Throwback: Guess Who?

Throwback: Guess Who? 

Overall Rating: 6 out of 10

Type: Board Game?

Suggest Ages: 6+

# of Players: 2 players

Playing Time: 20 minutes

Replay-ability: 7 out of 10

Expansions available: Nope

Cost: Approximately $17

 

I loved this game when I was younger. My sister and I would play over and over again. My favorite questions were "Do they have facial hair?" or "Do they wear a hat?" 

 

The object of the game is to figure out what character card the other person drew before they figure out yours. It's a simple game to learn and kids can really have a good time. I would recommend this game for anyone with children, though it is limited to two players. 

Imagination Station: Story War!

Imagination Station: Story War!

Overall Rating: 6 out of 10

Type: Party Game? (Cards)

Suggest Ages: 5+

# of Players: 3-8 players

Playing Time: 30 minutes

Replay-ability: 8 out of 10

Expansions available: 2

Cost: Approximately $17

 

As a creative writer, I'm always looking for games/activities that encourage people to be creative and imaginative. This game is simple: each player spins a tale based on cards they draw from two decks: the warrior deck and the item deck. The warrior they draw represents them in the story; they can use the item cards if they get into a story hole and can't find their way out. The "battles" take place on a chosen Battlefield that players can attempt to use to their advantage. The object of the game is to convince the player who is the judge that your tale is the best. 

This game offers a lot of freedom for the players to yarn whatever story they wish with whatever comes into their minds with the aid of the cards. This freedom is great for young children to exercise their imagination and to encourage problem solving skills, but the freedom also hinders (in my opinion) the end game. Because there are no rules about what makes a story the best and everything is all subjective, it can cause a bit of a squabble between players. 

I recommend this game for younger children and maybe as a classroom aid to help students learn about story telling, but I don't think I'd recommend it to older people, although some people in Amazon review have had success with it as a party game. I think it depends on the people who are playing what you really want out of the game. For me, it was too much effort to constantly devise different story threads out of the cards. Especially because gaming to me is about relaxing and having a good time, something that this game doesn't necessarily give you the luxury of doing because you're constantly battling.

Luck and Strategy: Carcassonne

Luck and Strategy: Carcassonne

Overall Rating: 9 out of 10

Type: Tabletop Game (tiles)

Suggest Ages: 8+

# of Players: 2-5 players

Playing Time: 35 minutes

Replay-ability: 8 out of 10

Expansions available: Yes, SO many, mini expansions, large expansions, etc.

Cost: Approximately $26

 

This game is my new obsession. My girlfriend bought it Friday (overpriced at a small business but Yay, small business!) and since then, we've played the game at least 25 times. It helps that the games are short--about a half hour. It's a quick game, and it's quick to learn, but it's easier to learn in a practice game rather than a layout all the rules before hand way. Although the rule instruction sheet is really readable and clear which is a blessing because some games have really confusing rule books.

In this game, players take turns placing tiles to form cities and roads. They can place meeples (the game pieces) on different features such as the cities, roads, monasteries, and gardens. (Farmer meeples can be placed on grass but will get to that later.) When completed or at the end of the game, these features give the players points. If a feature is completed, then the player scores the points and gets that meeple back.

The object of the game is just to earn more points than any other player.

Farmers are special meeple placements. These meeples are laid down flat to indicate that they are farmers. Farmers score 3 points for every completed city they are touching. So if a farmer's field touches 7 completed cities, that farmer would earn 21 points. Farmers are a big game changer and can be both frustrating and fun. If you're playing for the first time, you might not want to deal with the farmers, though my friends and I started with farmers and were fine.

This game is a great combination of luck (getting the tiles you need) and strategy (placing your meeples in the most effective spaces and cutting your opponents off from points). I really enjoy this game because you create the board every time you play which allows for different game play each time. And it's often hard to tell who is actually going win so you never really feel to discouraged about your position on the scoring board.

The scoring board can be very small depending on the number of players playing. So when we do one lap (after 50 points) we lay the scoring meeples flat and then if we lap again we place them into a sort of break dance position. This helps us remember where they really are in terms of points. We also like to throw the tiles into a hat and draw from there because sometimes drawing from stacks can seem not quite random enough.

