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As humans, one of our instincts is to belong to a group, to fit in, to feel special.   Originally, it was a survival mechanism, groups can support each other, look out for each other, and utilize each others’ skills for the benefit of the group.  I feel that boardgaming furthers that instinct.

Take kids as an example.  If you have any, you know as soon as they are born, they need attention, want to be held, want to be close to others.  As they get older, they start wanting to be part of what the parents are doing.  Even if you don’t have any kids, I’ll bet you can remember a time in your younger days when you wanted to be part of what ever your parents were doing.  Why not get them involved in gaming as soon as they show an interest?  The benefits are endless.

My two grandsons, Garrett, age 5. and Troy, age 3 are already avid gamers.  They get games as presents for birthday’s, Christmas, and just because.  Within an hour of my wife and I visiting them, they are pulling out a game and asking us to play.  When they visit us, they soon are asking me to play Toc Toc Woodman with them.  As they get older, the games will advance in complexity, and someday we will be playing Dominion, Agricola, or Paths of Glory together.   And then, in their teens, cars and girls will arrive in their lives, and the games will go away. 🙂  But then, if my own kids are any example of what will happen, they will be back, wanting to play games again.  And for certain favorite games, they may never go away completely.

So, what do you start with?  I am by no means and expert, but I can tell you what works for us.

1- Let them roll dice….lots of dice, big dice, soft dice.  In our family, both the boys, when they were only a few months old, had the ritual roll of a d6.  Granted, it was little more than putting the die in their hands, and eventually they drop the die (maybe it wasn’t really a roll), but it counts!  The die my daughter found somewhere, it is about a 3″ cube, and made of foam.  By the way, Garrett rolled a 4, and Troy a 6.  As they get a little older, let them roll dice for you in a game (make sure you watch them closely so they don’t eat the dice).

2-Get a copy of waterproof UNO cards, and play.  Basically the boys are just trying to match colors initially, and later colors and numbers.  All of the skip and reverse cards we just use to match colors and symbols.  The waterproof cards are great for spills and getting chewed on.  Initially, when they’re attention span wanes, let them stop.  But as they play the game more, make them finish the hand before stopping.

3-Space Rockets, the card game.  This is the card game War, with cool rocket pictures on the cards.  (We do model rocketry as a family also).  They are out of print, but available on ebay.  I sleeved them and away we go.  At this point, we do keep score, and have winners and losers.

4-A themed dominos game.  Matching characters, like Cars, Spiderman, or such on the domino’s.

5-Toc Toc Woodman.  We, as adults, follow the two swing rule, but initially, let the boys swing until they knock out a core piece.  At first, we also give the boys points for each piece of bark they put on the core when reassembling the tree.  Then, an amazing thing starts to happen, as they get older and play the game more, on their own, they start only taking two swings, because that is what the adults do.

6-Can’t Stop.  Rolling dice again. As adults, we follow the rules.  So far, we let the boys roll the dice until they can’t place the dice, with no penalty.  As 3 and 5 year olds, they don’t understand the chances of rolling certain combinations are more difficult than others.

7-Dino Dice.  The boys love dinosaurs, so this is a bit hit.  Initially, we let them roll with no penalty.  But slowly, they start to realize that the adults are playing by different rules, and change on their own.  Garrett is at this point, Troy is not there yet.

8-Swipe. Rolling lots of dice, and getting to steal dice and chips from Grandpa is a huge plus!  One thing that this game helps teach, more so than the games above, is sportsmanship.  At first, it is hard for them to have dice and chips stolen from them, but we keep reinforcing that it is part of the game, and you have to be a good sport if you are going to play games.

9-Sorry Sliders.  Another great dexterity game.

10-Blokus.  Garrett asked to play this game, there is a version of it at his pre-school.  He actually does pretty well, but he hasn’t won yet.

11-Monster Chase.  A memory game.  What the boys like about this game is when they make a match, the get to yell “In the closet, monster!” and banish the monster from the game.  They absolutely love this part of the game.

