Last night my son and I went out to Emerald City to enjoy an evening of gaming... unfortunately it was cut short by a new policy that EC Management has decided on. Apparently having gamers in the shop late has become an issue, so they have decided that board game nights will no longer be running late into the night at their establishment. The unfortunate side-effect of this decision, from my perspective, is that there's hardly anyone who is interested in showing up for an early board game night. As one person said on Facebook, many people have to work or have other family obligations and can't often get out for gaming until later in the evening. I am also one of those people. I have often arrived at EC closer to 8pm, purchased some snacks from their small selection prior to their cash registers closing for the night, and enjoyed a late night of playing games with a decent sized group of gamers (often probably 20 - 50 people, depending on the marketing pull for the evening) and a variety of games to try out.
Last night, when my son and I arrived, there were only other 6 people there - 5 were in a game of Cosmic Encounter. We asked the other guy, I believe his name was Andrew, if he was interested in playing another game with us while we were expecting others to arrive. After perusing the game shelves, in the shop, we got our snacks, returned to the game room, and got started on Condottiere, Isaac's selection to start off the night. As we were getting started, an employee entered the room to let us know that they were closing the shop, but we could stay for one more hour. I thought, I must have misheard that statement... what happened to the Staff and "Official Volunteers" who were usually there? Just 2 weeks ago we were told that we'd have to be escorted to the bathroom or the outside door after 9pm... which seemed a little odd considering the way things had gone before, but in the sake of security it was understandable. Now they just seem to be pushing away the following that they've been building up.
On a good note, after Condottiere finished, we did have enough time to get a game of The Resistance going with the other group of players who had just finished their game of Cosmic Encounter. It was my first time playing the game and I happened to end up on the side of the Spies. I managed to be sitting in the second seat, with a fellow Spy in the 3rd seat and another in the 5th seat (counting clockwise around the 8-player game). I was selected by the 1st leader to go on the first mission, along with Andrew, the Spy in the 3rd seat - we allowed it to Pass to avoid suspicion. In the following turn, I picked Isaac (4th seat) to be on the mission along with KC (5th seat), and our former leader in the 1st seat. I still selected to have the mission Pass, but KC chose Fail, so the accusations started to fly about who was the Spy. I can't remember exactly how things went after that, but I know at one point Isaac was being accused of being a Spy, which worked out well since he had a suspicious grin on his face. Isaac chose to put himself on a mission, which caused some people to doubt him even more when he voted to Approve the mission going forward even when people were saying that the mission would most likely fail. Soon after that KC was accused of being a Spy, which allowed us to throw off the trail from me and Andrew by throwing KC under the bus with some sound logic about the proposed missions that she had Approved. In the end, the 6th leader selected both me and Andrew to join the mission party, which was all we needed to secure the win. It was pretty sweet.
The game night at Emerald City ended there, since we were already still there beyond our allotted time, which was unfortunate... but the night was still young enough for Isaac and I to play Dead of Winter after we returned home.