The basis of this recipe is actually a Weight Watchers recipe I got a loooong time ago. I riffed on it and made my own version, which I make just about every single Christmas season because it's so damn good, and even more damn simple!

Chocolate Marshmallow Bark
Yields 12 servings (or more if you cut 'em smaller like we do)

Chris loves to taunt me with Christmas gifts. Basically, he is DYING to give me the gifts, and since he is suffering, he wants to dole out a little to yours truly. That means wrapping them, stacking them in view, drawing my attention to them as often as possible. But he doesn't want me to know what they are! He wants to surprise me. So he doesn't want me touching, shaking, or otherwise sussing them out.

A friend in the dance community posted a request for feedback on a particular video game franchise, rightfully concerned about her daughter's exposure to various themes of violence prevalent in games today and asking what we thought. Among the commentary was the following:

"I can't see where this or any other game is a necessity for the development of anyone's child.
I'm so grateful that my days after school were spent playing football, basketball and baseball and drawing and painting in my spare time.Life is about creating memories. I can hardly see where playing video games creates memories."

To which I had a ready reply:

Not all things we engage in need to be for our development. Some things are just fun for fun's sake!

That said, some of my FAVORITE memories as a kid--in the 80's no less!-- was sitting with my brother and playing Zelda. One of us would be the navigator with the map and the other would run the game, then we would swap. We would have friends over and play together as well. I also was in theater, choir, took dance and gymnastics, and played on basketball and volleyball teams, went camping in the summers, and loved to ride my bike. Later in college, my console system was one of the only ones in the dorm. I would invite people over to play, would leave my door open and people would gather to watch and play together. I met a lot of people and made a lot of friends with that shared interest. Today I have an awesome husband who also loves to game, and we do it together--both board and video games. We sometimes play online with friends who live in other states! Very enriching for me my whole life, with meaningful relationships and happy memories to spare.

I go to multiple conventions every year where I meet hundreds, nay thousands, of people who share my interests. Some of us spend months crafting elaborate costumes to dress up as our favorite characters, some of us develop games for a living now and get paid to do something we love and brings other people joy, some of us create art around various game franchises, themes, and characters; some of us use the vehicle of gaming to tell meaningful stories or messages ("That Dragon, Cancer" and "We Are Chicago" being two games with moving messages, just off the top of my head)--there are so many creative and interesting outlets which grow from gamers' experiences.

It's okay if this isn't your idea of fun, or if you wouldn't find it enriching or connecting. For me it definitely has been. I am also a dancer, an artist, a seamstress, an amateur chef, a community-builder, a dog foster momma, a gardener, and many other things. I still love to ride my bike! Video games can be as much a way to connect with stories, people, and creativity as any other activity, and the implication that it will somehow supplant or prevent other endeavors "in the real world" is the kind of hyperbole I usually see reserved to old church ladies clucking about "kids these days". I hope you will open your mind to the idea that gaming can have value and enrichment just like any other hobby out there today. Everything in moderation. It's about balance.

Finally got this to the table on the very last day of #Shametember as a double-feature with Isle of Skye. Just enough like Pandemic to be familiar, and just enough theme and new mechanics to give it its own flair. Theme did NOT feel tacked on, as we feared.

The board and components are beautiful--colorful without detracting from the dark atmosphere. The board is a bit *too* dark, and fonts difficult to read, but the locations and card placement markers are minimal enough that one will soon learn where everything is and won't have to read as much to navigate after a few plays. The artwork on the cards are evocative, and the Clue cards couldn't be any easier to read if you tried. In fact, compared to the art and design on the other cards, they seem downright plain, sporting a simple woodcut style image in white on a solid color background; but I offer that as an observation, not a complaint.

The addition of Awakening Rituals (the cousin of Infection Rate) bringing out random Ancient Ones and various one-time or permanent effects definitely makes it feel more consequential to raise the rate, even in the early game. Shoggoths appearing and moving toward gates as a further risk to life and limb was also a nice touch. I was disappointed to find there was not a mechanic analogous to Eradicating Disease from the original Pandemic, save for a single "Elder Sign" Relic you may or may not draw which allows one gate to be sealed, preventing Summoning in that town for the remainder of the game (barring extenuating circumstances). However, in retrospect, with travel largely simplified, and a smaller map of locations to deal with overall, if one could seal each gate with an Elder Sign, the run to the end of the game to close the final gate might be quite flaccid.

One part I felt was weak was sanity. The random die roll feels out of place in a Pandemic game, taking you out of the action/roleplay more than I thought it would. The inability to regain any sanity except by being the one person to close a gate, or a draw random Relic, is frustrating, and not in a "gee whiz that's a bummer" but a "dammit, why can't I just go to a sanatorium and heal up with action points or something?!" Maybe a house rule is in order should this continue to chafe.