12-Ninja vs Ninja.  Garrett is a ninja fanatic, so I picked up this game for him.  While it is a very simple game, it is a little advanced for him, because you have so many decisions to make.  So, right now, I show him his different movement options.  I am confident, that soon, he will be seeing those options on his own.

Other games Garrett has played recently are Castle Panic and Sentinels of the Multiverse.  Obviously, at 5, he doesn’t have the reading ability for either game, so we help him by explaining to him what options the cards he has have give him, and let him make the decision on what to do.

As you can see from above, we make rules adjustments to the games for the boys.  As they develop, they start to understand the concepts better, and so far, have advanced on their own.  I do feel that you have to have winners and losers, so they understand that winning and losing are part of playing games. We stress finishing the games and good sportsmanship.  I will admit, I have put off winning, such as rolling again in Can’t Stop, to give the boys more opportunities, but I only do it once in a while, and usually when the boys have had a lot of bad luck.  I will, at some point in time, stop doing this.

Develop a gaming relationship with you kids, grandkids, nieces, nephews.  Be a Big Brother/Sister and introduce them to the wonderful world of boardgaming.  You will educate them, teach them important life lessons, improve their self esteem, and develop a much closer bond with them.  And along the way, your will receive all of these  benefits in return, and just maybe, find a gaming partner for life.

Next blog; “Everything Deserves A Second Chance”.

Jeff Chattin

Great gaming gang!

I’m going to  change up my format for these entries.  I’m going to give a brief overview of the game in my own words, followed with my thoughts and play experiences.

Overview:  Ascension is a deck building game.  You start the game with two different types of resources in your deck, with a random assortment of these forming your hand.  An assortment of cards are at the center of the play area, that you may purchase with these resources.  As you buy cards with those resources, they’re added to your discard pile.  Once you run out of cards, the discard pile gets shuffled, and you have a new deck.  That’s the standard deck building game definition, more or less.

In games like Dominion, there are a number of piles in the center of the table for you to choose from and everyone has access to those piles.  Ascension differs in that there are 6 cards in the center row, and as each of those cards is purchased (or defeated) they are replaced by a new card from a central deck of cards.  There are also different types of cards.  Heroes and Constructs may be purchased with one of your resources and added to your deck, while Monsters must be defeated using the other resource, and give you a one-time benefit for defeating them.  You play until a pool of victory points has been exhausted, which happens as you gain victory from defeating monsters.  The cards you purchase also have a victory value, so there are multiple strategies to consider for victory.

Thoughts:  I was a few months late jumping on board with this one.  I didn’t discover it until attending the Alliance Open House in November 2011.  By then it was already a hit, and hard to get.  I played this a handful of times over the weekend, and have been a fan ever since.   The art isn’t great, though.  Later expansions and standalones have brought better artwork to the mix.

Granted,  I don’t get to play it as often, as it’s not a favorite for Jamie.  Since I’ve started recording my plays, I’ve only played it once, physically.  Digitally is another story.  It’s one of the first games I picked up for the iPhone and iPad, and I’ve played it several times.  It’s a great game to play against the AI, and I’ve played against online opponents a few times.

I enjoy this game, though I think I like the digital implementation better.  I think I’d like to try a live tournament, though.  I’m not a super competitive player, but I think I would enjoy trying my hand at two-headed competitive play.

I’ve only had a copy of Arkham Horror for a short time.  Our friend Dave (Morik) has brought his collection over several times, and I’ve joined in games varying anywhere from 4 to 8 players.

I’ve had a few opportunities to play this recently.  A few days after the birth of my daughter, I found I had a little bit of free time, but nobody to play a game with.  I broke out the base Arkham Horror (which is all that I own.  For now, that’s enough) and tried it single player.  I’m beginning to think I would have been better off controlling at least two heroes to play.

I selected my hero randomly, Harvey Walters, and the threat, Yig.  The game went well, and I had a lot of fun.  That’s not to say I survived.  In fact, I was slaughtered rather handily.  I’m using an app to track the encounter cards, as that speeds the game up a lot.  I survived a lot longer than I expected, as everything went wrong rather quickly.

A few days later, three of us got together and played.  Travis documented this play pretty well, and I’ll not repeat him.  We had fun, and we made a few mistakes, but we did triumph.

