Time for more savory snacks! We had 8 people at this particular game evening, so a great opportunity to split into two groups of four and knock out a play on our 10×10, and teach several people one of our newer games. Read on!

At a Glance…

Spring Rolls & Satay

As much as I like them, I’ve surprisingly never made spring rolls, I don’t think. I looked at a lot of recipes and ended up going with this one from Minimalist Baker, but using this peanut sauce. I didn’t want to mess with noodles, so I did the tofu and veggies. The tofu had potential, but I think my pan needed more oil or I should’ve just baked it, cause the crispy coating kinda stuck to my pan. The first couple were a bit hard to wrap since I filled them to full, and they kinda stuck to each other on the plate, but they tasted good and the peanut sauce was great! We had a ton of leftover sauce that I’m still debating what I want to do with.

Satay

The satay was awesome! (As I was writing this I was like, what exactly is satay? According to google/wikipedia, “Satay is a popular Southeast Asian dish made of small, seasoned pieces of meat, seafood, or vegetables placed on thin sticks and grilled over a fire. It is usually served with a rich, savory peanut dipping sauce, cucumber slices, and rice cakes.”) Obviously I used tempeh instead of meat or seafood. Jon was worried it was just going to taste like hunks of tempeh, but the boiling helped, as did the marinating and glaze/sauce. I definitely did not have time to marinate longer than 2 hours, so it might be even better after sitting longer. This was pretty tasty!

Sojourning

The Hobbit is one of our newer games, picked up for us by my brother from a game store in Portland when he met us at my parent’s place (eastern Washington) in June. It’s a roll and write, with 8 different missions/scenarios. I was a little nervous, because I’m great at tetris/polyomino games and filling areas using those shapes, but I struggle with line drawing games (like Railroad Ink) for some reason. This was not nearly as tricky for me as Railroad Ink though, and I’ve enjoyed the first 3 scenarios we’ve done! One thing I particularly love about it is that I usually don’t like to be rushed, and a couple of scenarios have actually rewarded you for taking your time to take out baddies like trolls. You get things like swords, bread, and the lines needed to get where you’re going. This one has a lot of potential, and I’ll be curious to see where it goes! (Pun intended haha)

Explorers of Navoria

Explorers of Navoria is relatively new for us ( I think we’ve had it about a year or so), and we’ve been loving it! I love the bright cheerful artwork and the unique game play. It’s played in 3 rounds, and each round has 4 phases of recruiting cards, gathering resources, scoring, and resetting things. It’s a relatively simple game, but one of the hardest things to wrap your mind around is that you’re creating most of your own scoring conditions. The cards you pick up will often have ways to score that are unique to you, so once you start getting those, then you can really hone in on your strategy. Broadly though, you want to put out huts in each of the three areas, move as far as you can on each track, and complete orders. The expansion, playmat, and upgraded bits are delightful, and I’m super excited to be playing this more for our 10×10 this year. I can’t wait to see what the new expansion will have that’s coming to kickstarter soon!

Want to buy these games? Check out your friendly local game store (FLGS), Amazon [here], or get a first-order discount at Board Game bliss [here].