♫ ♬ "(Gaming) Memories...In The Corner Of My Mind" ♩♪

So, as you read this you'll probably be wondering...why is he writing about a game day that happened waaaaay back in September of 2015?

Welp, five reasons, offa the top o' my head:

1. My regular weekly gaming group really isn't an option for me anymore so I'll be dipping back into the archives more and more.
2. To ensure that I don't freeze and / or starve to death during the winter (and can finance a new vehicle that won't fly apart on the highway when it exceeds 60 kilometers per hour) I've been forced to take on more paying work, leaving me less and less time to game and write. And write about games. Such is "life" I guess. 
3. I always like to be reminded of a time when the world around me wasn't a cold, damp monochromatic hellscape.
4. I actually played some really fun games that day that are worth talking about. 
5. I want to give youze guys some tips for teaching these games to your own friends. 

This was actually the third annual "Quadruple B": I.E. the "Brother's Booze BBQ and Boardgames" event, which happened back on September 12'th 2015. Mark and Dawn were kind enough to throw their homes open to us yahoos for another full day of gamin', drinkin' and wantonly carnivorous behavior. 

As one of the resident "game masters" (I'm getting some business cards done up as we speak) I decided to kick things off with something lite: namely Click Clack Lumberjack, which I first spotlighted on the blog right hur.

Basically, the players are lumberjacks who are trying to strip the bark off of a tree without harming the core of the tree. I know, I know, that makes about as much sense as Willow flaying Warren alive in Buffy and then expecting him to be the Big Bad in Season Seven, but, hey, whatevs.

During their turn, players take two whacks at the plastic tree with their l'il plastic axe. Every piece of bark they strip off the tree is one point to the good. If the bark they just knocked off has a l'il grub sticker underneath it, that's worth another point, plus it gives you a free chop.

If you fuck up royal and shear a piece of the white core offa the tree then that's bad. Like real bad. Like "minus five points to your score" kinda bad.

Anyway I had a blast watching Cheryl, Sabina, Allison, Mark and Trevor cope with this one. Eventually people start to marvel at the tree's gravity-defying contortions. Mid-way through the game, the thing looks like a pine tree that's been "out on the bank" for the past one-hundred years.

In the end, Alllicene proved to be the most deft of hand. Here are the final scores:

Cheryl: -4

Me: -3

Sabina: -2

Mark: 0

Trevor: +3

Allicenne: +6

Everyone seemed to dig this one so I quickly re-racked it for another game. I get a kick out of watching folks discover sneaky tactics like cherry-picking pieces that are on the verge of falling off, using a flick action to knock back off the top tier or deliberately knocking the whole thing outta whack just to fuck with the next person. Good times.

Our overall score in game two was slightly better and my more-conservative strategy let me eke out a tie. Here, then, are the final scores from game two:

Sabina: -3

Mark: -2

Cheryl: +3

Me, Trevor & Allicenne: +4

Sorry, but I love this stupid game. It's a wonderful opener and / or a great wind-down closer at the end of the night. It's cat-nip for non-gamers and kids in particular. In a world where Jenga is the only dexterity game that people know of, this one is Campaign for North Africa in comparison.

Pro tip: I've house-ruled the "grub" rule ever so slightly. In the original game if you reveal a grub you get a free full two-whack turn but that's totes cray-cray IMHO, especially if you turn up several of them at once. So, in my games, I just limit it to a single bonus strike.

Next up was Dead Man's Draw, which I originally profiled right hur.

Dead Man's Draw is a press-your-luck pirate-themed card game. On a player's turn, they draw the top card on the deck and play it in their "run". There are ten different suits in the game and each card is numbered from two to nine. Each time a card hits the table it triggers a special ability that you can use to help your effort or screw around with your opponents.

Anytime you want to stop drawing cards you can. Cards you collect at the end of your turn are placed in a chest of "booty" in front of you, stacked in different suits with the highest value on top. Alternately, you can keep drawing cards as long as you want but as soon as you draw a suit that's already in your "run" you bust and all of your cards go into the discard pile. Bee-boo.

The game continues until the draw pile is exhausted. Players then count up the top deck value in each of their suit stacks and the highest total value wins the game.

This is another one that's a blast to teach to people. I'm so good at it now that I don't have to do any up-front rules dump, I just get the first player to draw their first card and I talk them through their options. The most important thing to communicate to them right off the bat is that, with ten different suits, your really start to flirt with the possibility of busting when you get up around three or four draws.

