"Yeah. Maybe I should just not play until then so I don't get any better at the game until then."

He shrugs. "Your choice on that. Now I'm wondering what games I could beat you at, first few rounds..."

"I don't know any games here."

"Not a massive priority, anyway."

"No, but we definitely could waste some time there while you're not studying nor up for doing the dance with no pants."

He giggles. "Never heard it called that before."

"It rhymes in my original language."

"Hm, I might want to 'dance' more later but right now I want to explain this complicated naval war board game and see if better long term strategy wins against thinking capacity there... That'll take at least a couple hours even if you set up and clean up everything in two minutes flat."

"Sure thing, love."

"Well, it's in my apartment, but basically-" He starts explaining a fairly deep asymmetric tactical game that makes no use of random effects whatsoever. It all comes from seven kinds of ships and a bunch of different rules about how they fight each other. A few different scenarios are available - from an even, open battle to convoy escort to blockade running to trying to capture a VIP.

...He's pretty excited about board games, apparently. They're a suitably nerdy break from more useful nerdy things like golems.

Sadde finds this incredibly adorable. And, in addition to that, actually finds the game pretty interesting, from the description, and is almost as excited as he is by the end of the explanation.

Ships: Freighter, Carrier, Fighter/Bomber, Destroyer, Fast Cruiser, Heavy Cruiser, Battleship.

It's round based, you write down all your ships' orders on erasable slates before showing them to each other and resolving a round of simultaneous combat. Is that going to be a problem, can Sadde successfully fail to detect what Terel's ordering his ships to do?

Sure, Sadde can close his eyes and work out his orders mentally and then write them all down when Terel's done with his.

Terel starts off with the easy, simple mode: Straight 1-vs-1 battle with only a small fleet to the last ship standing. He spends his ship points on two heavy cruisers and a cloud of escorts, no carriers.

Sadde does... something. He's still not entirely sure how this game works in practice so he just tries something.

...How about an example round with completely arbitrary ships in completely arbitrary positions to give him an idea of how it works?

Here this formation is about to smash this other one because the heavy cruiser has armor, so these two destroyers either need to rush in to the range where they can do armor-piercing attacks or run the heck away... Or they could ram it and destroy both ships. And so on.

Oooh this is fun he likes!

So here they are, playing the actual game.

Terel spreads out during the opening rounds, but not far. His entire fleet can come together into one massive ball of firepower in two turns, and does, to focus down one ship of Sadde's at a time.

Okay this game definitely cannot be brute-forced like Kings can, but he can start strategising a bit, too. Sadde's ships are spread out, and he's aiming to do it in such a way that if Terel's converge on one of his ships the others surround Terel's and attack.

Terel allows Sadde to pick off some of the weak little destroyers, destroying Sadde's largest ship in a fierce stab of an attack.

...He'll probably win at this point. But Sadde can still make it tricky.

Sadde will do his best to make this tricky and have loads of fun on the way.

It's fun! Right down to the last turn when Terel covers every single possible destination for Sadde's last ship with long range fire.

He's down about half of his forces.

"See why I like this game?"

"Yes! It's great!"

He checks the time and deems it early enough, "How about a convoy escort mission? I'll be the raiders, you're defender."

"Sure, it's kinda hot when you crush me like that."