randomly around the middle of the room about halfway between the two teams.

You can pick up an item by moving your figure to touch it… items affect the figure carrying it but can be freely passed between grouped figures.

Bosses can carry 3 items, Generals can carry 2 items and Normals can carry 1 item (we decided on this rule after the boy attached all of the items to one normal which made him effectively invulnerable).

Combat:

If a figure is able to hit another figure*** the player can use an action to roll the appropriate die.

Bosses roll a d12 and require a 6 to be hit.

Generals roll a d8 and require a 5 to be hit

Normals roll a d6 and require a 4 to be hit

One hit knocks the figure prone. Two hits and the figure is removed from play. Rolling Twice the required number counts as two hits (so an 8 would eliminate a Normal and a 12 would eliminate a Boss)

If a figure starts it’s turn prone it can stand back up for 1 action.

The game is over when one team is entirely eliminated.

*(If you don’t know what Skylanders are you are a blessed person indeed… basic primer: it’s Action/Platformer except you get new characters by buying toys and then putting them on a USB “portal” that reads the toy and let’s you play with that character in the game… the toy also keeps track of experience and collected gold and levels up and can buy new skills and hats that grant stat bonuses… the salient detail here is that the boy owns about a hundred painted miniatures from the game https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=801-wgK06qc )

** Magic Items to Item Conversion Chart:

The Magic Items in Skylanders have bases like the rest of the figures so they can be knocked prone to signify they are exhausted for a period.

Things that look like they make you physically tougher (or grant a defence bonus in game)	+1 Defense Require the next higher number to hit the figure (aka 5 for Normals, 6 for Generals, 7 for Bosses)
Things that look like they make you magically tougher/more nimble (or freeze of slow enemies in game)	+1 Invulnerability Requires 1 more hit to eliminate that figure Once Per Turn ( first hit knocks this Item prone instead of the figure)
Things that look like weapons (or grant a attack bonus in game)	+1 Attack Add +1 to all of your attack rolls
Things that look like they make you go faster (or grant a speed bonus in game)	Once Per Turn you may move one card length and one card width ( first use knocks this Item prone so you remember)
Things that looks like portals, gates or teleporters	Once Per Turn Teleport one figure anywhere on the floor
Things that look like treasure (or the thing that let’s you find treasure in game)	You can pick up items that are within one card length instead of having base contact.
Things that looks like they control time (or freeze time in game)	Take one extra action per turn.
Things that look like potions (or heal you in game)	Once Per Turn, If a figure is eliminated it is restored to full health ( first use knocks this Item prone so you remember)
Things that look like vehicles	Once Per Turn, when you take a move action. Roll a D12. 1-6 move normally, 7-11 move twice, 12 move three times.

***(probably need real rule for this… because we played it “dad mode” I just agree with statements like “This one has a gun so he can shoot anything two cards away” or “This one has a magic wand so he can shoot any figures in a line (line of sight)”)