All the Games on Our Shelves

 Carcassonne: Hunters and Gatherers is one of a whole family of Carcassonne games.  I posted previously about the original Carcassonne game .  The idea here is similar to the original, but it's also different enough to have quite a different feel to it.  This version is set in the same area as Carcassonne but during the stone age rather than during medieval times.  Instead of dealing with cities, abbeys, and roads, in Hunters and Gatherers you are dealing with forests, streams and wild game.  In the next two pictures I've photographed tiles from each of these games (one orderly, one random), just to give an idea of the different landscape.  The tiles start out upside-down, of course, and players take turns choosing a tile and connecting it to the ever-expanding board and earning points for completing forests, completing rivers, and hunting game.  Game elements are claimed by placing meeples or huts on tiles.  Huts are only used...

 No Thanks is a game that was introduced to us by Adam back in December at a math conference.  David got it for me as a late Christmas gift, but by the time it got here all our kids had left again.  This is a 3-7 player game, so we had to wait to get together with friends in order to play.  The game is incredibly simple to learn, but we are still struggling with what the most successful strategies might be for the win.  We played this a couple of weeks ago with a group of 4, and we played it again this last weekend with a group of 6, and we've found that it has a rather different feel depending on the number of players. My set (above) has a different style than Adam's set (below).  The chips in his set are more like mini-poker chips, and in our set they are like Go stones.  Also, the cards in my set have quotes surrounding the center that kind of taunt players regarding whether or not to take the card.  I'm not sure how well you can read...

 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...

 And the answer to the question in yesterday's post is that the old game from our childhoods that David picked for us to play was Mastermind !  No chance involved here - just pure logic.  Below is my first guess on the first game, and below that picture is a view from David's perspective a few rows later.  I'm not posting an image of how long it took me to get that one, but I think it's only fair to state that David gave accidentally gave me false clues twice and didn't notice them until I was a row or two beyond where the mistake was made.  Yes, I am making excuses, but in this case I think they are legit.  OK, so then it was my turn to choose the color pattern and let David guess.    .  .  .  and he ROCKED it!  He solved it in four rows!  Below is another example of David's prowess at logic - took him 5 rows this time, but still not bad! This was quite a blast from the past!

 After the ridiculously long time period of three weeks we finally played another game!  Much more time away and I may have gone through withdrawals - or maybe I have been experiencing withdrawal, and that's why I haven't been feeling well lately!  Either way, I'm thankful the game-drought has ended!  The game Can't Stop Express was a recent Christmas gift to me from David.  He hadn't been able to find the large, board-game version (at least not at a reasonable price) so he read-up on this version of it and decided to go for it.  I must say that when I first opened the box today I was quite underwhelmed, particularly because I had played the board-game version previously.  This version is just 5 dice, directions, and a score-pad.  OK  .  .  .  Above is what I opened today; below is the board game version that our friends the Kirks introduced us to.  As you can imagine, I felt that a lot was missing!  So we "r...

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...