Here's how the score rattled out in this one:

Allicenne...16 points

Trevor...35 points

Me...48 points

Cheryl...60 points    

The same group stuck around for game two. Trevor and Allicenne proved to be quick studies and dominated the game. Here are the final scores:

Cheryl...34 points

Me & Allicenne...50 points

Trevor...57 points

Some tips about teaching this one to people: feel free to explain what the cards do and how they work in tandem, but always let your players discover the combos themselves. It's particularly gratifying when they figure out some crazy, Machiavellian plan all by themselves. "Hmmm, a Treasure Map. Let's see, if I use the Hook I just turned up to drag that Sword back into my run, I can steal your Key and complete my Chest / Key combo! Yis!"

Indeed, the best part of the game is discovering the synergy amongst different suits which you can use to rack up mondo points. It's not the deepest game in the world, but its another good, light, portable opener that makes your brain percolate.

Next up was Roll For It! which I've also previously covered here and here.

This one is a super-lite, odds-making, Vegas-style dice game. To start things off, three cards are randomly flipped up on the table from the top of the deck. Each one is a "blueprint" you're trying to fulfill with your six dice. The more dice required, the more it's worth.

On your turn you roll all six of your dice and dock 'em anywhere you like. Vis a vis you can split 'em up amongst several card, and that's a big part of the strategy. Do go all in on one card or hedge my bet among several and roll less dice?

Here, I'll give you an example. Say you've got a five-pointer on the table requiring three "3"s, just like in the photo below. On my first turn I roll two "3's" so I plop 'em next to that card. But then, my jack-hole opponent comes along and rolls three "3"s in one go. They can snipe my card, bump my dice back to me, and now they're well on their way to the 40 points needed to win.

Right off the bat I took the lead by going after some quick, low-value cards. Trevor scored a big 10 points but every time he started to invest in a new card, someone would just steal it away from him! Eventually he became obsessed with completing a juicy 15 pointer but this caused him to stall completely. Both Cheryl and Allicenne both tried to take a run at me but by then all I needed was another easily-acquired ten-pointer to put me over the top.

Final Scores

Trevor...10 Points

Allicenne...30 Points

Cheryl...37 Points

Me...41 Points

Whereas Click Clack Lumberjack is catnip for kids, Roll For It! is catnip for parents. It's quick, super-easy to teach and, hey, everybody loves dice! Just remember the following three important things when teaching the game to people:

1. Sometimes players will make the mistake of splitting their dice up while going for a 15-pointer. Be sure to remind them that they need all six dice on that one card in order to claim it. 
2. Get players to temporarily set aside any dice they just used to buy a card and then turn up a new card from the top of the deck. This gives the player a chance to allocate any of their remaining, unspent dice. In fact, with a particularly lucky roll, you can actually pick up several cards in one turn. Be sure to remind players that they'll get all of the dice they set aside back at the start of their next turn.
3. If players opt to take their dice back they can't cherry pick just some of them. They have to take all of them back but then they get to roll all six again. 

Next up we decided to play one of the better party games to come down the pike in a while: Konito?.  
To set things up, you construct a "race track" with a bunch of brightly-colored puzzle pieces. This alone is awesome enough since you can use all of the pieces for a 30-40 minute game or just half or three-quarters of the pieces for a shorter 20-minute game.

After everyone is divided up into teams, get them to pick a colored token and place it on the start space. Choose a team at random to start and then elect one member to be the first phrase-reader. An example of a phrase might be:

"May The Force __ ____ ___." 

Now if you've been living underneath a rock since 1977 and you had no idea what I was taking about talking about, I can then launch into word-association, songs, gestures...anything to get my team-mates to finish the phrase. Green spaces have three phrases per card, the orange spaces have four and the red spaces are the most challenging with five phrases per card. Each card your team clears in the allotted time is a movement point for your token around the race track.

Oh, one final thing: if you start your turn on a "Konito?" space the phrase-reader begins by drawing the top "Konito?" card and asking their team-mates "Do you wanna do 1, 2 or 3?". The random number they settle on corresponds to a particular stunt that your team must now accommodate for the upcoming turn. An example of this would be: "After each response, the answerer must give their first and last name". Typically these challenges make things slightly harder but also offer some sort of rewards if you succeed.

The first team token to reach the end of the track wins! 

The Teams

Team Blue: Angie, Cheryl and Allicenne

Team Black: Me, Chad and Trevor

Team Green: Angela, Claudia and Sabina

Since this was our first game, and a lot of the stunts are kinda humiliating, we decided to play 'em. As the game began we were getting our asses kicked. Angela, Claudia and Sabina were working in perfect tandem with one another. But eventually we started to settle down and close the gap by deliberately landing on the easier green spaces. Eventually Team Green got hung up on a tough Red spot just one space away from the finish line!

