We’ve been doing a family game night where my boyfriend and myself, my son, my daughter and her family all get together to play board games once or twice a week. We recently finished an epic, year-long Gloomhaven campaign. If you have been following my Instagram, you’re probably really familiar with our game nights…
That all ended when the pandemic struck. We haven’t had a game night with more than just us three since March.
Wednesday, the governor relaxed slightly the “stay home, stay safe” rule, and allowed family gatherings of no more than five people. So we couldn’t go over to my daughter’s house, but she could come here.
For the first time in several months — Game Night was on again.
I chose a small but fun board game for our inaugural night back, before we start delving into our next long game. Naming that game will have to wait for the next Game Night post. The game I chose for tonight, though, was Set a Watch.
In Set a Watch, you and up to three friends play a party of four adventurers. You are traveling from place to place to take on the evil lurking in a dark tower, but you are not alone. Each night, one of you will set up camp, while the other three take on the dark evils that attack in relentless waves.
Set a Watch is a dice placement game. Each round, everyone rolls their three dice — how many sides are on these dice are determined by their class. One of the players is chosen to set up camp, where they can chop firewood to keep the fire blazing (bright fires show more dangers of the dark; an extinguished fire means doom). They can also scout ahead (peek at the top cards of the monster deck, perhaps rearranging them or sending some to the bottom), choosing a different destination for next day’s travel, healing and so on.
Once camp is set up, the monsters start coming. Dice can be used to chip away at a monster’s hit points, or use special abilities drawn by each player at the beginning of the game. Each player has only three dice to combine with the dice of other players to defeat six to 12 (or more) monsters. Any monsters left over swipe away at a player’s health (and abilities) and move on to the Horde, where they will join later in the defense of the dark tower.
The last time we played it, we misinterpreted a rule that meant we exhausted our abilities early in the game and struggled to ready them afterward. We fixed that, and had a great time. Even though we played on easy mode and none of the eight regular rounds were too much of a challenge, the last fight at the dark tower was still a nail-biter that we just barely survived.
Great game that was redeemed by a good, solid re-reading of the rules (and a watch of a quick Let’s Play video :-))