Games We Play ~ Cooperative Games

I didn't really think that there would be a type of game that I enjoyed playing more than dice games, but that was before I started playing cooperative games.  These things are awesome! Instead of playing against the other player(s)  you are playing together against the game itself.  Love it. 

First cooperative game we got was Pandemic. The object of the game is to cure and eradicate the four diseases before they take over the world.  Each player has a special power that will help you along the way, but then again the game is working against you.  As I said above, there is one way to win the game - you must cure and eradicate all four of the diseases.  But to *lose* the game, maybe you run out of disease cubes of any given color, or you draw one too many epidemic cards and the epidemic rate goes off the scale, or if we reach too many infections and the infection rate goes off the scale.  Toward the end of the game things can get a little stressful lol.

The only complaint I have about this game is the make over the second edition got.  The little plastic disease cubes are cool and all, but the colors on the blue and black disease cards look just about identical...not cool...Also the color on a couple of the pawns is a bit close so it can get confusing sometimes if those two pawns are in play.  

You can see the game in play on TableTop here .

 

The second cooperative game we have is called Forbidden Island.  After we got Pandemic I really wanted to get another cooperative game and this is what we ended up deciding on.  This one is a bit more straight forward and a bit quicker of a game to play.  The object of the game is to collect all of the relics before the island sinks.  Once again there is one way to win the game but several ways to loose it...if Fools Landing (the helicopter pad) sinks, you have no way off the island and you loose, if all of the pathways leading to fools landing sinks, you have no way off the island and you loose, if the water level rises too high...you loose.  Also as with Pandemic each character gets special abilities to give the players a fighting chance against the island. 

Love this game, the relic pieces and cards are sturdy and the art work on the cards are really beautiful, no complaints here. 

See the game being played on TableTop here. 

I'm now addicted to these types of games.  We have only played these games with two players, I'm sure it would greatly change the dynamic of the game playing with more people, but it works great with just two.  It's fun to be bouncing ideas off each other and working together to get to a common goal.  We will definitely be getting more of these types of games to play!

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.

Tabletop Day 2013

Like many others I was ecstatic when International Tabletop Day was announced on Geek and Sundry  then I realized that it was to be held on the day before Easter and some of the excitement faded a bit when I realized we had a ton to do that day, still we did the best we could!

 

To celebrate the day we made our first trip to our local comic book store!  This is a place where if Tabletop Day didn't exist we probably wouldn't have found.   The shop is called Zombie Planet and I am so glad we did find it!  Having never been in a comic book store before I had no idea what to expect, when I walked in the door I was pretty amazed.  In addition to the comics (which are housed upstairs), this place has every game imaginable and they have weekly and monthly events.  We bought three new games (Smiles, Qwirkle Cubes and Gloom) and walked away with an insane amount of (self-imposed) guilt for ordering 3 other games on amazon last week, if only I knew!  Good to know though that there is a local small business that we can support in the future though!!

 

 

Hubby and the Girls (in their Easter best) checking out the game selection at Zombie Planet

Ending the day with a little Tsuro by fire and glow-stick light

 

Hello Again

Wow, just about a year since my last post...ah well life gets in the way.

 

Anyway...we haven't been doing much computer/console gaming lately but we have been doing LOADS of tabletop/board gaming. 

 

It's like a whole new world was opened up to us when I ran across a random episode of  TableTop by Geek and Sundry. 

 

And in other news we attended PAX East again this year!  We had an incredible time (more to come on that once I edit the pics) and learned a lot!  Well I did anyway...particularly when we attended a panel on education gamification, which I think gave me some new educator-parent ideas on how to teach through games. 

 

Soooo I guess the point of this post is that hopefully I will be dusting off this blog and posting reviews on games we play as adults and on games we play (and/or make!) with the kiddos.  No promises but hopefully it wont fall by the wayside again. 

 

And with that I leave you with some PAX East 2013 pics...