My only other complaint is the miniatures. On the one hand, as lovers of miniatures, we're happy to have them and it enhances the thematic immersion of playing different roles. However, the necessity of keeping the cultists small enough to spread 26 of them all over the board means they look like tiny little blue Jawas next to the Investigators, and the awesomely-sculpted Shoggoths lose their imposing power when we still stand a half-head taller than them side-by-side. I almost would have preferred a more abstract threat in lieu of the cultists (growing dread?) represented by tokens or cubes than teensy-tiny robed baby-people.

As with original Pandemic and its offshoots, the less players, the easier it is. With two players, we closed all the gates, and that was with overlooked rules that worked against us: we forgot to a) draw a Relic card each time we did and b) remove one cultist from each location in a town. We are also fully aware of the luck-of-the-draw involved, as with any Pandemic game. A few well-placed Summoning of Shoggoths on or nearer to gates and our Ancient Ones would have been awakening in no time.

Definitely an excellent addition to our complete Pandemic Collection. Looking forward to many more games!

I am very lucky.

I have a partner who enjoys gaming. A partner who will delay eating dinner, put aside other interests and concerns, sit across a table with me, and play board games for hours. It took about 15 years to get here, and yeah...it's a blessing and a curse because I created a monster!

I grew up with board games. When we got married I tried to get him into games. He played sometimes, and I thought I was winning him over, but he never latched onto it. I understood only recently that his idea of board games was party games; and honestly, I hadn't Eurogamed myself until a couple years back now, so I wasn't helping disavow him of this, not realizing where his head was at. Being a shy guy, he hated the requirement of bigger groups and especially hated feeling put on the spot. Being very social and outgoing, these are games that I got excited about, and I didn't realize how uncomfortable he was as he struggled to play them with me and even good friends.

So when we discovered Pandemic and the world of co-op board games (our preference is co-op play on every platform we share), it blew the top off of games immediately. Then we discovered Dominion and Carcassonne, and other mechanics of deck builder, tableau building, and worker-placement which didn't require 'take that!' tactics and attacking each other directly. Instead we discovered there was a world of games where we could focus on our individual strengths/personal best, and it literally changed our life. I personally like that, barring some rare and painful experiences (usually me! LOL), our scores in these competitive games tend to be really close--there are so many paths to victory and everyone focuses on what appeals to them, so no one gets utterly smashed or humiliated.

This slow-build to a fully participating gaming household has become an explosion of manic acquisition of ALL THE GAMES in 2016. Which brings us to our Wall of Shame. In gaming parlance, your Wall of Shame is the collection of games you have purchased but not yet played. It is not uncommon for casual gamers to have a few untouched titles, and for more avid players (and flush players), the Wall of Shame may include a...well...shameful number of games still in plastic from the factory. Why, you may ask?

Wall of Shame - An Explanation

Above & Below by Ryan Laukat, PAX 2016

In general, board gamers tend to revel in their senses, enchanted by piles of little plastic coins, the tinkling sound as they are poured into a bowl in preparation for a game, the weight and sound of tumbling dice on a tabletop, the sight of a colorful board and the unique shapes of player pieces. It’s not just the playing of the game that appeals; it is the having of a game that is also joyful. The boxes on display are like art on a wall to gamers, and they will spend almost as much time and money on finding the perfect shelving to display their games as they do on procuring the games themselves. There is a thrill in simply touching game components, or perusing well-designed rulebooks like a favorite novel...or maybe it’s more akin to a catalog of fun stories and worlds yet to be discovered.

A common simple pleasure among gamers is the delightful act of unboxing. Unboxing is the visceral experience of stripping off the shrink-wrap plastic seal and being the first to see, smell, touch, or otherwise experience a fresh board game. The unique bouquet of pristine cardboard, the little scritching-pop sound of punching out game pieces, opening the rule book for the first time...sooooo glossy... Opening new board games is like opening presents on Christmas morning! While the play(ing) is the thing, there is a certain exhilaration in the delayed gratification represented by a game still wrapped in plastic.

(Aside: Hell, we gamers even get excited about games that we don’t own yet! When new games are added to Kickstarter, or will soon be available for purchase online or in a FLGS (Friendly Local Game Store), the hype train pulls out of the station. The hype train is just another word for “buzz”. It’s the exponentially expanding banter, online and around gaming tables, about the latest games: what the game mechanics are, the quality of the components, how balanced the gameplay is, who has created a video play-through in advance of the release. And the more people talk about it, the more people talk about it. The train picks up speed, and with it the sense of urgency in being one of the first to own the best new titles increases with every forum discussion or YouTube review. Pretty soon, some gamers are pretty sure they will simply die if they can’t snag one of the first copies of New Game X as soon as it is available! But I digress...)

Ahem. So about those games still in their plastic...

