All the Games on Our Shelves

 This will be a very short post, as I have already written about this game, Deep Sea Adventure, in my bonus post from July 19:  Deep Sea Adventure in Ripon .  We played this game at our friends' house, and I liked it so much that I put it on my birthday list  .  .  .  and since it wasn't "on our shelves" at that time I couldn't officially count it.  My son Jacob got it for me as a gift (along with a box of Junior Mints - yea!).  I find I'm still trying to work out the strategy for this game.  No matter how careful I try to be, I still end up drowning most of the time and losing the treasure I had collected (though I try not to delve to greedily and too deep!).  I've only ever played it as a 4-player game, and I don't know if it makes a difference to have a different number of players.  This is my first week of school, so I had to drop out last night after one game. David, Jacob and Caleb played a 3-player game after I bowed out, and I was so busy wi

 This game, Walt Disney's Mary Poppins Carousel Game , has been on my shelf since I was 5 years old.  Today is my birthday, and during the dinner celebration I was asked about my memories of birthdays past.  As kids we didn't often have "friend birthdays;" normally it was immediate family or extended to aunts, uncles and cousins.  I do remember, though, that for my 5th birthday my mom hosted this big party including all the neighborhood kids.  A boy named Doug who lived across the street a few doors down gave me this game.  (This might be proof-positive that I NEVER get rid of games!)  I'm sure I haven't played this since my age was in the single digits!  But when I mentioned it over dinner, one of my boys said, "We should play that when we get home!"  And so, we did.  It just seemed especially appropriate tonight.  We each chose a character and got started.  It's basically a matter of rolling dice and moving ahead, but there are some spaces

 My dear son Caleb couldn't quite wait for my birthday to have me open my gift, the game of Imhotep .  Since my semester begins Monday, just before my birthday, he felt it would be a good idea to give it to me on the weekend so we would have time to play.  Good idea!  I had never heard of this game before, but I like it, and I think we all did, based on just one play.  A great deal of this game depends on timing.  There are multiple ways of earning points, all of which have to do with bringing building materials to port on ships.  The trick is that you can only take one action on a turn, so you can place a block on a ship or use a card to do a special action or move a ship to port (if the ship is full enough) or you can re-supply from the quarry.  Since any player may move a ship, even if his building materials aren't on it, someone might move your ship to a port that affords you fewer points that turn or overall.  This causes for some intense offense/defense choices.  The

 I feel like I keep writing this, but "here's another game we haven't played in a while."  I supposed that's bound to happen when playing all the games on the shelves, since playing current favorites repeatedly is a natural tendency.  I've been wanting to get back to classics for a while though - or at least for the past few weeks, since watching the documentary Alpha Go  (which I highly recommend to any game enthusiast).  I've labeled this a classic, as it is one of the oldest known board games.  Backgammon  is thought to have originated in Mesopotamia and has been played for approximately 5000 years. I figure if a game has that much staying power it's gotta be good.  Much as I love Seven Wonders  and Splendor and Karuba , I'm not sure they'll still be played 5000 years from now, but I imagine Backgammon will continue to be played!  I've just posted a few pictures from various points in the game.  Above, David has hit one of my chec

 I've had it in mind for quite a while to get this old classic off the shelf.  Last night David asked us all if we wanted to play a game, but he didn't say which game.  We said yes, and Tripoly is what he surprised us with.  This isn't standard fare these days in our household, as we're usually more about Seven Wonders , King of Tokyo , Stone Age , etc., but a fun time was definitely had by all.  I remember playing this quite a lot as a child and really loving it.  It's basically three games in one.  The first stage involves possible bidding on an extra hand (the "dead hand") and collecting chips based on the cards in your hand.  The second stage is poker, which consists of making the best poker hand you can of the 10 or 11 cards in your hand (4-player) and betting.  The third stage is Michigan Rummy, and here the first person out of cards take the kitty and also receives one chip from each other player for each card remaining in their hand.  It's a

When Caleb suggested we play King of Tokyo tonight, I was sure I had posted about this game already.  We were all surprised to find I hadn't.  It's a game we play reasonably often (or so we thought!).  It's quirky  .  .  .  in a good way.  All players are basically monsters fighting for control of Tokyo.  During set-up you choose which monster you want to be (see below), and then you battle it out with the other monsters.  There are two possible win conditions, that of killing all the other monsters or that of being the first to win 20 victory points.  We had so much fun with this game tonight that we just couldn't put it away and played 3 times in a row! The first player to roll a claw on the dice during his turn ends up in Tokyo.  The monster in Tokyo is in a position to attack all other monsters with his dice rolls, but he is also hit by everyone else's rolls.  Monsters can't heal while in Tokyo, but they gain victory points for staying in Tokyo. You