All the Games on Our Shelves

  This game was given to me by my brother. If he sees something he thinks someone will like, he buys it for them, so that is how I came to own this game. The game is basically Chutes and Ladders combined with trivia, so it's almost entirely based on luck. If you land on a square with a letter symbol or a book symbol on it, then you answer a question on a card. If you get it right, you spin again; if you get it wrong, then your turn ends. There are blank squares on which nothing special happens and the turn just passes. The spaces that cause ascent or descent are kind of clever. The base of each ladder is a property such as Netherfield or Pemberely. The top of each rope (chute) is a "spoiler" - a character from Pride and Prejudice who interfers with the course of a romantic relationship. There are some other twists to basic Chutes and Ladders such as what happens when you reach squares 89-99 and what happens if you land on your "perfect match." The questions ar...

I'm posting lots of pictures of this game since it gets no respect at my house - and also not much respect on the reviews on Board Game Geek - and I think this game deserves some respect!  The "project" of this blog is to count the games on our shelves (because I really am curious about how many games we own) and, normally, to do so by posting when we PLAY a game from our shelves (posting only once - only the first time we play a game since I began this blog in April 2018).  Well, since I don't think anyone will play this game with me ever, EVER again I am going to go ahead and post about it now because it is on our shelves despite having pretty much 0 probability of ever being played again here in our family group.  I love this game, but it might be because I love trivia enough to have once been a contestant on Jeopardy!.  I bought this game 5 or 6 years ago after I had been at a gathering of some colleagues who are gamers.  Kathleen mentioned this game as a fa...

 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...

HOORAY!  A trivia game!! I like the twist to this trivia game; rather than just answering questions, you are given three terms, and you have to determine what links them.  For instance, if the three terms are JUPITER, BLUE WHALE, SEQUOIA, you would need to answer that these three things are each the largest of their type.  There are 4 categories: entertainment, sport and recreation, academics and miscellaneous.  You roll a die to determine what category you get, but there are two other symbols on the die - one let's you choose your own category, and one gives you a free play.  There are three tracks that you need to complete before winning.  There are multiple different ways to challenge other people (and possibly move yourself ahead while sending them back), so part of the play has to do with decisions about whether to make a break for it on one track or to try to make a bit of progress on all three tracks.  Both David and Jacob were partic...

 It's rare for me to get my family to play a trivia game, but I saw this one out in the living room!!  WHAT?!?!  I found out that Jacob and Ocean had been playing this via Skype in the place of online trivia games, so Jacob was definitely up for playing, and even David jumped in with a good attitude.  (Full disclosure: I adore trivia and have been on the TV game show Jeopardy, so most people don't want to play trivia games with me because I can tend to do really well, but there's also the fact that I think David became sick to death of trivia simply due to my long focus on it as I studied intensely before I went on the show.) Actually I don't think people should worry about being skunked when playing this game by the trivia buff in their group. Wit's End is a pretty good leveler because the questions are quite hard - far more so than Trivial Pursuit - and because there is an element of luck.  Although the questions are hard, some of the categories involve m...