With Chad up, Trevor blew through the phrases as quick as possible and Chad's responses were unerring. So, right at the very end, we blasted by our rivals to claim the win!

This was one of my first times teaching the game to people so I goofed up one critical rule: everyone on the phrase-reader's team can answer. We were playing it so that the phrase reader and answerer kept changing and only one person could answer that round. This put people on the spot and made it a lot harder.

I.E. I can't slight the game for my grievous fuck-up. It's actually one of the better party games I've played in recent memory but, then again, I'm also a weirdo English major and writer who loves phrases. Full disclosure: I've taught the game to a lot of people and I've noticed that, for some strange reason, some Millennials have no sweet clue what a lot of these phrases are. So be sure to divide younger players evenly amongst the teams to make things are fair as possible.

Next up: one of my favorite press-your-luck dice games: Pickomino by Reiner "I Loves Me Some Numbers" Knizia.

In Pickomino (originally titled Heck Meck) players are mama hens trying to bring back as many tasty barbecued worms for their chicks to eat. They do so by rolling eight dice and keeping one matching set. For example, if my first throw was two "2's",  two "1's", three "4's" and one Worm symbol I could keep the three "4's" for 12 points. Now, I'm gonna hafta roll again 'cuz the lowest valued tile on the table is 21.

So I go again, and this time I throw one "1",  one "3",  four "4's" and two Worm symbols. Unfortunately I can't take the four "4's" 'cuz I kept 'em on a previous throw. But I can take the two Worms, which is a good idea for two reasons: they're worth five points a pop and I need at least one of 'em sitting in front of me by the time I stop. So I decide to take 'em and now I'm up to 22 points.

Now I can stop right there, take the "22" tile with a single worm on it and then pass the dice on to the next person. Every time I stop and keep a tile it goes on top of my stack. This gives the game another interesting wrinkle: if you roll the exact number on the top of someone's stack you can steal that tile away from them. Zing!

I can also keep rolling as often as I want, but if I can't keep a die result that's different from my previous throws I bust, my top tile goes back into the sequence and I flip over the highest valued tile on the table. This ensures that the the game lasts no longer than a half hour. The game ends when all the tiles are passed around and / or flipped and the highest worm count wins the game.

I introduced this one to Allicenne as well as Dawn's two friends Paula and Rhonda. Everybody picked up on it right away and pretty soon we were all rollin' as if our chick's lives depended on it. Right from the start I settled for a lot of low valued tiles but Paula proved to be particularly adept at pressing her luck. Instead of chickening out (seewutididthur?) she persevered and kept rolling long after logic (and sanity) dictated that she should stop. For me, such gambits never seem to pan out, but for her it really paid off.

Final Scores

Rhonda...0 Points

Allicenne...1 Point

Me...6 Points

Paula...8 Points

Game two played out in a similar fashion with me sniping the lowest valued tiles. This time it was Rhonda's turn to snap up those scrumptious high-worm tiles. I also suffered a bit from "game master" syndrome which dictates that if someone's gonna get a tile stolen from them, it's gonna be the guy who taught the game to people. Clearly he's the greatest threat! Yeah, um, no.

Here's how the scores shook out for game two:

Me...0 points

Allicenne and Paula...3 Points

Rhonda...4 Points

No matter how well you "elevator pitch" Pickomino to people, they'll typically just stand there and blink at you. So now I just throw it down on the table and tell people "YOU ARE PLAYING THIS GAME RITE NOW" in my best Dr. Klaw voice. Once it's down and people start chuckin' dem bones, they can't stop. It's like the "potato chip" of dice games, you just can't play one!

Next up: the smash-hit party game of 2015: Codenames.

Leave it to wonderkind designer Vlaada Chvátil to take a simple word-association party game like Catch Phrase and turn it into a super-cool spy-themed game.

Before I get started I just wanna say up front that the optimal number of players here is either four or six but it still technically works with three or two (kinda) or seven plus (decreasingly so). The game play itself is deceptively easy: players split into red and blue teams and nominate a "Spymaster" as their guide. It's the Spymaster's job to get their color-coded agents to rendezvous with affiliated spies in the field and keep them away from rival agents, the unwitting general populace or, even worse, the deadly Assassin. 

After a random, 5 x 5 grid of "code name" cards is laid out on the table, a "blueprint" is revealed to the Spymasters only. This instantly identifies where your field agents are as well as rival spies, Innocent Bystanders and the Assassin. The Spymasters are then given a moment to look at this grid and try to find as many links between their team cards as possible.

