I love watching tabletop games being played. It’s entertaining, fun, and drama-filled. That’s probably why I enjoy the Tabletop series so much. I enjoy playing them, as well, but not as much as watching. Still, ever since the Firefly board game came out, I’ve wanted to play it. It made an appearance at the DADA meetup group’s annual Game Day event, but there wasn’t time enough to play it then.

So when a friend bought it, we made plans to play one Friday evening. It terrified us a bit. So we abandoned it after about 5 minutes and played a round of Lord of the Rings DVD Trivial Pursuit instead. Then we felt braver and gave the setup a more serious try.

I’d like to say the hardest part trying to figure out the size of the table we’d need to play it. We tried a coffee table then the dining room table then ended up on the floor in front of the television playing an episode of Firefly we had to pause after 10 minutes because we needed all of our brain cells just to set the game up. But, unfortunately, setup and understanding the rules was the hardest part. For two people not used to some of these game matrices (is that even the correct term?). Setting up the game and reading through the instruction book took us hours. Literally. There was one point where I was willing to PAY someone to explain the game to me.

But we finally got there in the end and STARTED the game late into the evening. I was still a little terrified as we began playing, not sure I was doing it right, not sure what move to make. And I definitely made a couple stupid mistakes. I ran an entire mission I didn’t need. Luckily, our crews were pretty evenly matched and it came down to the luck of the draw when we were misbehaving in illegal jobs we were working. I got some good cards and my captain came out victorious with a win.

From start to finish, I want to say it took us around 5 hours to set up and run a game that should have taken 1-2 hours. But I’m confident that next time we attempt it, even if it’s a different story card, we’ll be a lot better. Maybe we’ll even manage a 2-hour game in less than 4 hours!