All the Games on Our Shelves

  We've had an extended time with extended family, involving four generations staying at our house, so obviously a lot of gaming has taken place.  We started with Mind the Gap , which some of us northern California folks REALLY like and thought would be a particularly appropriate game with which to start the family visit -- a generation-based trivia game.  Not everyone was as much of a fan, but that's OK, as we certainly have plenty of other games from which to choose!  Below is a picture of family members who were gathered together; the group ranges in age from 0 to 85. Next game is one that is a time-honored tradition in our family: Rook .  EVERYONE likes Rook ! Qwirkle is a favorite of Al and Jo, our Michigan guests, and do they ever know how to maximize their play!! Then a card game called Dutch that our middle son learned in Thailand, ironically enough. The next one, Skull King , is a favorite of David's.  This game is very similar to the games Up an...

  Yesterday morning I was doing some cleaning in the game room, and I saw this game on the shelf and thought rather sadly, "Well, it's going to be LONG time before that game ever gets played again!"  It's a party game that we usually play with a large group, and given the current pandemic that's not something that's going to be happening any time soon!  Later that evening I suggested we play Upwords (since I don't have any games starting with a U on this blog yet).  David suggested Karuba ("that jungle game").  Others were suggested, and then someone said, "Why don't we play Catch Phrase ?  I bet we can do that with four people."  I couldn't believe it.  We hadn't played this in months - probably not for well over a year - and I'd been thinking just that morning that we wouldn't be playing it any time soon.  You can tell by the condition of the box that it has been pulled off the shelf and played a lot in the past....

  Cities and Knights of Catan is an expansion to Settlers of Catan .  It's been on our shelves for a LONG time (probably as long ago as 1998 when it first came out), but it's also been a long time since we played it; it's probably been over a decade at this point.  Normally if we're going in this "direction," we just grab the original Catan off the shelf.  I do remember playing this one quite a bit, though, in the early days, especially with my brother-in-law and sister-in-law Tony and Stacey.  I think this expansion is a very nice addition to the original game, but over the years David has tended to get more and more tired of extra complication, which is probably part of why we haven't played this in a long time.  Of course we have lots of other options of games to play too, so it's not JUST that.  Among the things this expansion adds are knights (and I've always been one for chivalry, so I'm all about that!) and barbarians and walled cities....

  This game came to our shelves via Jacob's last birthday, four months ago!  Yes, I'm going to continue to grouse a bit about the busyness of this semester!  I did take 2 days fully off over the 4-day Thanksgiving holiday, and gaming commenced!  This is a cooperative game, and I am a fan of cooperative games.  I like to work together with my family members rather than against them.  I'm eager to play this game a second time (Christmas break?) now that I have an idea of what the elements are.  Despite being intrepid gamers, we went with a pretty easy setting for our first game, and we won quite easily.  I think we will ratchet it up a notch or two (or more) next time we play.   Here we are getting it out of the box for the first time and taking a good look at the board. Basically the idea is that we are crew members of a besieged ship, and we are dealing with hostile aliens in the ship, damage to our shields, hostile alien ships attacking from...

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...