On Tabletop Day (March 30), Jamie and I got together with a few good friends of ours, and decided to give Arkham Horror a shot.  Our first mistake was trying to start the game so late in the evening.  We never got ahead of the curve, and 6 gates opened, awakening Ithaqua.  We were so tired, we conceded that we could not defeat the elder god, and called it a night.

Last night, however, I got together with Jeff, James, Travis and Robert, and we decided to tackle mighty Cthulhu.  It was a close battle, but a few random bits of luck were on our side, including an environment effect that kept the terror level from rising that stuck around for a while.  We sealed our sixth gate with 3 empty spaces left on Cthulhu’s doom track.

I enjoy this game a lot, but I think I’m ready for a short break from it.  Next week, I think we might stick with the theme, and play Mansions of Madness or Elder Sign, probably Mansions of Madness.

In an only peripherally related note, I haven’t mentioned the Call of Cthulhu LCG in this post.  I don’t own it, but learned it several months ago.  Shane Porter, a newcomer to Legends, brought a copy in and let us borrow it.  Jeff and I played it a handful of times while we had it.

Shane returned several times, and joined us for quick games, frequently before heading to work, and he became a regular friendly face.  We ran into him at GenCon, where he was attending with some (if not all) of his children.

Shane left home on February 8 2013, to go to work, and never arrived.  He has been missing ever since.  His car was found near the river, and I fear the worst.  His situation has been on my mind a lot for the last several days.  Our thoughts are with him and his family, and we hope he returns home safely.

As I play the games that I list as unplayed, I’ll go back and talk about them.  Or if I add any games alphabetically that are earlier than my current point in the list, I’ll at least make note of them.

That’s what this post is.  I have added Aloha: The Spirit of Hawaii and a couple of the ARC: The Time Travel game decks to my collection.  I’ve not played either of these, but I’ve watched review videos.  I’m kinda looking forward to trying ARC.  Not so sure about Aloha yet.

Anyone have insight on these two games?

Game: Agricola: All Creatures Big and Small
Publisher: Z-Man Games
Designer: Uwe Rosenberg

And I’m back from my brief, self-imposed, blogging hiatus.  As noted in my previous post, I’ve now welcomed my daughter into the world, and can once again breathe normally.  This all came up on us pretty quick at the end, as they decided to try to induce her two weeks early.  The idea was, we’d go in on Tuesday night, they’d give her some meds, and let her rest until Wednesday morning.  Then they’d begin the induction.

To that end, I took several small games with us to the hospital, including Agricola: All Creatures Big and Small.  I’d only gotten it a week before, and we hadn’t gotten to play it.  Agricola is one of those games that’s “Been on our list” since 2009.  We’ve just never gotten around to getting it.  So when I was finally able to pick up a copy of this two-player spin off, I was happy to do so.

We didn’t get to play any games on Tuesday night.  There just wasn’t a good place to play anything, so we both amused ourselves with some IOS games, including starting a game of Stone Age that we’ve now been playing off and on for the last two weeks.  Wednesday, the opportunity just never presented itself.  The induction quickly turned into an emergency Cesarean Section, so I’ve been officially a parent since 12:21 that day.

Needless to say, the last two weeks have been a bit of a whirlwind.  We came home on Friday, and went through a few minor tribulations (minor unless you’re a first time parent).

*ahem* Sorry about that… 275 words in, and I’ve barely talked about the game at hand.  We finally got to play Agricola: All Creatures Big and Small last night.   The game went well, despite a few distractions.  The distractions made it a bit difficult for her to follow the rules, as I tried to explain them while learning them at the same time.

The game takes one of the elements of Agricola, and makes it a game in itself.  In A:ACBaS you are building a farm to contain animals.  It, like Agricola, is a worker placement game, where you spend your workers to complete tasks, hopefully before your opponent takes the actions that you want to take that turn.  The general goal is to fence in pastures and build stables to hold as many animals of four different kinds you can, over eight turns.

It may have just been the distractions we were having, but I feel the rulebook kind of starts in the wrong place.  It starts out telling you how to fence in the animals, before it tells you how you even get the fences.  Again, I need to look through it again, to get a feel for how concise it is.