So as not to tip off their rivals with the movement of their agents, the Spymasters will alternate back and forth, giving their team a one-word clue and then a number which indicates how many code name cards they're referring to. For example if I'm the blue Spymaster and the secret blueprint tells me that three of my blue spies in the field are "GOLD", "SHIP" and "PLANK", I might tell them "PIRATE - 3". This tips them off to look for three pirate-related code name cards.

After talking among themselves, a team must eventually settle on a guess by physically pointing to it. Every time they guess right, you get to overlay one of your color-coded Agent tiles. If they get all of their guesses right, they can press their luck by taking take one more bonus guess, perhaps based on a previous clue they've been given.

If they screw up and pick a rival team's color, the enemy team gets to drop one of their team color tiles on the board and the turn immediately passes to them. If you send an agent to meet with an Innocent Bystander, then a neutral cards hits the table and your turn is over. But the worst case scenario is sending your agents to meet with the deadly Assassin. If that happens you immediately lose the game and the other team wins. In other words, if I didn't notice that "ISLAND" was the Assassin in the example above, I've just put my players in genuine peril with my PIRATE-themed clue! 
    

Game One Teams

Red Team

Spymaster: Me

Agents: Jeremy and Trevor

Blue Team

Spymaster: Andrew

Agents: Cheryl and Matt

Even though I'm usually the dude who comes in last on our first play of deep Eurogames, but I'm a real savant when it comes to Codenames. Sometimes you'll get lucky and there'll be plenty of blatant links between some of the cards, but in most instances, you really have to think creatively. Sure, you can give a clue linked to a single card, but that isn't going to get you ahead! You gotta gamble a bit by doling out clever clues that relate to two, three, even four or more code name cards at a time.

Things were still pretty close mid-way through our first game but then Andrew got a little gun shy. Even though some of the links were tenuous at best, I managed to press my luck and us nudge into the lead. This gave me a chance to deliver the coup de grâce in the form of a conservative one-word clue: "MacDonald" for "BRIDGE", which probably only makes sense if you're from Halifax.  

Winners: Me, Jeremy and Trevor.

Game Two Teams

Red Team

Spymaster: Jeremy

Agents: Me and Trevor

Blue Team

Spymaster: Matt

Agents: Cheryl and Andrew

No offense to Jeremy but some of his clues, such as the incredibly esoteric "ANGELES" (as is LOS Angeles), put us behind the eight-ball pretty quick. Conversely, Matt was laser-focused, bangin' out one 2 to 3-word clue after another. As such, Team Blue trounced us soundly by a score of 8 - 5.

Winners: Matt, Cheryl and Andrew.

Things were starting to wind down by then, with many of the remaining party-goers distracted by some sort of DVD party game that I had zero interest in. This gave Andrew, Cheryl, Matt and I a chance to bust out one of my favorites from last year: Splendor.

Since I've already talked about this one pretty extensively (namely here, here, here and here) I'm not going to re-hash it in any detail. I do want to preface the following account by telling you that Andrew had just come off a Splendor tournament. He's prepared for this by weight-training with the app so much that he claimed to be invincible. Naturally we took this as a challenge and Cheryl, Matt and myself promptly took up the gauntlet against him.

Unfortunately, Andrew's prediction proved prescient and he charted an incredibly streamlined path through the game. I did a reasonably good job picking up some Prestige but my choices were considerably less optimal. For the record, my Splendor skills have really improved since this last meeting and now I think I could really give him a run for his money.

Matt, sharp cookie that he is, grasped the rules very quickly but by the time he started to divine a clear strategy it was already too late. Cheryl, normally a super-sharp contender in Splendor, Cheryl spent way too long developing her base before collecting any Prestige Points, which, as we know, is what the game's all about! 

Final Scores

Cheryl...2 Points

Matt...4 Points

Me...9 Points

Andrew...15 Points

I've played Splendor so much now that it's the gaming equivalent of a warm, fluffy robe. It's comforting, cozy and reassuringly simple. I'd like to challenge Andrew once again, this time applying some recent epiphanies about the game which involve the creation of deep discounts for the most plentiful developments while exploiting reservations to the maximum.

Speaking of gaming comfort foods, our last match of the evening was Lords of Waterdeep, which I've already featured here and here. I only had the base game with me, but since it was getting late, I needed something with a quick set up time and fewer options.

This time I was the one on point, snapping up the primo quests, becoming a prolific slumlord and nailing people with irksome Mandatory Quests. Andrew, on the other hand, altered his strategy mid-game, killing his momentum in the process. Meanwhile Cheryl had a hard time picking up quests that dovetailed with her Lord's special ability.

Final Scores

 

Cheryl...131 Points

Andrew...134 Points

Me...142 Points

What can I say about Lords that hasn't already been said? To this day it's still one of my all-time favorite worker placement games. Even though I consider the Scoundrels of Skullport expansion to be de rigueur now every time I play it, there's something to be said about clean, elegant simplicity of the core game as well.

