All the Games on Our Shelves

I cannot believe I hadn't written about this game yet.  We've played it so many times since I began this blog.  I only post games that we are playing for the first time since the inception of this blog, and we play this game so much that I and the rest of the family just assumed I had posted about it already!  Despite its edgy, punny name, it's an elegant game - elegant in its simplicity.  It's also very fast paced.  It can bring about a lot of laughter as things get pretty heated (when the stealing begins), but it can also get pretty frustrating and feel a bit personal when you're the one getting stolen from all the time - never getting a chance to "cover your assets."  It's OK, though, because it goes so fast that you can just play another round, and chances are the the tables will turn on someone else, and you'll come out on top! The photo above is of what I was dealt to begin the game.  The fact that I had pairs of cards was really SWEE...

I don't know that we'd ever played standard Dominos with this set.  I know we've played the Mexican Train version of dominoes and that years ago we went through a short phase where we were pretty hooked on that.  I had played standard Dominos (or seen it played) at my grandfather's house when I was a kid.  Yesterday, Caleb, who had just learned Dominos from friends at a youth leadership retreat, asked if we wanted to play.  This was a fun game to relearn.  Classics always appeal to me!  (And the dominoes have such a good feel to them as well.)  Though this is a double-15 set, we played only a double-6 version.  We had to use a double-15 as a double-1, however, since I took a domino to my office as a demo for a math problem, and it has stayed there ever since.  If you pay attention as you look at the pictures, you'll see a double-15 where a double-1 should be.  Other than this, I'm mostly going to let the pictures speak for themselves...