Family Gaming Night

 

I know, I know, this always comes off as a degrading terminology to me too. Let me do some explaining though. I love playing games. I love playing good quality board games. I love playing computer games (though I normally avoid them, as they suck my life away) I love wargames, I love roleplaying games. I think everyone should. But unfortunately, the only companies who have ever supported “Family game nights” are the big vanilla names such as Milton Bradley, Parker Bros. and their ilk. 

So, what can family game night really mean? Well, there is the stigmata I feel sits on the family game night: Pulling out games that the kids will go wild about, such as games in which you randomly move Ginger Bread children past the clutches of Lord Liqorice, but the fact is, the parents will only get one thing out of it, and that is seeing their kids having fun. Why do we prefer to watch TV over playing those crappy games? Because we genuinely enjoy spending the time enjoying a good TV show. So, on the bad end of the spectrum, we have

1. Playing a crappy game and guffawing like Mike Meyers and acting like we’re actually having fun, even though you’re thinking about watching Dan Blather or Monday Night Football.

2. Going and watching Lost and having to cover you’re children’s eyes half the time.  

On the other side though, I am in full support of a good QUALITY game night with family and friends. But this requires good games. The advantage of  a good game if you not only learn something about each other (maybe little Jimmy hates losing, and so playing a co-op game is better. Maybe dad is strategic genius who will only play Axis and Allies with his buddies: Get Carcassonne.

You also learn. You really, truly LEARN in a good game. A good game is replayable. Why stop watching TV? For the same reason I avoid Video games. You have nothing to show for them. Sure, you can say such things as “Oh! you remember the time when Frasier embarrassed himself?” or “Remember the time when Hurley finally figured it out and was in the looney bin?” Yeah, that’s nice, and you never forget those deep moments. But how much better to have your kids saying someday, “Hey, remember the time when Dad had a good one hundred points over us in Carcassonne, and I farmed the land and got 200 points, beating him?” Or, “Remember in Shadow over Camelot, when I single handedly defeated the Dragon? No one has ever beat the Dragon!” And sister says “Nuh-uh! I helped you. If I hadn’t given you the Grail and brought you back to life, you would never, ever have beaten him!”

Those are the times you really cherish, moments that your family actually have with one another. 

Now, I can rant and rave about how much you need to play quality games, but what’s the point if I don’t inform you which game you should or should not be playing? Thus, I am now going to give you some “Lists of five,” for you to consider. 

Games for families with younger Kids (no particular order):

1. Apples to Apple. A good game to help teach kids Adjectives along with Nouns. Can be fun, and challenging, and you get to see your kid’s sense of humor come out.

2. Zooloretto. Won major awards this year, very fun and easy game. Suggested for 8+. I think a 5 year old who has played other game can play this great game. Must have.

3. Carcassonne. A wonderful game for all ages. With help form an adult a 4 year old can play, but adults and competitive types will love it too. Helps teach matching and strategy.

4. Sorry! I know, it’s a Parker Bros. game, and it’s completely random, but it is fun hitting one another and sending each other back. Can help teach disappointment, and they have just as much of a chance at beating the adults too. 

5. Last Word. A good game for increasing vocabulary. Person flips over subject, and you must all start shouting out words that start with the hot letter, that match the verb. Timer has a variable ending, so you never know who will be last.

Games for older kids and family.

1. Cosmic Encounters. This is a remake of an old classic from the seventies and eighties. It has ironed out all the problems form last editions. And a definite must. There are fifty different aliens, each with their own game altering abilities, so the game will never be the same.

2. Settlers of Catan. A must for everyone to have played by the time they leave the house. God for teaching trading, and haggling. Can be competitive, or private.

3. Shadows Over Camelot. Every family should play a co-op game, and this is co-op at its finest. Everyone wins, or everyone loses. (Or you can play with the Traitor, and he might beat you all.)

4. Cranium. Too bad this was bought by Hasbro. It is a great family game, and unlike Trivial Pursuit, in which a kid who could care less about facts might not enjoy, here there is something for everyone. Art, acting, trivia, spelling, its all here. 

5. Blokus. Mensa game or 1-4 players. A great game indeed. There are two editions, on is squares, and the other Trigon, or if you want 3-D, get Rumis, which has just been renamed, it would appear, Blokus 3-D. A”think outside the lines,” game. Very good for developing cranial stimulation.