What I like most about Lords of Waterdeep is that it practically begs you to pay attention to the Buildings, the Quest spread and the Intrigue cards. Successful players will be the ones who juggle all of these elements in the most efficient manner.

***

By the time Lords of Waterdeep wrapped up it was around 11:30 pm and we'd been drinkin', gamin' and eating like kings for about eight hours straight. Ergo, it was time to pack it in. We thanked Mark and Dawn extensively for being such great hosts before heading out into the crisp, late-summer air. I drove home very happy, content in the knowledge that I'd presided over a few new gaming epiphanies, especially amongst valued friends.

Pity that my opportunities to game are becoming increasingly scarce. But, fear not! There's hope on the horizon! Stay tuned, folks, I've got a massive entry coming soon featuring a crap-ton of new games, some new reviews on deck, plans for a new video series and some exciting events on the horizon!

***

Wanna impress your friends with some cool, hipster-ish game knowledge? Well, click on any of the images below to learn more about the games we played and keep this blog on fleek!

Games For People Who Don't Like Games

Picture it: you're home for the holidays. Everyone is sitting around staring at one another or watching the youngling / pet battle royale in the middle of the living room. Bored out of your gourd, you tentatively propose an alternate activity:

"Hey guys, does anyone want to play a game?"

All of a sudden every bit of conversation and tumult drains out of the room and you find yourself standing in the cross-hairs of a dozen perplexed looks. Momentarily taken aback, you manage to stammer out something semi-intelligible about the Santa-sized sack of games you brought with you but no-one seems to bite. As a result you lapse back into silence, go back to staring at the kid / animal mosh pit in the middle of the room and wish that you'd brought your Splendor-app-laden tablet along with you.

But, hey, you really can't blame people for this chilly reception. After all, when you mention "games" the first thing most people think about is Clue, Payday, Monopoly and Risk. Sure the classics have their place but they also involve huge dollops of luck, player elimination and/or waiting forever for your turn to come around. As such, I really can't slight the average Joe for thinking that games are about as exciting as watching a layer of skin form on the the top of the gravy bowl.

Now, if'n yer a gamer who's plannin' to spend the holidays with a bunch of non-gamers, well, don't you worry yer purdy l'il head. I'm-a gonna recommend a few specific things to bring along that'll help redefine games for neophytes while keeping you amused as well.

"Steady...Steady..."

Dexterity games are a no-brainer. Literally, you just pick something up and you move it to another place, hoping to Sweet Baby Jesus that things don't go shit-house on your watch.

The grand-daddy, or at least the retired uncle, of this category is Jenga. I just played Jenga with my parents for the first time and it's probably gonna be the highlight of my entire Christmas vacation. Gotta love a game that you can teach to people by singing an ancient commercial jingle. Even though it's a goofy activity at best, my folks treated it like Bomb Defusing: The Board Game. It was a huge hit.

Actually they were a bit too good at it. In fact, when things were becoming super-precarious I said "Hey, this isn't right. I'm supposed to win!" As it turned out, Dad was the inevitable victor.

PROS: Super-simple to jump into. Most people know it already. Very tense. Eight people can play it.
CONS: Blocks go flying everywhere. The person who placed the last block successfully "wins".

Fun fact: Jenga is best played on a cock-themed tablecloth. 

Then there's Bamboleo which shares a lot of traits with Jenga. In this one you have a bunch of geometric shapes placed on a giant wooden platter which you tentatively balance atop a cork ball on a wooden post.

On your turn you try to take a piece off the platter without tipping the whole thing over kit and kaboodle. If your turn comes around and you don't think that you can take a piece off without knocking the whole thing over, you can pass your turn. But if the next person successfully removes a piece then you have to pay them one of your own pieces as a penalty. The ham-fisted oaf who eventually knocks the whole thing over also has to pay a four-piece penalty back to the "bank" and, as you might have guessed, whoever collects the most pieces at the end of the game wins!

PROS: Great curb appeal. It's super-simple. Suspenseful. Plays with up to seven people.
CONS: A bit tricky to set up. Shit goes flying everywhere. Your first few games will probably be over quickly until people get a hang on the whole "balance" concept.

Then there's the high-water mark of Dexterity Games: Riff Raff. I guarantee: if you set this sucker up at a Christmas party or family gathering you're gonna have people cueing up to play it. The great thing about this one is that there's actually a subtle whiff of strategy at work here.

