Azul Online

We're empty-nesters, so whilst our children are safe and well, they aren't part of our household and are isolating independently of us. This means, of course, that we haven't seen them for a few weeks, except online. But we still like to play games, so yesterday we tried out a game on Tabletop Simulator. Tabletop Simulator is interesting in that it doesn't provide online versions of games, as such, but simply ways of presenting actual game components virtually, leaving you to do the actual playing. You still roll dice, deal cards and move counters around. And you can play remotely. So Caterine and I set up a session on our respective PCs, whilst elsewhere in Wollongong my daughter and her partner jined us on their laptops.

And we played Azul. This partially because it's an unofficial user-designed setup and is therefore free; there's a whole range of 'official' game sets that you can buy for a modest outlay.

It worked really well, once we all got used to the interface, and we had two excellent games (made all the more excellent by my winning both of them, the second by an extremely comfortable margin).

Catherine acquired an assistant.

We have a few other games to try out for future sessios (I'm keen to try Codenames, and we may have a workeable version of Tales of the Arabian Knights as well), but this was a useful trial session and a lot of fun.