I really recommend this game. There are also a lot of expansions available. If you're really interested in the expansions and the games, there are big box sets that come with a copy of Carcassonne and multiple expansions which could save you money.

Find those Resources: Settlers of Catan

Find those Resources: Settlers of Catan

Overall Rating: 8 out of 10

Type: Board Game

Suggest Ages: 8+

# of Players: 3-4 players

Playing Time: 90 minutes

Replay-ability: 6 out of 10

Expansions available: Yes, 5-6 players, also different versions

Cost: Approximately $37 

 

In Settlers of Catan, each player picks a place to station their settlements, the goal is to get resources. There are five resources: wood, wheat, ore, sheep, and brick. Players use these resources to build roads, more settlements, cities, and to buy development cards. 

The goal is to reach 10 victory points. Players do this by building settlements (1 point), cities (2 points), longest road (2 points), largest army (2 points), or playing other development cards. Once a player reaches 10 points, every other player takes their turn, if play gets back around to the original player, then they win. 

There is a robber function which activates when a player rolls a 7. Sometimes this happens frequently and sometimes not very much; it's all in the luck of the dice. When the robber is activated, the player that rolled the 7 gets to move the robber to whatever space they want and steal a card from a player that has a settlement or city adjacent to the place. If any player has more than seven cards, they must discard half of them. Ex. If player has ten cards, they must get rid of five of them. 

I played this game for the first time with my family over the weekend. It was fun and also frustrating. It's nice to play games that are luck based, but it's also not always that fun because there's nothing you can do to improve your game besides roll better, which is just difficult without luck. 

I would recommend this game. Though I do think it can be frustrating, especially if the robber is rolled too continuously because then everyone has to keep discarding and it's really difficult to make progress in the game. 

A Thousand Words: Dixit!

A Thousand Words: Dixit! 

Overall Rating: 6 out of 10

Type: Family Game

Suggest Ages: 8+

# of Players: 3-6 players

Playing Time: 30 minutes

Replay-ability: 5 out of 10

Expansions available: Yes?

Cost: Approximately $24

Dixit comes with a bunch of cards, guessing tokens, and board. In the game, a player looks at a card and comes up with a word or phrase that describes that card. The other player then turn in a card from their hand that also matches that description. 

Players get points based on how many people guess the correct card and if anyone chose their card instead. On version of the game that I played, the board had the scoring rules written on the board so that they were easy to remember. 

 

I can definitely see this game being a family game and also one that you can play with younger children because there's no reading involved. The replay-ability of the game is fairly low because you can only come up with so many descriptions for the cards, especially after you play a few times in a row. But I think the simplicity of the game makes up for that. 

 

Overall, I would recommend this game as a short game to play between longer games or if you don't have a lot of time. I also think this game would be great for teaching younger children to use their imagination and create stories out of pictures. 

Long Distance Gaming: Tabletop Simulator!

Long Distance Gaming: TableTop Simulator! 

So maybe it's just because I've been thinking about how crappy it's going to be when I move to graduate school and don't get to play boardgames with my girlfriend all the time, but I've recently been thinking about how to do long distance gaming.

Last week over spring break, Jess, Sam, Leah, and I skyped in our friend, Megan to play Betrayal at House on the Hill with us. It was okay, but we had to communicate the board to Megan by tilting the computer and pointing to certain areas and saying, "This is where you are; this is where the traitor is. You could go to the library if you wanted?" I feel like Megan probably just agreed with whatever we said so that the game went smoothly and probably didn't understand a good portion of what was going on.

So I was talking to one of my other friends, Joyce, about board games, and she introduced me to the idea of the tabletop simulator (which can be bought here for $15). Joyce and her long-distance boyfriend use the simulator to play games.

I haven't purchased the simulator yet, but I have played around with it on Joyce's computer. You can download different game packages to play with your friends as long as they also have the simulator. The physics of the simulator are very interesting.

For example, I player can flip the entire table and destroy the game set-up if they want to dramatically show how upset they are. The controls can be difficult to learn, but I think that the wonky physics are one of the best features for comedic affect.  

Overall, I would recommend this simulator to people who are really into board games/want to hang out with their friends long distance/like wonky physics weird computer stuff. I think it'll be a good way to communicate with my friends and a nice way to continue to play boardgames with my family and friends.

