A while back, I posted a review on the board game, Pandemic. Pandemic is a cooperative board game that tasks players with saving the world from deadly diseases. The boys and I have played it on a few occasions and enjoyed our experience overall.
Board Games
I never understood why schools insisted on going over trivial things that we’d end up forgetting as adults anyway…after all, isn’t that what research is for? What’s the expression…”teach a man to fish…?” I don’t remember what the Scarlet Letter was about, just that the Custom House introductory was painful and could be considered cruel and unusual punishment. I don’t remember a thing about the Aztecs or who the twenty-second President of the United States was. Though, I do remember a thing or two about math and English, mainly because I use both more than any other school subject I was taught. It’s for this reason that I encourage kids everywhere to play educational games that improve both basic math, reading, and writing skills.
Back when I was in college, the Internet and social media were just starting to take off. I am not sure how popular it is today, but I played a Yahoo game called Word Racer a lot. Word Racer featured a Boggle-esque grid in which you had to spell words faster than the other people in your game room. You’d have to form words by using adjacent letters, while scoring bonuses if you used the special letters that randomly showed up each round.
I recently reviewed Wits & Wagers Family and promised a separate review of this edition, mainly because the components and bidding mechanics were slightly different. Both have the same general premise but as you’ll soon see, this version is a bit more complicated.
When I was purchasing Say Anything and Say Anything Family, I saw both Wits & Wagers and Wits & Wagers Family and thought I’d give them a try as well. I normally don’t buy games without doing research first, but they looked like a lot of fun.
Due to my busy schedule as of late, I’ve been opting to review some of the cheaper family games that I’ve run across a few times in the store. It turned out that most of them were pretty good games…Monopoly Deal and Scrabble Slam!, just to name a few. Yahtzee and I have never been the best of friends, quite the contrary in fact. If you’ve been following along in my reviews, you’ll know that dice and I don’t always speak the same language. I am pretty sure that dice are prejudiced against Italians named “Vince”, I just haven’t been able to prove it yet.
For years, kids (at least ours) have always acted as if they know everything. We, as adults, don’t know a thing, even though we’ve lived longer than they have. I do admit to forgetting a lot of the things that the kids are currently learning in school, but I’ll put my life experiences and know-how against knowing all the different species of shark known to exist any day of the week. *Shrug* Well kids, here’s your chance to get one up on your elders…
I was never a fan of dice games, especially Yahtzee. I think I must have left dice in my pocket one too many times as a kid…to the point where the little buggers got tired of the spin cycle. Maybe they came up with their version of the twilight bark and alerted their brethren to screw me over any time I happened to need them.
Jennifer introduced this game to me and I figured I’d share it with the rest of you. Most people have at least heard of the card game “Rummy”, however there is a variant called “Aggravation Rummy” that makes the original card game that much more challenging. Let’s take a quick look at what you’ll need to play and how the game is played.
I was anxious to get my hands on Star Trek: The Next Generation Deck Building Game, mainly because I’m a Star Trek fiend. I owned the Star Trek: The Next Generation Customizable Card Game as a kid (review to come eventually) and have recently reviewed Star Trek Fleet Captains and Star Trek Expeditions.
I’ve reviewed a few worker placement games already…Lords of Waterdeep and Agricola, for example. For those of you new to the genre, worker placement games task players with strategically placing (you guessed it) workers around the board in various places in order to gain resources and other bonuses. The kinds of resources you can acquire in this fashion vary from game to game, but you’re ultimately using said resources to perform other actions and ultimately trying to score more points than everyone else.
Tetris Link, a board game that I recently reviewed, was well received in our household. When I discovered that there was a Tetris card game, however, I was on the fence. How can something like Tetris be adapted to cards? Yet, I couldn’t ignore that the board game adaptation was an overall success among the kids.
I recently reviewed an old favorite of mine called Clue: The Great Museum Caper and thought I would keep with the theme by taking a look at a similar game called Scotland Yard.
This was my favorite board game as a kid. I used to play it for hours on end with my younger brother, who gave me a run for my money more times than I can count. I lost the game in a flood during hurricane Ivan and was unable to find a new copy anywhere. I buckled down and bought the game used from Amazon…something I never do…but gosh darnit, I had to.
I first learned how to play Mancala as a kid; it was part of a games pack that came with some other popular “stone” games on the PC. The game was fairly easy to understand, though I remember the computer being quite the jerk. There was no way to adjust the difficulty, so I’m fairly certain that the personal quest for expanding my vocabulary started there…though Top Gun, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and Mega Man for the NES were major contributors.
I enjoy a good game of Scrabble, but sometimes I’m not able to commit to an hour of playing board games. Word on the Street, which I’ve previously reviewed, is an excellent alternative…though I came across this card game whilst browsing at my local store and figured I would give it a try.