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Who's the more foolish? The fool or fool that plays after the fool?
United States
DURHAM
North Carolina
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I am not usually one for a lot of light games. I'm not going to claim to be a huge heavy-weight gamer (I don't seem to find the time for that) but I like my games to have some actual decisions to be made in a reasonable density. So it is a little odd to report the last week or so of gaming has mainly consisted of light games, with not very much deep analysis at all.
Part of the reason has been the requests of my 8 year old son to play something. "I'm bored," he says. "Hello, Bored," I say with customary wit. "Can we play something?" "Sure, what do you want to play?"
Well, last week that question was answered with Cranium Cadoo. This meant roping in his brother, which we did. The best parts of the couple of games we played were the intricate care the boys put into their drawings. My younger one was really into the sculpting as well (the clay that came with the game has long since dried out and replaced with Play Doh). After the game he played his own game where Dad had to identify the things he made.
He also brought out Hisss, a kids game where you match bits of snake together by color and try to make a whole snake, which you then claim and set it upon your opponent when he tries to make you do your homework. You don't have a lot of choices really, but it was still pretty exciting when both of us completed long snakes with our last plays of the game and the little guy was very pleased to find he beat the old man by a point, 25-24.
On Saturday night, we had our friends Geoff and Leah over. They brought a bag of games with them, mostly light and silly games particularly good after a drink or two. They brought some of the drinks too, so we were set. We ended up playing Time's Up. This is the version with all people as the answers - we had played the Time's Up! Title Recall! version not too long ago. We had also played this one, long ago at a New Year's Eve party and I vaguely recalled us having trouble with it, due to some of the American answers being outside our decidedly British upbringing. The one example I remember was Martha Washington. Neither of us knew (back then) that she was the first President's wife. That was frustrating to our team-mates. However, with some clever gestures and breaking down the clues, you can get there. Eventually. So we partnered up, the wifes swapping husbands for the duration. Well, it turned out that my wife and Geoff were not quite on the same wavelength, not helped by some of the problems we had encountered before: anyone know Clarence Darrow or Allen Funt? Well, we didn't. However, Leah and I were able to get more per turn and it ended up a bit of a blow-out. But that really misses the point of the game, because what it is about is doing silly things to help your partner remember that name for next time - with much hilarity from the onlookers.
We didn't play it at the time with them, but Geoff loaned us his copy of Category 5. After cleaning up a bit, we tried it out before bed as a 2-player. It was the 24 card variant, but trying to learn a game from the rules when tired is fraught with difficulties, even a simple one. After two hands, I realized we were supposed to play our cards simultaneously not sequentially! We resolved to try it again once we had had some sleep.
We did, sticking with the 24 card version (I can't imagine the whole 104 card deck being any good with 2 players) but we still managed to get something wrong, though this time I blame the awkward wording in the rules: it seemed to say that a 'category 5' card blocked a row, making holding a number right after it Very Bad News. So when I found out that wasn't how you were supposed to play it, my wife was very glad to write off my win that day as 'tainted'.
In a break from the light game, but still in the short game category, we also played Race for the Galaxy. This was with all the expansions, but (at my lady's request) without Goals. We've noticed that sometimes the goals are just aligned with what one of us were doing anyway, which just makes them win more. Anyway, we tried it without (and missed them at least once each!). My wife had Galactic Scavengers and worked up a diversified economy tableau, some light military for a couple of the worlds, Galactic Exchange and Merchant Guild and successfully completed the full set of production worlds. It was pretty nice. Trouble was, my tableau just hummed. I was Earth's Lost Colony, I added Interstellar Bank and R&D Crash Program first turn. I put down a bunch of nice developments (Galactic Power Brokers, Galactic Markets, Pan-Galactic Research) capped with Galactic Bankers. And I had a few production worlds which consumed for a nice haul of VPs. I won 55 to 41 and I don't think my wife was too pleased about it. 
I offered the lunch gang the chance to play Category 5 as well, telling them up front to be prepared for some chaos. They went along with it. The first hand, Mike gets a bunch of points and starts complaining. But as it happens we all get pretty pounded. J and I have experience so we narrowly lead. And that 'experience' enables us to both get a 20+ point hand next round, while Tom escapes with a single point. 3rd round is wilder - Tom is ahead and we are all looking to give him points - but that is a rather difficult thing to achieve. In the end, he escapes with none at all and Mike and especially Rick pile up the points, with Mike now at 64 and Rick leaping into last place with 66. Figuring this for the last round, both of them opt to play at random and it is remarkable how they both avoid the bad rows and - somehow - pass them on to J, who ends up getting the single highest point score for the round. I duck all the dangers and get 1 point and Tom misplays (he missed the 43 at the end of a 5 row when he played his 45, thought it would sit with the 41) and takes some points, so I have a faint hope. But so many go J's way that Tom holds on. And Rick and Mike have their best round playing randomly.
Rick: 19+11+36+9=75
J: 15+21+8+38=82
Me: 12+24+6+1=43
Tom: 21+1+0+14=36
Mike: 23+14+27+8=72
As was gleaned from the last round, the gang didn't much take to the game. Even Tom was not overly keen - his initial reaction to the yellow cards was not a good start in itself. Though Rick did acknowledge that playing randomly would not work every time, that it worked at all was pretty damning. Most of the game was looking for cards you didn't want to play and then hoping your other card worked out OK, with little control over whether it did or not. We could have played the variant where only cards 1 to 54 are in the deck (and everything is dealt out every time) but I have my doubts over whether I would get them to play it again.
I think it will be Railways of the World card game next week. Maybe something heavier too? We shall see. But a week of lighter games was good too.
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