Mind Bending: Pentago

Mind Bending: Pentago
Overall Rating: 5 out of 10

Type: Board Game? Strategy Game? 

Suggest Ages: 6+ (That seems young though??)

# of Players: 2 players

Playing Time: 3-30 minutes

Replay-ability: 5 out of 10

Expansions available: No (Different Versions available: Multiple Player Game)

Cost: Approximately $38 

In Pentago, players attempt to get five of their marbles in a row. The version I played had only two players, one with white marbles and one with black marbles. The concept of the game is very simple; however, the game strategy is quite complex. Most of the complexity lies in turning one of the small squares. On their turn a player will place a marble into one of the four square quadrants and then rotate one of the quadrants 90 degrees. This turn changes the alignment of the marbles and can cause players to win or lose the game. 

This game is very compact and could travel well because the container holds all the marbles and only takes up a small, flat square of space. The replayability would probably drop dramatically after players learn the different strategies (kinda like Tic  Tac Toe). My girlfriend disagrees with me, she believe the game play would progress like Connect Four and no one would get tired of it. (But it's all speculation because we haven't played it enough times.) 

I am not very good at this game because it's a bit too much visualization for me to manage, but I think once I become more familiar with it, I could become a lot better at it. I think it could be a good game for children to learn strategy. Overall I think this game is really interesting. It's definitely not in my top five, but it's an interesting alternative to longer games and could have a much calmer game play than other competitive games. 

[I will post photos later.]

Treasure Grabbing: Forbidden Island

Treasure Grabbing: Forbidden Island

Overall Rating: 7 out of 10

Type: Cooperative, Board Game

Suggest Ages: 10+ (Probably could do a couple years younger though??)

# of Players: 2-4

Playing Time: 30 minutes

Replay-ability: 7 out of 10

Expansions available: No

Cost: Approximately $17 (AFFORDABLE!)

Forbidden Island is a co-operative game designed by Matt Leacock (also the designer of Pandemic). The game mechanics of Forbidden Island are very similar to Pandemic. Their are different roles with special abilities, one way to win, and the players are fighting against the game.

The different player roles. Special abilities listed on cards. My favorite is the Explorer who can move and shore diagonally!

Each player can take up to 3 actions during their turn. These actions can be movement (only up, down, left, or right: NOT diagonally), shoring tiles (to "shore up" means to un-flood tiles), give a player on the same tile a treasure card, or to capture a treasure. After their 3 actions, the player draws two treasure cards (hand limit = 5 cards) and then the player draws flood cards equal to the water level (similar to infection level in Pandemic).

To the left is the water level meter and to the right is the flood deck with a few discard flood cards.

At the start of the game you lay down the tiles to form the island, making a four by four square and then placing two additional tiles on each side of the square. You then flip over the first six flood cards in the flood deck and flood the corresponding tiles. You can begin the game on any number of water levels from novice to legendary. Players also start with two treasure cards. Some treasure cards represent the elements and others are special event cards that cannot be traded. These cards can be played at anytime; they are the Sandbags card (which is used to sandbag an island) and the Helicopter Lift card (which flies a pawn or pawns on the same tile to a different tile, BUT this card is also used to win the game).

The very start of the game with six flooded tiles. Also the starting shape.

The game after a few tiles have disappeared. Oh no!

Also in the treasure deck, there are Water Rising card. When these cards are drawn, the players move up the water level (drawing more flood cards each turn) AND reshuffle the discarded flood cards and place them on top of the flood deck. Water Rising cards are the game mechanic that make sections of the island disappear. If players lose their way to the Fool's Landing tile, they lose. If the water level gets too high, they lose. If a pawn is standing on a tile that sinks and all the tiles around them have also sunk and they have no way back to the rest of the island and they drown, everybody loses. (Thanks, Matt Leacock!)

All the different kinds of treasure cards!

The treasures!

How to Win:  Players attempt to steal four pieces of treasure: The Earth Stone, The Statue of the Wind, The Crystal of Fire, and The Ocean's Chalice. To steal a piece of treasure, one player must have four matching treasure cards with the corresponding element and then go to corresponding treasure tile. So to steal the The Earth Stone, a player must have four earth treasure cards and be on either The Temple of the Moon tile or The Temple of the Sun tile. It then costs the player one more action to discard those four cards and actually receive The Earth Stone.