Simple Games:

1. Phase-10. Good game in which you put down different sequences of cards. Can help develop crd identification. 

2. Yahtzee. Good game of math and decisions. You’ve never played it? I’m sorry.

3. Nerts. Wow. This game will blow you mind. Go to the link I’ve provided, and buy a completely separate deck of cards for each player (I believe 6 is best to have on hand.)

4. Pit. Wild, loud, and headache creating. Totally worth it! 

5. Shut the Box. Another Yahtzee type game in which you must make mathematical decisions. Good for solitaire, or for multiples. Only problem is, you need a box for each person if you play multiple.

Of course there are plenty of other game. My wife and I love to play Phase 10, Stratego, Infernal Contraption. Each of these are great. This post will actually be appearing on my new Blog at Monday’s Hero, in three weeks. But you get to see it first, and hear about my new blog. I’ll be working on two blogs in order to Polarize my writings more. Here will be only games, and there will be a weekly rant. Hope you enjoy both of them.

 I ask you basically to consider each of those 15 games, 15 games to have in the house or having friends over, playing with your kids, or giving them when they move out. All of these games are worth having handy.

My suggestion? Finish your break by looking up the closest board game store in your area and on your way home, go by and get one of these game. Show up at home with a surprise. Go over and unplug the TV (Wives appreciate the football game being turned off every once and a while,or basketball, depending on the game season.) And inform them after dinner (you did pick up KFC on your way home too?) you’re going to play a game, or two, or three. The kids will hurry to finish their homework and you’ll have a good time. Heck, maybe it’ll become what you do every Monday.

-Game Gorilla Out

Shadows Over Camelot

I have to say, with Christmas over, and my wife and I finally getting to go to our local game store for board gaming every week, and me having Saturdays off is nice! This means I get to bring to you more reviews.

So last night we got the the game store, and no one was ready for a new game. We pulled out Scrabble, and one of the guys, Drew, who works at Blue Highway Games was playing Cribbage with his wife until another friend showed up. They pulled out Shadows over Camelot, and called over, “Hey, you really deeply involved in your Scrabble game?” ”No” says I, and we joined. Now I’ve been wanting to play Shadows Over Camelot for several months now, and I am glad to say, I have just played my first of many games.

What a great game! Basically, is a co-op game in which you choose a Knight of the Round Table. One of you may or may not be the Traitor, who job is to see you all fail.  There are three ways to lose. The Round Table is filled with majority Black Swords by the time it is full, you are all dead, or Camelot is completely under siege. How do you win? Survive to see the majority of the Round Table is filled with white swords when it is filled.This is not as easy as it sounds, for what you can do every turn is limited. 

there are a number of quests you can each go on, but it takes a turn to travel there. You could go after the Grail, or Excaliber, or the armour of Lancelot. Each of them will give you bonuses later. However,if you accomplish them to son, it speeds up the chance of the siege of Camelot to occur. However, each player has to choose before they go to either draw a card of darkness, which raised the escalation level of all the conflicts, take a wound, or add another catapult. Thing is, if you leave any one of the 6 Quests unattended, they will draw closer to your losing the quest, and thus adding more black swords. Accomplishing quests adds white swords. The Grail almost slipped out of our grasp, we never got Excaliber, and we lost the Armour of Lancelot forever. Right before we got the Grail, one of the players died, and all of us were down to 1 life. We got the grail, and I sacrificed myself to die, drink the cup,and be boosted back to nearly full life. Then, I drew a card that forced us to lose one more quest, thus ending the game, with us in the majority. 

This is a great game. Everything is stacked against you in a life or death defying poker/yahtzee game. And what a game is was. If you get a chance, please play this game. Very good co-op with high replayability.

-Game Gorilla Out

Zooloretto-Spiel des Jahres 2007

So, last night, my lovely wife and I popped into Blue Highway Games, our favorite local game store, to play a game.

Normally, this consists of us staring at the library wall for a while until we make a decision. I saw a game I secretly wanted to try, but was a bit embarrassed to. And that game was Zooloretto. I had really not wanted to play the the game, because, well, as you can see, it’s a kids game. But, it did win the coveted Spiel des Jahres Which is the german “Game of the Year” award. The likes of while Scotland Yard, Carcassonne, Catan and others all won. Nominees generally see their sales go up to 10K, while winners can expect an easy 300K to 500K. So, I turned it over, and saw, “Hey! This is a really simple Zoo Tycoon!” A game my wife and I love to play. So I said to her, ”Hey! This is a really simple Zoo Tycoon!” We decided to take it over and sit down and read through the rules. VERY EASY!!  We played through it, and were too tried to play through again, so we went home, but more than anything, a fun game. 