All players start off with seven pieces of flotsam and /or jetsam as well as a small deck of cards numbered one to ten. Every turn players select a card and reveal them simultaneously. The cards determine two things: who plays first and where you have to load a piece of cargo on the ship. Any given number can only be played once per game so budget them wisely.

The ship itself is on a cardanic hinge which causes it to list in one direction if too many pieces are placed on one side. If things tumble off the ship during your watch you can try to catch them. Anything snatched out of mid-air is thrown out of the game but pieces that hit the board or the table are added to your stockpile as a penalty.

The winner is the first person who gets rid of their last piece or the person who gets rid of most of their crap after all ten cards are played out.

The strategy really comes out of the card play. For example: if the ship is badly tilting in one direction you'll want to play cards to sway things back in the opposite direction.

PROS: Looks amazing. The construction is an engineering marvel. There's actually a teensy bit of strategy. It's incredibly absorbing.
CONS: It's a bit harder to explain than the others. Only four people can play at a time.

And then there's the new kid on the block: Rhino Hero.  

Gawd, how I love Haba Games. It's like they built their entire business model on how much adults hate playing Candy Land with kids.

This one's like a combination of Jenga meets Operation. On any given turn, players built the walls of a skyscraper based on the last floor card played and then add their own. Some of these cards have special icons that screw around with the regular rules of the game. For example you could force the next player to take two turns in a row, reverse the order of play or make the next person move the titular ungulate up a level. Sure, Rhino Hero is well-intentioned but every time the fat bastard moves he threatens to send the whole thing tumbling down.

The first player to get rid of all of their roof cards wins! Conversely, if the tower collapses the person who dumped most of their roof cards wins!

PROS: Colorful. Nail-biting. Easy to play. Wins are more satisfying than Jenga. You can really screw over your opponents.

CONS: Some might struggle with the card symbols. When Aunt Mildred and Uncle Bill come barging through the front door the tower might blow over.

"Flick You, You Flickin', Flicker."

There are tons of flicking games out there but, IMHO, none do it better than Flick 'em Up.

The charming components, the western theme and the easy, programmable rules make this a real winner. The first scenario is super simple: it's just five lawmen and five desperadoes trying to ventilate one another over the course of six rounds. Each faction alternates back and forth, flicking the movement disc to maneuver their l'il wooden cowpokes around obstructing cacti, fences, hay bales, and buildings to get a clear shot at enemy varmints. If you hit an opponent with the bullet disc and knock 'em over you deal a point of damage and when someone gets hit three times they're off to Boot Hill.

PROS: Massive curb appeal. You can keep up to ten people amused at a time. Easy to play. Rules expand naturally as you keep playing.

CONS: The tsunami of bits may look intimidating to the average schmoe so be prepared to teach it quickly. Also be warned: the components are super-attractive to kids and / or pets so keep a close eye on things to avoid a festive trip to the Emergency Room.

Another solid choice is Tumblin-Dice. Each player alternates flicking, bouncing or pushing one of their four die off the top platform, trying to get their die past the foul line and keep it on the board. Wherever the die ends up the score multiplier kicks in. Naturally knocking your opponent's dice off the board, shuffle-board style, is a major part of the strategy.

Whoever has the highest total over the course of four rounds wins!

PROS: Super simple. People love the shuffle-board style game play. You can expand the number of players just by cannibalizing six-siders from other games.

CONS: This fucker is expensive.

"And By Game I Assume You Meant 'Card Game', Right?" 

Sometimes you can get certain people on board just so long as the game doesn't have a...board. 

Sushi Go! is a fantastic little game that takes the card drafting mechanic from 7 Wonders and distills it down to its simplest form. 

Players get "x" number of cards based on player count. Everyone picks the card they like the most, conceals it face down in front of them and then everyone reveals their picks simultaneously. The remaining cards are then passed on to the left. You rinse and repeat this action until all of the cards have been passed out, the goal being to have the best scoring tableau siting in front of you by the time the round ends.

For example, the person with the most Maki Roll symbols on all of their cards will net themselves six points with the runner up getting three. Every pair of Tempura will give you five points while a set of three Sashima gets you a whopping ten points. Dumplings stack in value so two is worth three points but four gets you ten. Nigiri are face value but if you dip 'em in a a pre-played Wasabi card you triple their value. Finally, Chopsticks give you a bonus play while Puddings are only tallied up after three rounds of play. 

PROS: Disarming sushi theme will put everyone at ease. Game play is fast and furious with no down time. Lots of scoring options.

CONS: Even though the drafting mechanic is pretty simple some people might have a hard time with it since it has no precedent. I.E. prying the remaining cards from players hands after a draft can sometimes be a real challenge.

