All the Games on Our Shelves

 As I mentioned in my previous post, Dominion is a game that our family latched onto quite a few years ago and played over and over and over and over.  It's a deck-building game, and you have a variety of sets of cards to choose from each time you play, so there is a lot of variety possible.  We purchased quite a few expansions (pictured below) and had fun mixing and matching with that.  In the last year or two I haven't been able to get my boys to play this game.  I'm not sure if we just over-played it early on, or if this has to do with Caleb generally having a masterful winning strategy that leaves us all waiting while he takes his massively long turns (which perhaps he also is bored with).  Two weeks ago I had opportunity to go to a colleague's house for a game day.  The group hadn't played this game, so I brought it along.  I was happy for a chance to play again.  It's definitely a good game, and it even won the Spiel des Jahres Kritikerpreis in 2009.

 I had fun playing a nice selection of games this afternoon [actually two weeks ago now that I'm finally getting around to finishing the post!] with math department colleagues and friends.  I also just like being at Ross's house, as his house is filled with both things I love most: books and games, books and games!  I arrived a bit late, and they were already playing The Red Dragon Inn (which is not - yet - on our shelves).  It looks like a pretty fun game, but I don't know if my family would go for a game based on drinking.  I may see if Ross will let me borrow it so we can give it a try. We also played Dominion , which is the game I took along.  It's a game that I love and that we used to play all the time as a family.  I'm not sure if it's that we just played it way too much or if it's that Caleb has developed a killer strategy that leaves the rest of us just waiting  .  .  .  and waiting  .  .  .  to lose.  I was really glad to have a chance to play

 Stick Around has been sticking around on our shelves for decades.  It's from the Great American Trading Company, the board game publisher that put out many of our favorite games that we've been playing since the early days or our marriage.  We hadn't played this for a long time - partly because it's a 2-player game, and we often have our sons at home and are playing with a larger group.  I may have subconsciously avoided it a bit because it's a territory game, and David generally dominates those entirely. Coincidentally, I won the first game tonight decisively.  We went on to play best two out of three.  Above are our first few moves. I played red.  David played yellow.  The first player cannot place in such a way that the stick touches or crosses the central intersection.  The goal is to be the last player to be able to place a piece.  As we were playing, I started feeling like my brain was thinking about lessons I'd been teaching lately relating to pari