Once all four treasure are captured, the players must all make it back to Fool's Landing and use a Helicopter Lift card to get off the island. Then they win!

Overall, I really like this game. It's simple and quick. You can play multiple games in a row because your role changes, the island never stays the same, and you can experiment with trying harder levels. The game isn't as much fun to me as Pandemic but it has the same feel to it. I think it could be really good for teaching 10-12 year olds teamwork? (But I don't hang out with children very much so maybe that's a lie?) I also adore the tin it comes in because it packs everything up SO nicely! And I like how affordable this game. It's definitely worth the $17.

Say Yes to perfect organization! And an adorable tin!

No time for the Tulips: Dutch Blitz

No time for the Tulips: Dutch Blitz

Overall Rating: 6 out of 10

Type: Card Game

Suggest Ages: 8+

# of Players: 2-4

Playing Time: Dependent on Players/Can go to certain score or number of rounds

Replay-ability: 5 out of 10

Expansions available: Yes, Cost = Approximately $10 (Not really Necessary!)

Cost: Approximately $10

 

Dutch Blitz is a pretty simple game. Each player gets a deck of cards that has a unique symbol on the back. The count out 10 cards to put in their "Blitz Pile" and flip the tenth card so that the color and number are facing up. Then they place three more cards face up next to their pile. These three cards act as a card stream. 

 

 

The object of the game is to be the first person to get rid of their blitz pile. When the game begins any player with a #1 card throws it into the middle of the game. Players then play on these number 1's starting with to going to 10. The card played on top of the number 1 must be a number 2 card of the same color. When a player plays the number 10 card, they flip the card over to signal that no more cards can be played on that pile. 

 

Players play the top card of their blitz pile or a card in their stream first. If there is no place on the table for any of these cards then the player picks up their deck (this is the deck of cards that was left after counting ten cards into the blitz pile and three cards into the stream). The player counts off three cards from the top, and flips these cards over on the table in front of them, if they cannot play the top card, they flip three more, etc. If they can play the top card, they do so, and then they either play the next top card or flip three more over. 

 

 

 

Players also have the option to stack their cards. Cards can only be stacked on top of the other cards in the card stream. Cards must go in descending number order AND must be stacked in a pattern of Boy-Girl-Boy-Girl or Girl-Boy-Girl-Boy. (There are girls and boys in the upper corner of the cards.) Once a card is stacked on top of a card stream card, the bottom card cannot be played until the player can remove the stacked card. 

 

The two stacked cards are descending number order (3, 2) and Boy-Girl order.

 Each player gets 1 point for every card they play in the middle of the table (ie the stacks from 1-10) and a NEGATIVE 2 points for every card left in their blitz pile. The negative points are why it is important to get rid of the blitz pile. When a player does get rid of their blitz pile, they yell "Blitz!" and that round of the game is over. You then tally points. The game can be played to a certain point count (we usually play to 100 pts) or a certain number of rounds. 

 

There are NO TURNS in this game. Every player is playing at the same time which means that even if you've been waiting for someone to play the green 3 in the middle of the table so that you can play your green 4, someone might beat you to it or not play it on purpose so that you can't do anything. 

 

This is probably the most annoying and frustrating aspect of the game. (I can no longer play with my S.O. because I get too angry. Oops.) But otherwise this game can be a quick break from other games or a game played when you don't have much time. I would not recommend this game for people who are sore losers or become frustrated easily. I would also not recommend buying the expansion pack because they used the same symbols but mixed up the colors which could make it hard for you to separate out the cards to determine points when the round ends. (By same symbols I mean someone has the original red wagon and another person has the expansion yellow wagon. So it would be easy to just think, "Oh, I have the wagon" and then forget which wagon.) The expansion also runs a little higher in cost than the normal game so you might as well buy another deck of the same cards and mark them with marker or some other words to distinguish them. 

 

Confusing Expansion Pack Colors and Symbols. (Left is original; Right is expansion.)

I was introduced to this game by my friend, Leah. Her whole family usually plays (I'm assuming in rounds?) during the holidays. I'm sure it's super intense. I like this game a lot, but I generally prefer more chill cooperative games. 

