All the Games on Our Shelves

 For this milestone post we have The Game of Wolf .  As it says on the box, you want to "choose your pack wisely."  This is basically a two-team trivia game, but the teams can change from round to round.  This game can be played by 4 to 12 players.  To begin, one player is The Wolf, and the player to his left is the reader.  A card consisting of 5 items under the same topic comes up each round, and the first thing the reader does is to state the category.  The Wolf then decides whether to choose a pack member (or two if there are six or more players) or to play as a Lone Wolf.  Once the decision has been made, the 5 items on the card are read out.  All players that are not The Wolf or part of his pack play against The Wolf/Pack.  Both teams write their answers on the boards provided, and then answers are checked to determine the scoring.  Play then proceeds to the next player. Below is an example of  a card - this one...

 Tyler and Anna are so good at getting us out of our house and over to theirs for marathon gaming, and it is always a marathon when we get together.  Currently "we" has included the two of them, me and David and our two youngest boys, Jacob and Caleb.  Our first game of the night is one we had not played before: Deep Sea Adventure .  It's not yet on our shelves, but this one is going on my wish list.  It's a very simple game to learn and to play, but after the two rounds we played I'm still not quite sure how to go about determining effective strategy on this one.  I love games like this - simple rules involving possibility of deep strategy.  This is one I want to come back to.  (I also like the fact that it comes in a nice, compact box!)  The idea of Deep Sea Adventure is that of diving for treasure and trying to get as much as you can without being so greedy that you run out of oxygen and don't survive the journey!  The original ...

 I'm so glad we've decided to play through all the games on our shelves, because with as many games as we have it is easy to get into ruts and to forget some games completely - thus losing some minor gems.  The game Guillotine is one of those minor gems, and we had a great time playing it today (which probably sounds rather macabre!).  Basically the game is set during the French Revolution, and nobles are lined up to be guillotined.  You earn points depending on the "status" of the noble (for example, Marie Antoinette is worth 5 points, Robespierre is worth 3, and Lady in Waiting is worth 1), and the person with the most points at the end of the third round (i.e. the third "day") is the winner.  Each "day" there are 12 "nobles" lined up for the guillotine.  I put "nobles" in quotes because there are also such characters as Martyrs and The Hero of the People, and if you end up beheading them you lose points!  Some charac...

 This has been a favorite in our family for something like 25 years.  We used to play it more often than we do now - partly because we've gotten so many new games since that time, and partly because even favorites can get overdone.  We played it Wednesday night with David's family, and we almost always play it when our friends, the Easthams, come over.  It works particularly well for "large" groups (6 to 10 or so).  The game is very basic, and you can play it without thinking much about it at all, or you can take it to a higher level and get reasonably strategic with it.  The directions say it's for ages 8+, but it would have worked well for my kids to have been playing this at age 5 or so.  The game consists of cards numbered 1 through 12.  There is one 1, two 2s, three 3s, etc., all the way up to twelve 12s.  There are also two jokers that are basically wild cards.  The goal is to get rid of all your cards first, but play continue...