Back in the mid-Nineties, Magic: The Gathering publishers Wizards of the Coast actually produced a line of quick and easy card games specifically advertised to help gamers cope with family gatherings. One game in particular was so good that it stood the test of time and is still in print today. And that game is Guillotine. 

You can sell this one by telling potential players that it's the only game in your collection that comes with a l'il cardboard Guillotine. In this one, twelve "Nobles" are lined up in front of the titular execution device. On your turn you have the ability to play an Action Card to alter the line up, which is great since the last thing you have to do on your turn is lop off the noggin of the poor jobber that's closest to the guillotine. 

Ultimately what you're trying to do is collect the heads of unpopular assholes like "The Judge" while avoiding the pates of nice people like "The Martyr". After the skulls of thirty-six random Nobles have been distributed around the table you add up your tally and the player with the most positive points wins.

PROS: The coal black humor will amuse your cool family members.

CONS: The coal black humor will horrify your prudish family members. Or is that another "PRO"? Hmmmmmmmmmmm...

Cherry Picking is a fabulous new set collection / trick taking game that borrows elements from several of the games I've already mentioned while still managing to be its own animal.

To get started you just lay out six colorful cards representing the fruit-bearing plants in the game and then pair each one up with a random card. Once again, players pick a card from their hand based on what plant they want to harvest from and then all cards are concealed and revealed at once. Then things are played out in the following order:

• Ladders get to "cherry pick" anything on the table, but if multiple Ladders are played then all of them are chucked into their respective scoring piles and no fruit is "picked".
• Next up are Wild Cards which also let you pick from any tree. However, if more then one of these things hits the table they're all thrown out for zero points!
• The player who dropped the highest value fruit card plucks the card from the matching tree. If multiple people played on the same tree, then the law of diminishing returns will likely kick in! 
• Finally, Baskets can gather up any remaining fruit card that hasn't been picked yet. This could either result in a real bargain or a giant pile of bupkis.  

At the end of the game players add up all of their face value points, matching sets, Ladder and Basket cards and whoever has the most points wins!

PROS: Colorful. Contentious. Easy to "pick" up, seewhutIdithur? The variety of card plays and point sources keeps this one "Farmers Market" fresh.

CONS: Some people might be confused by the card plays and the scoring system. We call those people "idiots". 

The final entry in this category is a game that's sure to put even the most skittish card player at ease: Diamonds.

If your audiences's enjoyment of a game is entirely predicated on seeing face values and suits, then go with this one. At it's heart, Diamonds is a simple trick-taking game like, um, Hearts. But three things make the game interesting for veteran gamers:

(1) You use a cardboard stand up screen and shiny plastic gemstones to keep score. Diamonds in your "Showroom" out front are worth face value but anything squirreled away in the back "Vault" is doubled in value. That way you have no idea who's winning until the very end!  

(2) Whenever you take a trick you activate one of four suit-based special actions involving the screen and / or the gemstones. For example, winning a heart-based trick lets you take a diamond from supply and place it in your Showroom while diamond tricks let you take a gem from the supply and place it directly in your Vault. Boo-ya! 

(3) Whenever you can't follow suit you also get a trick-taking action! *whut, whut?*   

PROS: Traditional card-game trappings makes it appear safe and familiar for scaredy-cats. Trick taking mechanic will have you cursing out opponents. The diamonds and the player screens will keep veteran gamers hooked and the winner in doubt right up to the very end.

CONS: Card snobs might think that the screens and the diamond tokens are too "gamey". As if anything could be.

"He Puzzled And Puzzled 'Till His Puzzler Was Sore."

If you're looking for something colorful, familiar and "thinky" that won't cause civilian's heads to explode like Louis Del Grande in Scanners, look no further than Blokus. 

This one's great: every player gets an identical set of candy-colored, Tetris-like playing pieces and then picks one of four corners to start in. The placement rules are simple: all pieces of the same color have to be placed corner to corner but pieces of a different color can be played adjacent to one another. The goal of the game is to get rid of as many of your pieces as possible.

This is a wonderful spacial relations-type game where it pays to be kinda aggro and go after your rival's corners. By rights it should be called Invasive Species: The Board Game.

PROS: Colorful, familiar and edible looking pieces. Strategic and vaguely brain-burny without a metric shit-ton of rules. Quick to play.

CONS: Limited to four players. Dumb toddlers might mistake the playing pieces for Jolly Ranchers, so unless you want a festive trip to Emerg, be warned. 

"C'mon, Baby, Daddy Just Needs To Beat Aunt Mildred!"   

If folks just want a simple Vegas-style odds-making dice game then sit 'em down for a spot of Roll For It!

