All the Games on Our Shelves

  I remember the excitement I felt when I came across an advertisement for this game decades ago.  It was obviously the perfect birthday gift for David, and, since gifting isn't my "love language," it was nice to know I had a good idea for once!  We used to play this quite a lot, and I think we only moved away from it as our boys got old enough to play sophisticated board games, at which point those became our focus.  David and I both love Cribbage, and we like Scrabble -- especially Fast Scrabble; this game, being a combination of those two, was perfect for us.  It had been years since we had played, so we needed to do a quick refresh on some details of the rule book.  It was nice being able to play outside, spring finally having really "sprung." Below is my starting hand: The board near the beginning of the game: No matter what game we play David needs a lot of time to contemplate each move deeply. It was nice to have beautiful surroundings to enjoy as Da...

When Caleb suggested we play King of Tokyo tonight, I was sure I had posted about this game already.  We were all surprised to find I hadn't.  It's a game we play reasonably often (or so we thought!).  It's quirky  .  .  .  in a good way.  All players are basically monsters fighting for control of Tokyo.  During set-up you choose which monster you want to be (see below), and then you battle it out with the other monsters.  There are two possible win conditions, that of killing all the other monsters or that of being the first to win 20 victory points.  We had so much fun with this game tonight that we just couldn't put it away and played 3 times in a row! The first player to roll a claw on the dice during his turn ends up in Tokyo.  The monster in Tokyo is in a position to attack all other monsters with his dice rolls, but he is also hit by everyone else's rolls.  Monsters can't heal while in Tokyo, but they gain vic...

 We were so excited to have a long weekend, which gave us time to game with our dear friends the Kirks.  I knew it had been far too long, but as I just now checked I see that it's been EIGHT MONTHS, which is just a ridiculously long time to go without playing games together!  I really love the fact that they involve their kids in serious gaming!  David said to me on the drive home, "I guess the jumped right over Chutes and Ladders , didn't they?"  YEP!  What you see above is a game called My First Carcassonne , and I'm sure I had as much fun playing it as the kids did.  Below is the stack of kid games that were brought out.  Carcassonne is the one in the bag.  I think Owen was pretty ready for us to get on to playing Carcassonne.  He looks quite eager as we are yet finishing up My First Stone Age with older brother Levi.  Below are a couple of pics of My First Stone Age , which also plays quite well.  Finally we...

These days it is me, David, and Jacob in the area, but it is rare that I get a photo of all three of us, as one of us generally has to take the picture.  This weekend we had the chance to meet fellow gamer Adam, a  math professor at CSU Fullerton, who gamed with us and took a picture of our family.  He was a keynote speaker at the CMC^3 Math Conference in Monterey, which is where we were this weekend.  I made sure to connect with him, as I had read in his bio that he has created a freshman-level class on problem solving based entirely on board games.  How cool is that?!?!?!?  I connected with him after his keynote address, and we decided to be in contact after dinner to see if gaming would work out, and it did!  As had we, he too had brought a bag of board games along "just in case."  Below you see them all laid out on this table in the hotel lobby.  It was fun to see that so many of his games were ones we were familiar with (For Sale, Cod...

 Kingdomino was one of my birthday gifts this week.  It has been on my wish list since our friends the Kirks introduced us to it earlier this year.  It is the 2017 Game of the Year award winner, and it is very deserving of the award.  In this game each player builds his kingdom (a 5x5 grid) using domino-shaped terrain tiles.  Each domino must be placed in such a way that at least one of its halves touches terrain of the same type orthogonally.  The start-tile for each person is a 1x1 square that is "wild;" terrain of any type may be played against this piece.  Points are scored by multiplying the number of tiles of a given territory (all connected) by the number of crowns appearing on tiles in that territory.  The player with the highest total wins.  Above is a picture of the game after 3 turns.  Below is a picture as we near completion of our kingdoms.  We use "king meeples" to select the terrain domino that we want.  ...