Home-Infused Cinnamon Whiskey and Homemade Hot Chocolate: Suck a Dick, Cold Front

The multi-day forecast shows another week of single-digit or subzero temps: I need something else to look forward to. Time to see if Rygar wants to swing by after work and test my new jar of home-infused cinnamon whiskey — this time made with Fireside Straight Bourbon Whiskey instead of Beam.

It includes the usual big cinnamon stick and a dried arbol chile, but I pull it after three days instead of five to see if the better whiskey and milder spice will make it more approachable. The last time I brought a jar for him to try at the game shop, I could hear the soft tissues of his throat and stomach sizzling like bacon.

Plus I have all the makings for homemade hot chocolate, something I’ve never made in my whole life: Whole milk, unsweet cocoa powder, sugar, semisweet chocky chips, little marshmallows, all that shit. He stomps out of the freezing addition of my house in his electrified vest just as the spiked cup comes off the stove: Damn, this is good.

Project L: I’m flying off the caffeine and booze in this cinnamon whiskey-spiked hot chocolate, of course we want to handle all these pieces. Everybody does.

We try a sip of the cinnamon whiskey straight, too. Switching up the base was a good move: It’s mellower, less brute alcohol and sugar flavor, more depth in the middle, the burn in better balance with the booze. Once it’s stirred into the hot chocolate mug? Potent. I can’t even feel the booze hit because the caffeine and sugar has me off my face halfway through the drink. It’s a good accompaniment to the cigarettes and joints that get taken in multiple hit-and-run attacks in the addition. I can feel the cold conducting into the soles of my sneakers and Rygar points out during our second break that my hands look purple.

He has to go make sure a place he’s housesitting doesn’t have frozen pipes. We have about 15 minutes and half a mug left, so would he like to try Project L? We breeze through his first game in minutes flat and he declares it his new favorite. He mimics eating the irresistible pieces — this game would be a death sentence for any unattended toddler with functioning senses — and heads out with a bottle of Winter Warlock Oatmeal Stout. You gotta design waypoints with treats, light the route with little candles here and there.

More on this game and this drink in a future episode of Breakup Gaming Society.

Mysterium Board Game: I’m Not Playing This Again, Win My Copy

I’m accepting the fact that dozens of incredible titles in my spare room just won’t be played again.

I am culling, beginning with a game that I think is beautiful, well-designed and worthy, but just not for me: Mysterium, the 2015 murder mystery deduction hit.

The pieces and cards are all there. It’s been played only three times. I want it to live with somebody who loves it.

Here’s how this works:

• I’m still seeking donors who want their own copy of my beautiful and dangerous cocktail booklet. Anybody who donates through the end of Jan. 2025 gets the booklet and is in the prize pool.

• At the end of December, one random donor will get my copy of Mysterium. I’ll mail it in Feb. 2025.

• I have to limit the Mysterium prize to donors in the U.S. lower 48, as international postage rates are breathtaking.

That’s it. Donate and get the cocktail booklet. Maybe end up with a beautiful coop deduction game in which a ghost tries — using only lush and oblique image cards — to tell a table full of psychics who was responsible for their death.

Cascadia Solo: I Thought I Was a Thrice-Ascended EcoArchitect, But I Cheated

Moments after publishing this post, I finally spotted the reason why I was able to rack up such an obscene score: I took too many turns. There are 26 animals placed here. So, regarding the text that follows: It’s all erroneous. I forge on humbled, still in pursuit of an Ascended 110+ score.

What do I do with this game now? Frame it? File it away? I’d been chasing the 110+ “Ascended” solo score ranking of Cascadia all summer, notching 100+ games regularly. A 110+ score seemed like it required a subtle extra layer of calculation I just didn’t have.

Then this. I gasped when I totaled the top half of the sheet. 93 points. I checked it again. And again:

• Bears (Card C, Families): 18
• Elk (Card B, Formations): 15
• Salmon (Card C, Families): 10
• Hawks (Card D, Territorial): 25
• Foxes (Card D, Dynamic Duos): 25

I didn’t realize I’d hit the Bear Families bonus until my next to last move, but I had focused on building diverse axes of animals that I could bookend with Territorial hawk pairs. In the back half of the game, owing to the vagaries of the draw, I did something else I usually don’t do: Went for a third pair of foxes, which turned out to be massive.

Add 40 points of terrain/nature token leftovers and I think that’s 133 — 20+ points in excess of any of my best-ever games up to that point and a mark I don’t imagine I’ll hit ever again. So I quadruple-checked the score. Took a pic, swept my eyes around the room to note the jarring gulf between what just happened on this table and the oblivion of the remaining day, then packed it up.

What a morning. What a game.