The game begins when you turn up three cards at random that show what combination you're trying to roll with your six dice. For example, if there's a card that requires a "2", a "3" and a "6" for five points and I roll a "2" and a "3",  I can place the matching dice there, hoping to roll a "6" on my next turn. However, if my opponent comes along and rolls this exact combo on one throw they can capture that card, bump my dice back to me and they're on their way to the forty points required to win.  

It's so simple even a lead-poisoned chipmunk could play it.

PROS: Lotsa pretty dice, which are always fun to roll. You can split your dice up among several cards but, of course, this decreases the number of dice you roll next turn. The game plays quick and doesn't overstay it's welcome.

CONS: I'll just leave this right here.   

#rollfor it #cockstorm

Cards Against My Nerves

Cards Against Humanity sucks balls. There, I said it. It's nothing but a prefab sense of humor in a box for people born without a funny bone. Or a conscience. Mercifully there are plenty of other, considerably better games out there that involve novel concepts like wit, creativity and a modicum of intelligence.

In Snake Oil players take turns being customers. Everyone around the table has a bunch of product cards so they pair two of them together and that forms the basis of a sales pitch. For example, if I was a "Caveman" you had "Beard" and "Brush" you could put 'em together and say something like "Hey, look, dude, I didn't wanna say anything but it looks as if you've got about a week's worth of mastodon tangled up in that thing." And in response I might say "Duly noted!" 

The next person could partner up "Stone" and "Paint" together and say "Yo, Korogg, I know you ain't got no Wi-Fi in dat hobbit hole o' yours, so you prolly bored as a mother-f#cker up in dat bitch. But, check this, wif  'Stone Paint' you can exercise them creative muscles, craft yo' masterpiece, rake in tha' Benjamins and move up to a dee-lux crib in the upper east mountainside." To which I would say "Fuck you, you can't get rich with art...'Beard Brush' wins!" and give the point to the other guy. The game ends when everyone gets a chance being a Customer.

PROS: I just told you all of the rules. The selling component is surprisingly fun. The combos and the resulting pitches can be creative and unexpectedly funny.

CONS: Just like in Cards, the winner of the round is a single arbitrary pick.  

Another viable option is Say Anything. In this one players pick one of five different questions to read out loud like "What is my favorite 80's metal band?". Everyone around the table has a mark n' wipe board so they can answer the question any way they like: total creative freedom. The "judge" then picks their favorite answer by locking their choice in with a secret voting thingamajigger. Then everyone around the table has to get into the judge's head and use their two voting chips to guess what answer they picked. You can hedge your bet on two different options or double down depending on how confident they are. Points are then awarded accordingly.       

PROS: The wide choice of questions and the mark n' wipe boards really opens up the creativity. The points system makes an actual game out of it. It's a good way to get to know people around the table.

CONS:  Maybe you don't want to know everything about Aunt Mildred. 

Finally there's Word Whimsy, which allows you to build something of a creative narrative on every turn. Once again, every player takes a turn being Judgy McJudgerson, reading a random question out loud such as: "Name A Movie That I'd Probably Love". Then everyone else around the table picks out a series of subject cards and tucks them into a l'il cardboard sleeve in the order they want them read, such as "Ash", "Versus", "Kim Kardashian". 

Then all the sleeves are thrown into the middle of the table, mixed up and the judge randomly reads them out loud, awarding three points to their favorite, two points to the runner up and one point for their third choice. Naturally, the person with the most points at the end of the game wins.

     

PROS: You can use some, most or all of the cards at your disposal. Awarding variable points make it surprisingly good. There are tons of cards so the combinations are consistently funny, weird and varied.

CONS:  Things might get a little awkward when Uncle Bill uses "Female", "Extravaganza", "Jell-O", "Wrestling", "Vulcan" and "Nude" to answer the same question above. Ewwwww.

Anyway, that's just a few quick ideas offa the top o' my head. The thing to remember when picking out a game is:

1. How many people are playing? Make sure that you have games at your disposal that can accommodate four, six, eight or even ten bodies at a time.
2. Know your audience. If Aunt Mildred gives out prayer beads as Christmas presents every year it's highly unlikely that she'll appreciate the finer points of Epic Spell Wars. 
3. Curb appeal is important. Make sure the components are kept to a bare minimum and they're attractive to look at and maul.
4. Play time should never drag. Anything longer than an hour is really pushing your luck.
5. Reading rules verbatim out a manual will drive people away quicker than an invite to peel potatoes for Christmas dinner.

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Determined to lure folks away from their smartphones, tablets, T.V. screens and monitors for more than ten minutes?  Then click on the images below to learn more about these games and, in turn, wish this blog a Happy and Prosperous New Year!