So here’s the premise: You’re building a Zoo. 

This is pretty easy. Very little money floats around, which limits what you can do, but of the most part, you load up trucks, and then, once you’re ready, you take a delivery. Problem is, now you gotta find somewhere to put the Concession Booths and Animals that come on the truck. You’ve got some time though, animals with no place to go stay in the Barn awaiting moving. Problem is, getting animals is free, and moving them costs money. Expending the size of your zoo to accommodate also costs money. And, animals in the barn can be stolen, nay, purchased. You pay your opponent one coin, and a bank one coin, i.e. 2 coins total to take a single animal from their barn. I discovered this is a good way to make money. Deliberately take an animal on a truck you know your opponent wants, and put it in your barn, i.e. a fertile animal who when used with another fertile animal of the opposite sex, makes an instant, free, baby animal. Once all the tiles are used up, the game ends, you count up victory points, minus anything still in the barn, and see who wins. 

This was a great game. I’ll buy it in about ten years.

Woah, wait a minute, ten years? Why the wait? 

Well, that ’s because I don’t have kids yet. My wife and I would definitely get bored real quick, even though there is that real tempting second expansion out there which included a whole bunch of little add-ons. But back to the topic. We don’t have kids yet. It will probably be about five years or so before that happens. “Hey wait, isn’t Zooloretto a 8+ age range?” Why yes it is. But our kids are going to be game playing geniuses playing Carcassonne from year 3 on. I think they mismarked the age range. The game is perfectly suited to younger audiences, depending on the mental capacity.

The nice thing is, the game is a non-competitive game. Kids can play and feel like they are building a zoo, and adults, i.e. the two parents, can play against one another and not feel like they are simply moving a gingerbread kid past the clutches of Lord Licorice. If I was playing with parents and little children, I would have it so the kids are not charged points for still having animals in the barn. This way, the adults loose points and kids don’t. You might also add up your points and then half them, announce what they are, and then minus the barn animals from the points. Chances are then, you’ll lose royally, but it’s all about the gameplay, and the kids, isn’t it?

Definitely worth getting if you have kids under the age of 12. If too many of them are older, probably not. But at the same time, perhaps you want to spend some one-on-one time with your youngest. Get this game, and put their name on it so then can jealously guard it as their own. Then offer to play it with them regularly. 

Have a good Sunday,

-Game Gorilla

Race for the Gravity

So, I played “Race for the Galaxy,” last night. On Board Game Geek it takes 10th place which is pretty good. My thoughts:

Have you played Puerto Rico? In which case, have you played San Juan? Both are also Rio Grande games. Reason I ask: San Juan

 is a simpler, card based version of Puerto Rico. San Juan is a quick pick up game, or, perhaps after a few beers, you would do better to hold cards than little pieces. So, why do I mention this? Because Race for the Galaxy is basically San Juan on Crack. I can play San Juan and enjoy it well enough, but I could probably really enjoy Race for the Galaxy. That being said, I will probably not play it again. Had we had time to play it again last night, we probably would have really gotten it. But the fact is they took the game San Juan, added some nice complications to round it out, but instead they took it to “11.” I guess because eleven is better than ten? They did a wonderful job of making every single card self-containing, thi

s means each player should be able to look at the card, slowly decipher it, and then run with it. Hard to explain, I know. Its complicated.

The problem really is, the cards have trouble really getting across some of the more complicated cards. Now there is an index in the rules (Revolutionary!) but this index doesn’t really elaborate on what the cards contain in themselves. One of the main problem with new players on this game, is that each person should keep track of their own cards, and simply declare during phases, “Give me five cards.” Not

, “How many cards do I get?” Not as bad as someone saying, “Yeah, is a 10, jack, queen, king, and  Ace. Good?” But still a bit irritating. Not to insult those I played with. We were all gamers, it was just hard to play. This is why I won’t play again. I won’t buy it, because this would mean playing with new players again, and having to explain some real abstract concepts, such as the use of face down cards as money, goods and other such things. I mean, I do enjoy explaining some harder concepts. I mean, I’ll play Twilight Imperium with newbs a million times, I loke the game too much!

I did see the inherent “fun-ness” in the game. This means if anyone else ever says to me, “Hey, Gorilla, want to play Race for the Galaxy?” And when I ask them if they have played before they say “Yes” then I will play, and have fun. But I will not buy the game. If someone you know has it, by all means, play it. Buy San Juan, good pick up game, I must say. Just don’t go out on a limb and play it without having played it. Those are my thoughts.

-Game Gorilla.