Your Ticket out of Monopoly-ville: Ticket to Ride

Your Ticket out of Monopoloy-ville: Ticket to Ride

Overall Rating: 7 out of 10

Type: Board game

Suggest Ages: 8+

# of Players: 2-5

Playing Time: 30-60min+

Replay-ability: 6 out of 10

Expansions available: 1910 Expansion Pack (Cost = $15)

Cost: Approximately $36

Ticket to Ride is train building game filled with strategy and little geography (though the cities are not necessarily in the right spot--that is Chicago is sort of in Indiana). There are 5 different colors to play (black, blue, green, yellow, and red) each player receives 45 plastic train cars in their color to start the game. They also receive 3 route cards of which they have to keep at least two, and four colored train cards. 

Route Cards!

Route cards have a brown backing and contain two cities that you have to connect with your trains and a number amount that you receive at the end of the game for making that route. If you don't make the route, you get negative points! 

The colored train cards are used to claim parts of a route. There are eight different colored cards plus wild cards. During each turn, you can either draw two colored train cards, one wild train card, take more routes, or claim parts of your route. 

If a section of a route has three yellow boxes, a player must play three yellow train cards or a combination of wild train cards and yellow train cards to claim that section. If they do this, that is the only thing they can do per turn. If there are a number of gray boxes, say two, then a player can play any color of train cards but it must be two matching for example to two blue cards or two green cards, etc. 

Usually you want to try to complete a 20 point route because these are some of the longest, highest value routes, but you can complete a lot of smaller routes if you'd prefer. When picking your first routes, it's best to choose routes that you can complete with one line of trains. For example, try to avoid perpendicular routes or parallel routes because that makes it harder to complete the routes and uses up more of your limited train supply. 

There is also a bonus of 10 points awarded to the player with the longest continuous train. I really like to finish my routes early and then work on getting the longer train. It makes me feel accomplished even if I don't end up winning. 

Overall, this game is easy to learn, fun to play, and not as stressful as other board games. Though the Europe version (which I also own) is more complex and more stressful with tunnels and ferry routes. I like this game a lot and would recommend it. I have played at least 25 times (probably more) and I still really love it. I think it might be time for me to get the expansion pack because I now know all the routes and that's a somewhat unfair advantage. I do think this game has a learning curve as you learn the strategy that works best for you, but it's worth it! 

It's like a Scary Movie: Betrayal at the House on the Hill

It's like a Scary Movie: Betrayal at the House on the Hill

Overall Rating: 9 out of 10

 

Type: Board game, Co-operative with defector

Suggest Ages: 12+

# of Players: 3-6

Playing Time: 1hour+

Replay-ability: 9 out of 10

Expansions available: Not Officially (Some Unofficial talk here)

Cost: Approximately $35

 

So if you like co-operative games, but you miss the competitive aspect of non-coop, then you might want to look into co-operative games that have a defector. In Betrayal at the House on the Hill, all of the players begin on the same team. You're a group of explorers finding omens, events, and items in an old haunted house. Until the time when "the Haunt" begins, at which point a player becomes a traitor or there are monsters or both! This game can be pretty spooky, given the haunted house, creepy event cards, horrifying items (including weapons like the blood danger), and even worse omen cards!

The game starts with three pieces of the board the basement landing, the upstairs landing, and three rooms on the main floor: the entrance hall (where all players start), the foyer, and the connecting downstairs landing to the upstairs landing. In the beginning of the game there is no way for a player to get to the basement, and even once a player makes it to the basement, there is often not a way for the player to get out of the basement. This happens because there are multiple room tiles that cause players to take a one-way trip to the basement.

Room tiles are what build the game board. Each player can explore house in whatever direction they choose as long as they follow the number of moves they have. You explore new rooms but going through doorways of the house into rooms that have not get been discover. You then find a room title in the stack marked accordingly (ground, upper, basement) and place it on the board so that it's door and the door you entered through are connected.

The basement.

Room tiles usually have special symbols on them that tell you which card to draw (event, item, or omen). The play continues this way with players drawing items and decreasing and increasing their player stats according to the cards and room tiles until the Haunt begins.

Each die has two blank sides, two sides with one, and two sides with two.