Like most first games, where nobody has played it before, it was a little rocky, with us both taking actions that didn’t really benefit us, and building a few fences that ended up not making sense.  Despite that, by the 4th turn, we had a pretty good handle on what we were doing, and enjoyed it quite a bit.

The games has 4 types of animal, 3 types of construction resources. As each turn progresses, you add these animals and resources to the game board.  As your workers take various positions, you claim those animals and/or resources.  You can also take actions to build fences and buildings, provided you’ve collected the resources to do so.  The larger the pasture you’ve built with those fences, the more animals you can hold.  At the end of each turn, if you have enough of each type animal (2), they breed, giving you an extra animal.

After eight turns (signified by running out of extra fences in the supply, a simple mechanism that I really like), the game ends, and you total your points. You get bonuses for having large herds, lose points for not diversifying, and also get points for the buildings you have built, as well.

Even with the learning curve, we completed the game in about 40 minutes, and enjoyed it quite a bit.  I won, by about 4 points, but we missed one of the details of scoring bonus points for animals, so really, it could have been anyone’s game.

I’m a big fan of worker placement, but I feel it can be a tricky beast at 2 players.  It’s hard to limit the actions available in a game made for 4 players, with only 2 people playing.    This game, being designed for 2 players, seems to hit that contention fairly well.  There are two ways to get stone, and two ways to get wood, but one is notably better than the other.  There are more actions available on the board than there are total workers, so some unused actions will build up as turns progress.  This may not sound very limiting, but several of the actions will gain you animals, and if you don’t have a completed pasture built for those animals, they’ll just “run away”, leaving you with a wasted worker.

We enjoyed this, and look forward to playing it again, now that we have a better understanding of what we’re doing from the start.  I will add comments to this post as we get more plays, with any additional thoughts.

[bgg id=119890]

I would like to introduce you to the next generation of
potential gamers. 🙂 Meet Betty Jean

So, I’ve been bad about keeping up on my journal of my collection. I do have an excuse, though. The last few weeks, I’ve not gotten to do much gaming. I’ve been getting our house ready for a new addition.

As I type this, I’m sitting in the hospital room, while they get everything ready to induce my wife. Our first child, a daughter, is on the way.

After things calm down a bit, I will be resuming my thoughts on each game in my collection. A note about my posting order. I’m going through my collection alphabetically, but will backtrack when I add games that I’ve already passed alphabetically. So, in theory, my next review will be Agricola: All Creatures Big and Small. I picked this up specifically to play with my wife, and while I have a captive audience, I’m gonna try to get in a game or two.

More soon, and I’ll warn you, there will be pictures of my daughter.

Most humans are guilty of being at least a little superficial.  Our initial reactions to pretty things are usually favorable.  Test after test have shown that corporate hiring managers will lean toward an attractive candidate over a less than attractive candidate even though the less than attractive candidate was slightly more qualified.  More attractive, “slick” politicians more often than not win over more qualified less than attractive opponents.  When my wife and I go into Wal Mart, we head our separate ways to get supplies and cut down on the time spent there.  While picking up my products, almost every time I will walk into an aisle with a young mother with a child in it, the mother takes one look at me and takes her child’s hand and leaves the aisle (the unattractive aspect of my appearance).  When I finally find my wife, she is usually “holding court” with two or three other people, chatting away….about half of the time she doesn’t even know who she is talking to (the attractive aspect of her appearance).   I am guilty of being superficial also, especially when it comes to games.  Stone Age, Mice and Mystics, Dungeon Command, and any game by Fantasy Flight Games makes me drool.  I just want to dive in give ’em a go!  Less attractive games, and boxes, usually get shoved to the back of the playlist.  Fellow gamers, if you are guilty of this, you must resist this superficial urge!!

