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.]