The Rise of The Wall

Burgle Bros. by Tim Fowers

Given the aforementioned flurry of acquisition in the last year, we already had a healthy Wall of Shame to contend with. We would occasionally take a stab at diminishing the volume of said WoS, but we have discovered some real gems among our collection, which make frequent appearances and take precedence over cracking a new game. Sometimes our choice of game is driven by simplicity--swiftness to set-up and tear-down, as well as length of gameplay, will determine if we can play on a given weeknight. Ease of teaching/learning is a motivator when we invite friends over to try something new to them. The desire to stage a comeback from a bad loss in a previous session may drive us back to a co-op to try to wrest victory from the jaws of defeat. And just the general mood of one or both of us will be the limitor on other cases. And so The Wall grew...

And here we find ourselves in fall of 2016. Since the gaming revolution has come to our home, September is a game-tastic month now. My birthday is near the beginning of the month, and has traditionally included at least some form of game gifted by my well-meaning husband as a nod to my love of them. Many years were console games for our PS3, but most include at least a card game or some light party game he found at Target. The past two years, however, have included an influx of co-op and Eurogames.<

That same weekend of my birthday happens to be PAX Prime (aka PAX West) in my hometown; which, while ostensibly a convention surrounding video games, has a strong showing of board games in the form of a whole booth dedicated to indie game designers, multiple prolific publishers and vendors of board games with wares for sale, and a large lending library with rooms of empty tables inviting all-comers to borrow any game of your choosing and play it at your leisure. Last year we were ill-prepared to make best use of this library, but this year...we came with a list! Over the year, yours truly cross-referenced my BoardGameGeek.com “want to own” list with the current list of available games in the lending library. Some games fell off the list over the year as we either played a game and decided it was not for us, or we ended up being gifted or purchasing said game in the intervening time. But when the weekend began, we had a list of about 10 games we hoped to get our hands on (at least some of them), and consider for purchase.

What was unexpected was the Barnes & Noble 40% off customer appreciation coupon...that same week. Oops, and we pre-ordered Pandemic: Reign of Cthulhu earlier this summer from CoolStuffInc, and of course we HAD to buy enough to get free shipping, so tacked on three. other. games. And Chris and I had long ago backed some Kickstarter games, as long ago as last year, which are coincidentally slated to ship this month as well (which doesn’t take into account another six he has backed which all coincidentally due to ship in November?!). Thus, as a result of birthday acquisitions, coupon-drive purchases, the back-ordered games, Kickstarters, and the inevitable PAX purchases...um... The Wall of Shame is bigger than ever, by...like...a lot. *hanging head* So we instituted Shametember!

Shametember In Shaytown

Dead of Winter in the heat of summer

We instituted the concept of Shametember to motivate us to tear into those as-of-yet-unplayed games and get them to the table. The goal is to play a new game every day of September, come hell or high water, preferably from our own collection, though not strictly required. It is our challenge to choose games we can play each day, even on “school nights”, to knock back the encroaching Wall of Shame. It doesn’t preclude playing favorites, but it has to be in addition to a new game in that 24 hour period, and significant expansions count. A “significant expansion” is defined as a measurable alteration of existing gameplay. So for instance, Five Tribes: The Artisans of Naqala counts because it includes entirely new tile types and tribe powers to the game, but Marvel Legendary: Paint the Town Red doesn’t count because it is essentially the same mechanics skinned with different heroes. Leave it to gamers to gameify gaming, amirite?!

We came up with this idea on September 2nd, so we started a day behind, but we are making up for it by making a gaming date with friends on October 1st, essentially adapting our goal to “30 New Games in 30 Days”. And full disclosure, we further gave ourselves a “pass” one day over this past weekend when a MMORPG game in which we have collectively clocked ~1500 game hours dropped a new update we have been waiting for since spring and we devoted most of the afternoon and evening to a deep dive together, nearly forgetting to eat or sleep let alone get to the table to try and wrap our brain around a new game. We did at least pinky-swear that one day this month we will play two new games in one day to make up for it, maintaining our adapted 30-in-30 goal. Hey, it’s our game, we get to decide how to play it.

At any rate, the moral of the story is that it has been going great! It’s been a lot of fun to finally get to some games which have been staring at us for a long time (I’m looking at you, The Swarm, the game that had been longest member of our unplayed list at 10 months--no more!), games which one of us has been wanting to play while the other continues demurring (no more excuses, Sherlock Holmes-Consulting Detective), as well as immediately crack some of the brand-spanking-new birthday/PAX week goodies (finally, Machi Koro is mine!). We have spent a significant portion of our free time together away from screens of any kind, exercising our minds and interacting with one another directly through the medium of game. Gaming has brought us closer than ever in 2016, and this challenge together continues to connect us joyfully as a couple. With a month as fun as the one we’re having now, I am excited to see what the rest of this gaming year brings.