About three months ago, Jason and I were getting ready to jump into another game night.  Usually, the conversation goes something like: “What would you like to play Jeff?”  “I don’t care, I’ll play anything.”  But not this night.  He brought over a red and blue box with a locomotive on it and said “This is Empire Express, I played in a demo game at the Alliance Open House earlier this year, I think you’ll like it.”  He proceded to pull the cellophane off the ho hum looking box.  He opened up the box, and pulled out a very bland, jigsaw puzzle board, some not too exciting, kinda tan colored cards, paper money (which I am not a fan of at all) and some crayons.  I thought to myself, “Self, you are not going to like this game, its not pretty, and I gave up coloring a couple of years ago.”  Jason began explaining to me that this was a newly released, introductory version of a popular line of games beginning with Empire Builder, also know as the “crayon rails” games line by Mayfair Games, the people who bring us Settlers of Catan.  “I like Settlers of Catan, and it is my wife’s favorite, so I’ll give it a shot.”  “Plus, I did say I’d play anything.”  So we got right into the game, with Jason doing is usual exceptional job of explaining the rules.

About an hour later, after I got trounced by Jason, I asked him if he had a copy for sale, and picked it up.  This game is a gem!  The game components are vanilla at best as I already described.  But I really like the game play.  It is not a deep game, with lot of nuances, strategy and tactics, but you do have decisions to make on almost every turn that will effect the outcome of the game.  “Do I build that line from Indianapolis to Chicago for $27 million, or do I draw a different delivery cards?”

There are basically two aspects to the game, building track and delivering products from a production town to a delivery town.  When you complete a delivery order, you get money.  When you build track, it costs you money.  If you run on another players track to deliver or pick up products , you pay them cash, or they pay you cash if they run on your track.  The first player to amass a fortune of $150 million wins the game.  Basically, the game mimics the business adage, you have to spend money to make money.  So, as stated above, do I build more track, thereby reducing my fortune, to make more money delivering goods, or do I look for different delivery cards?  There is some randomness in the card draw, (delivery tickets) and there are several random event cards that effect players if their train is in a certain location, but I think it is the right amount.  The only down side to play is that there is not much interaction among players, you do your own thing for the most part.

The game has rules for the regular version and the starter version.  The starter version has a set of four pre drawn routes that players begin with, along with predetermined delivery tickets that ensure you start making cash right away.  It took Jason and I about an hour to play the game for the first time, but I could see this game taking about 15-20 minutes per player once everyone know the rules.  Starter game can play up to four players, standard game (in which you start out with no track, and $60 million in cash) plays up to six players.  The game scales well, I have played with 2, 3, 4, and 5 players, and the mechanics and flavor work well at all 4 levels.

As I said, this game is a gem!  I have it in my top ten games, rating it an 8 out of 10. While it is not as pretty, deep, or elegant as other games, it does what it does very well.  Empire Express is easy to teach and easy to grasp.  My son’s girlfriend Alia claims it as her favorite game.  I have taught it to 5 others so far, and all have given Empire Express a thumbs up.  As I stated earlier, there are several games in the “Crayon Rails” line, and I intend to buy at least 3 others in the next few months, Empire Builder, Lunar Rails, and Martian Rails.  Empire Builder is the expanded version of Empire Express and is the game that started the line of games, Lunar and Martian Rails being based on the Moon and Mars.

So fellow gamers, I highly recommend Empire Express. And strongly urge you to give each game a chance, don’t make the mistake of overlooking a great game based on its components.

Next times topic, “Get ’em while they are young”

Jeff

Great gaming gang!

PS – I still have a  brand spankin’ new copy of Zombie Dice to give away to the next person to say great gaming gang to me.

It’s amazing to see Apples to Apples as such a mainstream thing.  I remember when Out of the Box and John Kovalic first released the little party game.  We tried it right about the time it was releasing at a trade show thirteen years ago or so, and was taught the game by one creators. (more…)

Hello all, like Alan and Travis, Jason has asked me to contribute my $.02 worth to the Fort Sackville Gamers page, blog, bulletin board, web page, whatever this is (as you can see, I am prehistoric when it comes to the social media, the internet and the new technology coming down the pipe).  I am not sure what I have to say is worth $.02, hence the name.  I am going to give a somewhat lengthy background about myself (my wife says I can’t answer a yes or no question in less than 10 minutes) to serve as a background and filter as to how I look at games. (more…)