All the Games on Our Shelves

  Anthony brought this game with him when he and his family headed up north to our place for Christmas break.  We enjoyed it so much that David promptly ordered one for us.  The package arrived today, and we just finished playing our first game together.  It's a good combination of strategy and luck, though somewhat heavier on strategy, I'd say.  We are pleased with the quality of it - the feel and look of the tiles and gems, the solid box that folds over and closes magnetically, etc.  Unfortunately, ours arrived with one side of the box torn in two places.  I'm not sure how that could have happened, as it was well-packed and was sealed in it's original plastic wrapper.  We thought about returning it, but we'd enjoyed it so much that we didn't have the patience to send it back and wait for another one, so we're just taping up the tears.  Here are the opening few moves to our first game. You begin with 5 tiles, and you draw-up again after your...

The heart of me absolutely loves and adores games of pure strategy, but I don't often play them.  I think I'm often looking more for entertainment than for mental exercise these days, and maybe I simply like it when games include some chance elements so that I don't have to take full responsibility for falling behind or losing.  I also think that because I'm a mathematician people have expectations of me being able to absolutely crush my competition with games of pure strategy such as Chess and Go, so playing them can feel more like being in a pressure cooker than like any sort of enjoyment.  Given this sense, then if I win, it's just expected, and if I lose I've REALLY blown it!  Anyway  .  .  .  it was more than time to grab a game of pure strategy off the shelf, and so out came Octi .  David and I have played it twice in the last two days, and I sense that we haven't explored anything near its full potential yet.  The wins came quit...

 It has been way, way, WAY too long since we've played a not-yet-posted game from our shelves!  It's been too long since I've played pretty much anything, honestly.  I'm on sabbatical, and my college is sure getting its money's worth out of me given how hard I work at sabbatical studies!  Anyway  .  .  .  this is a GREAT game.  It could be that I enjoyed it that much more, being my first recreation in a while, but I actually requested to play two back-to-back games and would have liked to play more because I felt immediately addicted to it.  It's pretty fast-paced.  Also, everyone plays at the same time, so you're never waiting for anyone.  There are lots of options even in the basic set-up, but the game comes with what I would consider built-in expansions, so there's a lot of variety already without having to buy another box of stuff.  I lost the first game by a significant margin, but I tied my son in the second game a...

  Just One is a game that was added to our shelves yesterday as a Christmas gift. It is the winner of the 2019 Spiel de Jahres. We are already addicted to it; this is particularly true of David who keeps asking to play it.  I think we've played it 7 times in the last two days (and that's despite other games, a jigsaw puzzle, Christmas dinner, and having two toddlers in the house!).  It's definitely a good party game, but it does only include as many as 7 players.  The picture below is of Caleb explaining the rules for our first go at it.  This was after our Christmas dinner - rather a small party this year, but always good to be with family, whoever can make it!  And with us, games are always involved!  This is a cooperative game, which is something I always appreciate.  Each player takes a turn having the word card in front of him/her.  The playing boards are shaped in a way that functions as an easel, and the player with the card sets...

 OK, it's really ridiculous that it's been very nearly 2 months since we played a "NEW" game to count from our shelves.  To be fair, mid-to-late semester is super busy for me and my husband in our particular teaching jobs.  But enough of that!  Trumpet is an AWESOME game, so much so that when I hauled out my camera to record it tonight, everyone was SURE that it was already on the blog; shockingly, it wasn't.  It's a great game - one that we used to play much more frequently, especially with our friends Chuck and Sue, but it's kind of taken a back seat for our family to more recent pure strategy games such as Stone Age , Seven Wonders , Splendor , etc.  I'm honestly not sure whether to classify this as a card game or a board game.  It does have a board, so I guess, technically, it's a board game. But it plays so much like a standard trump card game - like Hearts , Spades , Pinochle , etc. - that it seems like a pure card game, so I'm categ...

 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 Kriti...

So, the family played this without me early in the weekend last weekend when I was grading mid-terms and had no time for gaming, but I got them to play it again later when I was able to join in.  We are up to a 95-game count with this one, and nowhere near the end of the "Games on Our Shelves!"  This game is very simple, yet fun.  The object  .  .  .  well, the object is to get the most points  .  .  .  but getting "qwirkles" (all one shape of all different colors or all six colors with the same shape) really helps with that, since you get an additional six points for doing so!  In order to place tiles, you need to match color or shape (without matching both).  It's a little bit like Scrabble, in that you have a number of tiles in front of you (in this case 6) that you can use on a turn - and that you have to use what is already on the board as you add.  Instead of making words, you are making strings that are al...

I can't imagine a better game than Carcassonne to have as our milestone 75th post; on the other hand, I can't believe we played 74 other games before we got to this classic!  We've had this game and a couple of (the many existing) expansions for quite a while, and all the pieces are mixed together, so we'll count this as one game.  We decide each time we play whether or not to play by all the rules of both of our expansions or to limit things a bit - as we feel the house rules should be for any given day.  In all the years we've had Carcassonne it hasn't lost any of its appeal for us. I don't think I'd mentioned this on the blog yet, but I ALWAYS play green.  Not only is it my favorite color, but I've played it so much that I get confused if someone else plays green.  I will, however, give way if a guest is playing and would be broken-hearted to not be able to play green.  (Hosts should be gracious in that way, right?)  The picture below i...