The Haunt begins when a player fails a haunt roll. After each Omen Card draw, the player has to make a haunt role. The player roles six dice to determine whether the haunt will happen. The player must role equal to or greater than the number of omens out on the board in order to avoid the haunt. For example, if there are four omens on the board, a player needs to role a four or higher.

Once the haunt begins, there is a traitor attempting to murder/change/whatever the other player either alone or with a group of monsters or the traitor turns into a monster. There 50 different haunts outline in the traitor's guide and the survival guide of the game. Once the haunt occurs, the traitor leaves to read about their objectives and the heroes stay to talk about their objectives. The heroes have to be careful not to give away information to the traitor or vise versa because neither party knows the full story.

Overall, this game is super fun to play. There's a horror-movie-esque feel, but even if you don't particularly enjoy horror movies, it's still worth a shoot, especially with the right people. You can play in character if you want and it makes it that much more fun to make up how the people arrived at the house together and how they are all related and what their motivations are. But if you're not into doing that, then it's just as fun to simply play the game!

The replay-ability of this game is crazy! There are 50 different haunt scenarios, the game board is never the same, and the characters are great. I love learning about the new haunts and trying to figure out what is going to happen next.

Just a note though: There are a lot of punch out tokens, so you might want to have some Ziploc bags ready when you open this game. That's probably the only downside I see for this game.

Save the World Together: Pandemic

February 10, 2014

Save the World Together: Pandemic

Overall rating: 8 out of 10

Type: Board game, Co-operative

Suggest Ages: 8+

# of Players: 2-4

Playing Time: 45min+

Replay-ability: 7 out of 10

Expansions available: Yes

Cost: Approximately $40

 

Introducing, Co-operative games! Co-operative games are games in which everyone playing (or most people playing) are working together to defeat the game. These games are the best for many reasons. You can play them with sore losers, people who always win, and people who are nervous about learning new games because the sore losers can't be upset about the game, an object winning, the always-winners only win if you do, and the nervous people don't have to feel like they're playing alone against people who are already better than them. 

I really recommend this game to everyone. Co-operative games build relationships instead of destroying them... And also I think this game would be great for teaching (older--8+) children teamwork, listening skills, and strategy. (We all know that even adults need to relearn these skills! Myself included.) The reason I list listening skills is because the rules explicitly state that members have to agree about certain actions before other players can take them. 

So what is Pandemic? 

The premise of Pandemic is that every members is apart of a team of science/health related individuals who are trying to save the world from 4 diseases. These diseases are represented by different colored disease cubes (red, blue, yellow & black). Each of these diseases attacks different sections of the board. For example, the yellow disease is located in southern USA, South America, and Africa.

From this angle, you can see how the diseases are located in different areas. You can also see the cure vials.

 When a city has three disease cubes (like Santiago does in the photo above), there is the risk of an "Outbreak". An outbreak occurs when a city that already has three disease cubes gets pulled from the "infection deck" again. Santiago is probably the best place for an outbreak to happen because the mountains prevent it from being connected to any other city except Lima. An outbreak causes the "outbreak counter" to go up one space. If more than seven outbreaks occur, the game is lost. The outbreak also means that any city connected to the outbreak city receives one cube of that disease color. In the case of Santiago, only Lima would get a cube. 

Here is a view of the entire board. The green cards are the "infection deck" that cause cubes to be place on different cities each turn. The Outbreak counter is to the left. The infection rate counter is under the infection deck. And the blue cards are the "cure deck."

Each turn: each player has four actions per turn. They can move to different cities, remove disease cubes, build research stations, give/take cards from other players, and/or cure a disease. Each player has a specific role that comes with special abilities. For example, the Medic can remove all the disease cubes from one city for one action and remove all disease cubes of a cured disease by simply entering that city. He's (probably) the most helpful role, but everyone gets a special ability. 

To win the game, you have to cure all four disease. There is only one way to win, but there are multiple ways to lose. This idea seems to be common to co-operative gaming. I think the idea is that if there are multiple people working one problem then the problem has to be more difficult. Anyway, you lose pandemic if 1) there are more than seven outbreaks, 2) the cure deck runs out of the cards before you can cure the diseases, or 3) you run out of disease cubes.  

 It is VERY important to read all of the rules! My friends and I played this game wrong for so long because we neglected to read everything. (Duh!) But now we play it right and still love it! 

