Games We Play - Dice Games

I am pretty much in love with dice games.  Don't get me wrong I LOVE games in general, but with dice games we can sit down after a long day and just play a couple of rounds, throw the dice back in the box and get on to bed.  They (mostly) don't require a lot of set up and (mostly) don't require a lot of brain power which is especially awesome after a long, stressful, exhausting day.  

While looking for games to keep us occupied while waiting in line at PAX I came across my first TableTop Episode, it happened to be This One which showcased Tsuro, Get Bit and Zombie Dice.  We decided not only that Zombie Dice would be awesome for line waiting, but we had to run out and get these games the next day.  Essentially that episode of TableTop is what set us of on this game playing journey :) 

But anyway, I digress.  This post is, after all supposed to be about the games we play, not what got us started playing them. 

So on to Zombie Dice this game is super simple to play, skill level is low,  learning curve is basically zero and it is most definitely not a cooperative game.  The idea is that, well, brains are good!  You like to roll brains!  Runners you re-roll, so they are the neutral party.  Shotgun blasts are bad, three blasts and you are gone AND you loose all your brains, stop rolling before you get to that point :) 

This is a pretty well played game for us, we probably play it at least once a week.  Plus it's pretty portable so I throw it in my purse when we go out on date nights, it's nice to have something we can play so we don't end up both playing on our phones for half the night!

The next game is called Pig, though I've been trying to come up with a new name for it since the Pig game we usually play is a card game we play with my Mom-in-Law.  But anyway this game is also super easy with no learning curve.  The rules of the game are simple, be the first to get above 100 and you win.  You can roll as many times as you want before you stop, but make sure you stop before you roll a 1, if you roll a 1 and your turn is over and you don't get any points, roll snake eyes and you loose all points you have collected up to that point.  

The first time we played this we played with normal six sided dotted dice, but I decided it would be more interesting to play with some different dice so I pulled out some others.  The hardest part about this game is adding up the points when your exhausted, other than that it's great fun! It will be an excellent one to introduce to the girls for number recognition and counting.  

The last game here I got as a mother's day gift, and I love it!  This one takes a bit more thinking and effort and is a bit more involved than the other two but it's still easy to play and it's loads of fun (though Hubby will disagree with that statement since I kicked his butt...).  Essentially you are rolling the dice in this game to build Roads, Settlements, Cities and Armies.  Now neither Hubby nor I have ever played any of the variations of the board game of Settlers of Catan so we didn't know really what we needed to build any of these items so it took us a while to figure out what we actually had or needed with each roll.  It took us about 40 minutes to play instead of the suggested 15-20 minutes on the box.  

I like this one the best of the three I think.  It's got just enough extra that it's not just about the luck of the roll, but also it's not so involved that we can't just play a quick game after we put the girls in bed and before we go to bed ourselves.

When I was researching this game I found that a lot of people out there don't really like it, but mostly they are people who had already played and love the full version of Catan.  Never having played that version I didn't have anything to compare the dice against.  I think in the future we will absolutely be adding Settlers of Catan to our collection, but I think this will still get more play time since it's a) quick and b) portable.  Love those portable games.

(Pint Size) Games We Play

We love playing games as a family (obviously) but with a 2 and 3 year old sometimes it's pretty difficult to find things that we can all enjoy playing.  So here are our latest favorites...Hisss and Uno Moo.

 

 

Hisss - (Here's the Amazon link - though if you think it's a game you want to add to your collection, check out your local gaming or comic book store first!)

 

My cousin got this game for A for her 2nd birthday, turns out it's just a smidge advanced for her and all she wants to do is throw the cards around, but C absolutely loves it!  It reminds me of a cross between Tsuro (path building) and Uno (color matching), the goal of the game is simply to build as many snakes as you can until the draw pile (or player's attention span) runs out.  The cards are perfect size for little hands and the colors are nice and vibrant. This is an excellent game for working on color matching and fine motor skills. 

 

 

Uno Moo! - (Here's the Amazon Link)

 

This game happens to be A's favorite game at the moment.  We picked it up to help her learn her colors and it's great for that.  It's basically like regular Uno except that rather than cards you have little balls and rather than numbers you have animals.  You play by matching either the color or animal and you get to knock the ball into the barn before setting your ball up on the door.  This is a great game for working on color recognition and matching in addition to working on those fine motor skills.

 

Growing Games

Todays post isn't a geeky game but a growing game...

On pintrest a while back I pinned this link to a fine motor skill activity. 

 

I picked up some salt and pepper shakers at the dollar store, the die and toothpicks we already had at home.  We started out just putting the toothpicks in the shakers then shaking them out...

 

but then we came up with an idea to take it to the next level and make it into a game. I ran into grab a die... C would roll the die, then count the dots and put that number of toothpicks in the shaker.  Simple and yet it kept her busy and smiling for about half an hour plus we got to work on fine motor and counting skills.

 

 

Gloom

Back on Table Top Day we picked up Gloom figuring, it would be fun to get into some card games and it turns out that that was a great investment because this pretty much has to be one of the best games I have played in a while.  My husband and I played it by ourselves the first time so we could figure it out before introducing it to our friends, but after that first night we were hooked.  The best part about the game is really the story telling I think and while it was fun with just the two of us, it really is amazing when there are other players to bring more families into the mix.  

 

The object of the game is to make your family as miserable as possible before their "untimely death" while making the members of the other players families as happy as possible and the family with the least amount of points at the end of the game wins.  As I said up above the best part of the game is the story telling aspect, yeah you could just put the cards down on top of the other cards, but it is way more interesting when you can explain just how exactly Cousin Mordecai was walking through a forest when he got "mauled by manatees" or how Lord Slogar who is actually just a brain in a box met his untimely death by "choking on a chicken bone" you can seriously learn a lot about your opponents by playing this game :)

 

If you want to see Gloom in play here is its Table Top episode!