All the Games on Our Shelves

 It is summer, and that means I have time to get together with friends!  As I look back, I see that this is our fourth game night with the Kirk family since I began this blog.  The picture above is of the games - some ours, some theirs - that were stacked up on their kitchen counter to select from over the course of the evening.  We ended up playing Deception , Bonkers , Barenpark, and Settlers of Catan (double).  Barenpark ("Bear Park") was new to us.  Tyler had gotten it as a birthday gift earlier in the week from Anna, and they taught us how to play.  It felt to me like a combination between Tetris , Kingdomino , and Cathedral .  We all really enjoyed it.  The game is pretty easy to play, but I'm finding it hard to explain right now - maybe because I'm posting late at night.  Basically, the idea is to build a bear park (koalas, pandas, polar bears, etc.) including enclosures, water features, playground areas, monuments, etc...

 So  .  .  .  we've had Puerto Rico pretty much since it first came out in 2002.  We used to play it a lot.  I've always really liked it and had been wanting to play it again for years (literally years).  For some reason this one has fallen out of favor with my boys.  I think the comment I've heard from them is that the play is too predictable and that once you choose a strategy you're stuck with it so you can't really change things up mid-game.  I typically join in with whatever others are playing rather than being the one to choose the game, but I recently insisted on having my way (so bossy!).  I've been wanting to play this, AND we're supposed to be playing through ALL the games on our shelves - which is the point of this blog - a project at which we are not making very speedy progress.  It's hard to make progress when we keep going back to playing our current favorites over and over.  So here we are up to game 83 (...

 As we continue to enjoy our time with two sons at home, Caleb introduced us to Pandemic Legacy, his gift to the family.  He's been playing this with friends in Michigan and has really liked it.  I've heard great things from others who have played it as well.  Today we played the prologue phase, and we lost.  We could have won if we had reversed a couple of decisions, but I insisted we couldn't time travel and what was done was done.  The prologue feels very much like standard Pandemic - a game I love but which Caleb isn't a fan of, and which is why, after 82 game postings, it is still not one I've blogged about!  We'll be playing more phases of this in upcoming days, so for now I'm mostly just posting pictures of it without much more commentary.  One thing about the game is that you really individualize it.  For instance, we named the havens and wrote the names in permanent marker on the board.  We also choose and name our own char...

 YEA!!  After a month of finishing out the semester and then traveling for two weeks, I'm back to gaming again!  I've also got two of my three boys home - we have Jacob here between travels to Australia and Germany, and Caleb is back from Michigan and not yet out at the coast.  The upshot of this is that I get to play MAGIC again, and that makes me happy!!  We played Planechase, which is not a format I had yet posted about here, and so here you have it. Before moving on into that, though, I'm going to be a little bit negative.  I am a gamer - duh, see blog.  I spend time in gaming stores here at home.  My house is filled with hundreds, perhaps thousands of games.  I game whenever I get a chance. SO  .  .  .  on my recent trip to Edinburgh, I thought I'd check out the gaming scene.  I didn't just want to do the touristy thing; I wanted to get local and hang out with "my kind" of people.  I was curious about th...

 We bought this game about 20 years ago, back when my parents had a small place near the Monterey Coast and our boys were little.  We would take a day trip into Carmel-by-the-Sea where, for me, the draw was not the beach but rather the game store.  I've always been drawn to beautiful woodwork as well as to games, so once I set eyes upon this game I wanted it desperately.  If you take a look at the photograph posted 3 down from here you'll see what we paid 20 years ago when we were pretty much flat broke.  I can't believe David ever said "OK" to this!  Now you can get it for less than $25 on ebay (which tells you something!).  The board is elegantly crafted, which makes it feel satisfying to play with, but I haven't yet really been delighted with the game itself - alas.  David and I did get it out again about a week ago, and I'm ready to give it a few more tries to see if I can make something of the strategy and yet develop a taste for it. ...