All the Games on Our Shelves

  It's rather hard for me to believe that in the 3 years I've been working on this project of playing through all the games on our shelves that we had not yet played this game.  It seems especially strange to me that we had not played Pandemic in the last 15 months, given that we've been living through one!  Pandemic (the game) is a cooperative game, one that we had often played but always with 4 people, and which we have almost invariably won.  This is our first time trying the 2-player version; we played last night and this afternoon, and we lost both times!  I'm not sure yet if the 2-player version is just that much harder or if David and I are just out of practice.  Despite our losses, we are eager to play again, and we have just left it set up on the table so we can get in another game tonight.  We do want to save the world, after all! And we are particularly motivated to do so given the times in which we live! Above and below are a couple of pi...

  I've labeled this game as a "bonus" rather than adding it to our count since it belongs to our son Caleb and is therefore not a game on OUR shelves.  Caleb introduced us to this game last week Sunday, and we happily played it again this Sunday.  To be honest, when I first saw it I wasn't all that interested, and it looked to me like a really weird idea for a game.  But after playing it I found it to be one of the best resource-management games that I've come across in a long while.  (My brother loves the game too but is especially geeking out over the cool cards containing facts about birds, so I imagine any birders might be drawn to this game for that reason.)  The elements of the game, not only the playing pieces but also the rule book, are super high quality, and therefore nice to handle.  Below is a picture of the initial set-up with cards dealt and ready to go. Here's a closer look at the initial set-up: Here is a closer look at some of the...

  I suggested we play this game today.  I know it to have been one of David's favorites back in the day.  It's one we used to play ALL THE TIME in the early years of our marriage.  Today is our anniversary, so I though this would be a particularly good choice.  We had also planned to make a nice dinner together and then to go out to a movie (A Quiet Place Part 2).  What I forgot is that this game can take nearly 4 hours, and it did!  No movie tonight, and I think dinner will be ready at about 9pm!  It is a good game.  It is mostly based on strategy, but there are a couple of elements that bring luck into the picture.  Though it is a good game, both of us ran into some pretty disappointing roadblocks today.  That's one thing when you're playing for half an hour, but when you're playing for nearly 4 hours, that kind of impacts the mood.  It can't always have been this frustrating, as, if it had, I don't think we would have made i...

I typically only post when we play a game for the first time, but for quite a while now we've been re-playing favorites and can't seem to get back to the "counting all our games" idea that initiated this blog.  We got a particularly good amount of gaming in a couple of weekends ago, however, and we did play a new game - just not one that's on our shelves, so I thought I'd put up a post.  The photos above and below are of some of the choices that were available, contributions to the stacks having come from us, our two youngest sons, and my brother.  We ended up playing Agatha Christie's Death on the Cards , The Quacks of Quedlinburg , Barenpark , and Rook . The first game, Agatha Christie's Death on the Cards , was a new one to us, but it belongs to my brother, so it isn't part of the count. In this game each player has a hand but also some secret cards that are face-down on the table.  One player is the murderer, and there can be an accomplice as w...

  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 we played Abalone recently (game 128), it just didn't feel as satisfying as it used to - at all.  I love games of pure strategy, and especially when they are as pure as this one, just a straight-up battle for territory between black pieces and white pieces.  After we played last time I read up on the game a little bit, and it turns out that in the standard set-up with all the white pieces starting on one side and all the black pieces starting on the other, that if the players are good, the one who goes first will win.  Because of this, alternative starting set-ups have been created for tournament play.  The set-up above is called the Belgian Daisy.  The set-up below is called the Germain Daisy.  For tonight we decided to try the German Daisy starting position.  This absolutely made for more interesting game play.  I didn't check the time, but it took us quite a while, and it really felt like a battle that we were both invested in.  (It ...