My name is Donna Legaspi. I'm thirty-one, I'm an accountant in Minneapolis, and as of this morning I am ahead of my husband Tom fourteen games to eleven.

Heroes of Might and Magic III lets several people share one computer and take turns. It's called hot-seat because when you get up, the other person sits down in your warm chair. We have exactly one computer that can run it (the Pentium II in the spare bedroom; Tom's old 486 just sat there and hummed at the box) and two people who both want to win. So since the first week of March, every Friday after supper, we've played a game, or a piece of one.

It's the perfect game for this, because nobody has to be fast. Each day on the map, I move my heroes, build something in each of my towns, fight whatever's in my way, and click End Turn. Then I leave the room and Tom takes his day. Then I come back. You can think as long as you like, within reason. (I timed us with the kitchen timer for three Fridays in August. My days average a little under four minutes. His average a little over six. I've shown him the figures. He disputes the methodology.)

Why I like it, besides the winning: it's a game about managing resources over time, and I manage resources over time for a living. Seven resources, one building per town per day, and creatures that arrive on a weekly schedule whether you're ready for them or not. It's month-end close with dragons.

Why Tom likes it: he says it's the dragons.

There are eight kinds of town, each with its own two kinds of hero and its own seven levels of creature. The short version is below. The long version, with strategy, has its own page.

Castle. Knights and Clerics. Pikemen at the bottom, Angels at the top, and Marksmen who shoot twice in between. Nothing in Castle is a trick, which makes it the town I'd hand a new player.

Rampart. Dwarves, elves, unicorns and green dragons. Grand Elves shoot twice and Dendroids hold enemies in place. Tom calls it the nice-people town. I've won with it four times, so I call it the winning-people town.

Tower. Starts with Gremlins, ends with Titans, and has the best magic in the game in between. Slow to get going and very hard to stop once it does.

Inferno. Imps, demons, devils, and the Castle Gate, which lets your heroes step from one Inferno town to another. I want to like Inferno. Between us we're 0 for 3 with it.

Necropolis. Skeletons, vampires, liches, bone dragons, and Necromancy. Tom's town. See the Necromancy Argument, below.

Dungeon. My town. Underground, expensive and worth every bit of it: Black Dragons, which no spell can touch, and the Portal of Summoning. Five of my fourteen wins.

Stronghold. Goblins, orcs, ogres and Behemoths. Cheap and quick, and the Mage Guild stops at level three. If you're going to win with Stronghold, win early.

Fortress. Swamp creatures built for defense, and Hydras that hit everything around them. A town for patient people. Tom has played it once.

Necropolis heroes have a skill called Necromancy. After every battle they win, some of the enemy's dead get back up as Skeletons and join the army. Win a fight, get Skeletons. Win another, get more. Build the Necromancy Amplifier in town and you get more still. On a big map, by the second month, Tom's main hero walks around with more Skeletons than there are houses in our neighborhood.

Any one Skeleton is no threat to anybody. Several hundred of them have beaten me four times.

Tom's position: it's part of the game, the game is balanced, and I'm just mad.
My position: I am mad, and that has nothing to do with whether it's balanced.

After a long discussion in May that I won't reproduce here, we adopted the Necropolis Clause (house rule 5, below). It hasn't stopped him. It has slowed him down.

1. No saving and reloading. You may save to quit for the night. You may not save to undo. If your hero walked into a pack of something he shouldn't have, he walked into it, and we'll both remember it.
2. Loser makes Saturday breakfast. Tom has made it fourteen times, and his pancakes have improved considerably. I have made it eleven times. I make eggs, always the same way, and nobody has complained.
3. The player who isn't moving leaves the room. Kitchen or couch. No hovering in the doorway, and no asking "what was that noise?"
4. Towns are picked in secret. Write yours on the back of a grocery receipt, fold it, and turn them over together.
5. The Necropolis Clause. If you pick Necropolis, the other player picks the map and moves first.
6. The Midnight Rule. Whatever's on the screen at midnight gets saved and finished next Friday. The big maps take two Fridays, sometimes three.
7. Conceding is allowed. You concede by getting up and making coffee.

Every finished game since the first one, by month. A game that runs across two Fridays counts once, in the month it ended.

Tonight Tom has already picked his town. I can tell which one from his face. I've picked mine, and I'm updating this page first, because once the game starts I won't have time.

We learned on the two-player maps that came in the box, in March and April. Since then it's mostly been maps we made ourselves. The map editor comes with the game, and it's the best thing in the box after the game itself: you lay down the land, the towns, the mines, the monsters guarding them, the treasure and the roads, and then you get to watch the other person walk into it. It is very easy to lose a whole Saturday to it. Ask Tom.

The Commute (Small, mine). Two towns at opposite ends of one long road, with a monster on every bend. Done in one Friday, which is the point. Tom says it's like driving 35W at five o'clock. It is.

The Mine Field (Medium, Tom's). Gold mines everywhere, every one guarded by something nasty. Whoever's braver gets rich. Whoever's braver also loses heroes. It's split three and three.

Lake Country (Large, with an underground level, mine). Lakes all over the top level, so you either build a Shipyard, go the long way around, or go down through a Subterranean Gate and take your chances below. Two Fridays every time.

Snow Day (Small, Tom's). All snow, which slows everyone to a crawl unless their hero has learned Pathfinding. Tom built it to beat my Dungeon. It worked once.

An expansion is supposed to come out this fall. We've already argued about who gets the computer the night it comes home. I said whoever buys it. Tom said that's why he's going to buy it.