If you play this game and decide you love it, you can share that love with the game creator, Matt Leacock, on Twitter. I tweeted at him, and he actually replied!! 

You can also see this game played on YouTube with Wil Wheaton on his TableTop Series. 

If you have any questions, feel free to comment below!

Extreme Babysitting: Evil Baby Orphanage

February 4, 2015

Extreme Babysitting: Evil Baby Orphanage

Rating: 6 out of 10 

Type: Card

Suggest Ages: 13+

# of Players: 3-6

Playing Time: 15min+

Replay-ability: 5 out of 10

Expansions available: Yes

Cost: Approximately $15

I should start by saying that this game isn't for everyone. In order to truly like the game, you have to be willing to embrace the bizarre dark humor. The premise of the game is that each player is a Time Nanny who uses their ability to travel back in time to adopt evil babies. For example, the Baby Deck is made up of evil babies ranging from baby Hitler to baby Guy Fawkes. They adopt these evil babies before they grow up and become horrible people in the hopes that they can turn them into less horrible people. (Nature vs. Nurture, maybe?)

There are two decks for this game. One deck is the Baby Deck which is made up of all the evil babies. Each baby has a different set of actions that it takes if it is unsupervised during a player's turn. The most common of these actions are Bite, Bully, Grab, Creep, and/or Babble. Although some cards have no unsupervised actions and some have special unsupervised actions such as the Unabomber who allows you to use your good toys are bad toys. (We'll get to toys a little later.) 

The unsupervised actions are show by the different symbols within the circles or with text explaining special actions. Due to blurry photo the babies from left to right: Robespierre, Joseph Stalin, Lizzie Borden, and Elizabeth Bathory.

The second deck is the Nanny Deck which contains special nanny cards. One card, the "Trail of Cookies" allows players to lure a baby away from another player. Another, the "Musical Chairs" lets a player choose either another player or themselves and whoever they choose has to place all of their babies under the baby draw pile and select new babies from the top of the draw pile. This card can be dangerous to play because the player could draw higher mischief point babies and be closer to winning the game. (I'm getting to the winning, I promise!)

Special Nanny Cards and also two "bad toys": Sippycup of the Damned.

But first, the toys! Good toys such as the "puppy-sized elephant" allow a nanny to supervise their babies, nullifying their unsupervised action. For example, Lizzie Borden is a biter baby but when you give her the puppy-sized elephant, she does not bite during that turn. Supervising is an important step because it allows you to keep your babies or prevent your babies from helping other orphanages. 

So how do you win? A nanny wins when she/he has ten mischief points at the beginning of their turn. Each baby card has a set number of mischief points, signified by the number in the top right corner of the card. It can be tricky to win because the other players have all of their turns to knock down your score and steal your babies.  

This a typical hand of cards. This player has 6 mischief points, three good toys, and two special nanny toy cards that let me steal a certain type of baby from their opponents.

Overall, this game is very fun and quirky. The art is fitting and adorable. I wouldn't recommend this game for younger players because of the violence displayed with guns, but for a mature group of people with the right humor, it's a great game. The game is often short (though it can stretch for a while if all the players remain on their toes) and so this game is a nice break from more complex, intensive strategy games. It also has a nice variety of cards so that the replay-ability is better than some other games. I have played multiple rounds of this game in one night without getting bored or annoyed because you receive different babies and nanny cards and so the game is altered. 

If you have any questions, feel free to post in the comments below!

Goodbye, Monopoly!

Introduction

Monday, January, 26th 2014

Say goodbye to Monopoly. I know you've had fun riding on the Reading Railroad, passing Go, and buying out properties, but I have had it with the greedy, math-heavy, take-forever-and-a-day game play that is Monopoly.

Since I outgrew Mouse Trap, my favorite game as a child, I have been searching for exciting games that I can play with my friends and family. 

I will be using this blog to review various board games. I plan to talk about some co-operative games, some games that are mostly cards (though not standard card games), and other games that require some strategy. 

My hope is that I will convert some people away from Monopoly and get them hooked on other board games. Below is picture with some of the games I will be reviewing later on.

These are some awesome games. I promise.

If you have any suggestions of game you would like to see, please comment!