April 18: Thornwatch

 I spent most of the day on Sunday preparing to teach a new game to a group of my friends. It is called "Thornwatch" and it is a comic-book inspired game that has elements of a lot of different games, most notably Dungeons and Dragons (roleplaying, campaigns, and a dungeon master), Magic the Gathering (attacking, spells), Pandemic (cooperative style of playing), Pandemic Legacy (continuing story like campaigns, result of games affect future games), Dominion (playing cards for actions), Red Dragon Inn (different character boards with personalities), Scythe (attacking, character boards), Risk (rolling dice for attacks), Villainous (each character has their own deck and special abilities), and Wingspan (tucking cards). 

I took the role of the judge, like a dungeon master in D&D. I chose people's characters, character traits, and the story that we could go through. The game comes with like 15 different stories we could do, but it also leaves open the possibility to create your own (like D&D). I really enjoyed being the judge, because it totally played into my leader personality. (I also very much enjoyed teaching the game that played into my educator personality). 

A little bit of background: the Watchers of the Thorn (or the "Thornwatch") are heroes who are summoned by villagers in the Eyrewood when help is needed. All villagers have to do is tie a special knot of thorns around a birch tree and the Thornwatch are summoned. In the story I chose, a farmer and his wife summoned the Thornwatch because an evil creature from the wood kidnapped their baby. The Thornwatch (each of my 5 friends) had to work together to destroy the Splinterkin, spiders summoned by the evil creature (and controlled by me, the judge), in order to move on to find and to fight the evil creature itself and return the baby. We only got through scene one, the Thornwatch destroyed the spiders, but we didn't make it onto the next scene to rescue the baby. The game seems infinitely playable, with different people, different stories, different scenarios, with different results leading to different outcomes. 

I had a delightful time learning, teaching, and playing the game, and I hope that subsequent playings of the game are just as delightful.

With delight,

♥Jamie