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ghoti_mhic_uait) wrote2014-12-20 10:32 am
ghoti_mhic_uait) wrote2014-12-20 10:32 am
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Board games; what are your favourites? What would you like to play more of?
The main thing for me is that I'd like to play *more* tabletop games of all types. For this reason, I seek out games that are interesting family games (ie, at least two of the children want to play them, and they're not boring for adults). I grew up playing games after dinner, I always thought that would be how my life would go, and I get grumpy when it's not going that way. Games in this category include Carcassonne (Andreas enjoys if the game play is generally quick), Continuo (a rather nice tile/colour matching game), Pandemic (this is one for B not A :)), Ascension. I'm sure there are more but it's quite hard to tempt B out and A is really little yet. Hon. mention: I like Hey, That's My Fish but A is too young and B is not interested.
So let me talk about Ascension. Ascension is a bash-the-monsters game that has a very simply game play. The play reminds me of child-friendly card games like Qwitch: when we regularly played games with xanna, we used to open her card game book at a random page and play a game, and a lot of those games had a mechanic of 'draw a hand, play the cards, discard' which is exactly the mechanic here, so it feels comfortable and accessible, and the hit-the-monsters-buy-stuff-get-points aim is also fairly standard, but combining the two really works for me. I'm told by people who play Dominion that they two are very similar - I have never played Dominion.
I tend to choose a game for Date Night too, whereas Colin usually goes for a film (last night's choice was his, and we watched Fight Club, before that we had a few times in a row where we both wanted to watch the same thing) but two player games are good. Lord of the Rings is great for date night; we've played Keyflower for date night once and that worked, so we'll definitely do that again, Smash Up is awesome.
The prompt is quite specific, but I'd like to mention card games too. I love Bridge, which Colin introduced me to, but find it difficult to get enough practice and often muck up because of lack of familiarity. So I'd like more opportunities for that - when we were newly weds we'd semi-often have couples over for dinner and bridge. Now we have three bridge players in the house, it seems like it should be easier to just grab a fourth! Or fifth if we're playing somewhere that needs a parent to be watching the littles more closely. I'm definitely looking forward to Judith learning :) I'd like to play Mao more often, too, and have vague plans for late night Mao parties, which we managed a couple of times when away in the summer. And I miss the gin rummy which was the game I played most often as a teenager, even though my family version bears very little resemblance to the wikipedia version. We recently bought card holders but have yet to try Judith on gin rummy, which was one of the reasons I wanted them.
So let me talk about Ascension. Ascension is a bash-the-monsters game that has a very simply game play. The play reminds me of child-friendly card games like Qwitch: when we regularly played games with xanna, we used to open her card game book at a random page and play a game, and a lot of those games had a mechanic of 'draw a hand, play the cards, discard' which is exactly the mechanic here, so it feels comfortable and accessible, and the hit-the-monsters-buy-stuff-get-points aim is also fairly standard, but combining the two really works for me. I'm told by people who play Dominion that they two are very similar - I have never played Dominion.
I tend to choose a game for Date Night too, whereas Colin usually goes for a film (last night's choice was his, and we watched Fight Club, before that we had a few times in a row where we both wanted to watch the same thing) but two player games are good. Lord of the Rings is great for date night; we've played Keyflower for date night once and that worked, so we'll definitely do that again, Smash Up is awesome.
The prompt is quite specific, but I'd like to mention card games too. I love Bridge, which Colin introduced me to, but find it difficult to get enough practice and often muck up because of lack of familiarity. So I'd like more opportunities for that - when we were newly weds we'd semi-often have couples over for dinner and bridge. Now we have three bridge players in the house, it seems like it should be easier to just grab a fourth! Or fifth if we're playing somewhere that needs a parent to be watching the littles more closely. I'm definitely looking forward to Judith learning :) I'd like to play Mao more often, too, and have vague plans for late night Mao parties, which we managed a couple of times when away in the summer. And I miss the gin rummy which was the game I played most often as a teenager, even though my family version bears very little resemblance to the wikipedia version. We recently bought card holders but have yet to try Judith on gin rummy, which was one of the reasons I wanted them.
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I have more recs in this category if you're interested, all of which are fun for all-adult groups at GamesEvening but also suitable for Bethany:
Blokus: placing Tetris-shaped tiles according to simple rules (your pieces must touch each other at a corner and may not touch at an edge) and trying to get all yours out on the space-limited board.
Lemming - one of
Gravwell - this is like a simplified one-dimensional Robo Rally, but still fun for grown-ups. You have a hand of cards with a letter and number on, and everyone simultaneously plays one card. They execute in alphabetical letter order, and you move spaces equal to the number, in the direction towards the greatest number of other players' pieces, which might not be the direction you predicted.
Castellan - this is only 2-player by default, but you can buy two sets in opposite colours to make a 3-4-player game. There are 3D plastic pieces for building castle walls: long walls, short walls and turrets. (Kids like to play freeform with the pieces.) You play a card from hand, take the pieces depicted on it, and add them to the collaboratively-built castle; you get a point if you complete an enclosed room, so you don't want to leave a nearly-finished room for the next player.
Friends have also played Settlers of Catan and Hanabi with their kids of about this age, but I don't think Bethany's quite ready for either of those yet.
We find with Bethany there are games she's intellectually equal to, but can't manage emotionally, like games where you visibly thwart each other's goals, like Connect 4. But my impression of J and A is that they're more mature in that way, so that opens up a few more possibilities.
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We have Blokus and generally like it. Gravwell sounds fantastic and I'd like to give that a try.
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We have Settlers, and I nearly mentioned it but we haven't played it much - I initially bought Catan Junior, which we've played more, and in a small collection it didn't seem worth having both, so it was only as our collection grew that we acquired Settlers. I'm surprised about Hanabi, because we found it needed a lot of concentration and therefore discarded it for Friday night date night.
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(Our set is "Lemminge" but I thought I saw one at the Paulls' called Lemming; I thought it was a more recent international printing.)
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