It has been customary in the last several years for Game Fanatic to make wish lists for both his birthday and Christmas that include photos, prices and retailer options to aid us in buying gifts that won’t disappoint and won’t take him too much by surprise. He’s not very big on surprises. Anyway, he made a list for his birthday in September but it was considerably shorter than in past years. There was a game he wanted that wasn’t due to be released until the week following his birthday so he planned to put aside birthday money towards that purchase. Unfortunately the game date was pushed back and was only released early last month. He finally got his very much desired game. After that game, he didn’t think there was much that interested him so he decided to let go of the “list’ and allow us to choose things for him. He did eventually point out some things that interested him in the video/music/game shop near us but no list was made. And by the time he finally made known what interested him, the Scientist and I had already made a few purchases.

One of the gifts we chose was the game Forbidden Island that we found in one of the game shops we visited while Christmas shopping. I remember seeing this on Board Game Geek at some point before it was released and it sounded like it might be a good game for us to eventually try. And since it sported a Mensa Select sticker, we thought it might be a good game for Game Fanatic, who is quite good at some of the thinking games. So Christmas Day came and it became apparent early on that being taken by surprise was not a good idea and Game Fanatic was kind of disappointed with his gifts. We did half expect this and offered to return gifts for refunds so he could choose what he wanted. Forbidden Island was one that looked as thought it was going back at this point. Surprisingly, Game Fanatic decided a while later that he would give the game a chance after all. I think the problem was that it took him by surprise.

The nice thing about Forbidden Island is that it doesn’t require a long playing time like so many of the other games we own. So this was the reason we gave this one a try last night when it was already getting kind of late. After the exhausting hours spent on Agricola the night before, this was an absolute delight. Set up is quite easy and it took only a few minutes to work out the game play. Game Fanatic took to this one from the start and it really suits his thinking style, so much that he was working out strategy throughout the game. This is one of only a few cooperative games we own so it was a nice change to be playing together. We ended up with an unlucky draw of the cards at the start that made it pretty difficult to win but we gave it a good shot anyway. While we didn’t win,  we all had fun the whole way through and weren’t utterly exhausted at the end like the night before. I’m sure we’ll be giving this game a lot of use in the future since it’s a simple and quick game that is a lot of fun to play.

When I was in the US back in June, I went on a bit of a buying frenzy for board games. Here in Australia, most are significantly more expensive and infrequently go on sale. I was particularly interested in getting Agricola because it’s one of the higher-priced board games being sold right now. I ended up doing a lot of running around to get this, reserving a copy at a Dallas games shop when it wasn’t in stock . It was quite annoying to later discover that Barnes and Noble had plenty of copies in stock all along. I didn’t find my way to B&N until the latter part of my visit and it never occurred to me they would be carrying board games even though I had been to Border’s which did carry some titles.

When I returned home, I was literally sick and tired for several weeks and we only ended up learning to play a couple of the games during that time. Further down the track, we did make some attempts at learning some of the others but the learning part would take so long we’d abandon play before we properly got into them. I spent a lot of time reading the manual for Agricola during this time but we never had the time to learn to play. Last night, I suggested we finally give it a shot and that’s when the fun started.

Although I had read the rules a number of times, it’s often quite difficult to work out the play until you actually do it. We started to set it up and realised our coffee table simply wasn’t big enough to accomodate all the boards and pieces, so moved to the kitchen table. Set up was more difficult than we expected due to some pieces not quite matching the illustrations/instructions. Game play was also quite difficult to work out. It is recommended that newcomers play the family version to start, moving on to the full game once basic game play is understood. Unfortunately, the instructions are mostly geared to the full game, with only a few notes posted on the family version of the games. After much frustration, I looked online and discovered a video explanation lasting a half-hour. The Scientist and I watched while the boys disappeared for a while. Afterwards, the Scientist had a good idea of what we needed to do and I was halfway there. So we finally started and muddled through the various rounds of the game. Game Fanatic was thoroughly overwhelmed and pretty much just went through the motions for the latter part of the game. By that point, he had managed to acrue enough negative points to leave him well out of any chance of winning so he had just given up. Lego Lover enjoyed playing even though he also ended with negative points due to difficulties in managing the multiple facets of the game. I just managed to keep to positive points and the Scientist did somewhat better than me.  It was quite late by the time we finished and we were pretty exhausted after having our mental faculties so heavily taxed.  I think we will enjoy this a lot more the next time we play.