Only taken a couple years…
After playing Ticket to Ride on my birthday, Game Fanatic suddenly got back into playing board games after backing away from them for the most part. He pulled out Alhambra, a game we had yet to try, and worked out the rules. His first observation was that it wasn’t terribly complex. He also pointed out that it has a slightly Carcasonne-ish element to it although it’s considerably different. We tried out the game tonight and it all went well…except that Lego Lover was very slow to take his turns and it took a lot longer than we expected. It was a lot of fun and easy to set up so I suspect this will be something we play more often than the more complex games we own. I recently noticed there are expansions for this game so we might invest in some of those at some point.
We often purchase video games from Ozgameshop, a UK retailer that sells at a much lower price and offers free shipping. More recently they added toys and board games to the items they sell and the prices are again much lower than any local retailers. They sent me a birthday email with a $10 discount on my next purchase so I used it this week to buy a couple more board games and hope to get those in the next couple of weeks. I’m finally getting a copy of Dominion, which I’ve heard good reviews about from a variety of sources. The other games is Castle Panic, which I saw on the web video show, Tabletop (hosted by Wil Wheaton). Game Lover and I watched and liked what we saw. It’s a co-op game. in a similar vein to Forbidden Island, which our whole family enjoys playing. And because he’s in one of those moods, Game Fanatic has bought three more games for himself this weekend….
Tomorrow is supposed to be International Tabletop Day and our family is going to have our own game-playing party. We plan to play Alhambra again and will likely play at least one other game. We will have to fit that in between egg decorating and other weekend activities. I also got an email from a local friend inviting us to play board games on Sunday. It only came tonight so not sure if we will go or not… it’s a good chance for social outings for Game Fanatic so perhaps we can work something out.
3 Comments
Valerie
We have Dominion, and about five expansion sets. We used to play it a lot, and really liked it. But then we got Thunderstone, which is similar and way better, so now we never play Dominion anymore. (If you’re ever interested in buying Thunderstone, the rules on the original are horribly written, so I recommend starting with Thunderstone Advance, instead.) We have Castle Panic too. We played it maybe twice, liked it, but somehow it never gets chosen. I think we played Alhambra at the local university’s Game Archive (an amazing place!), and liked it okay, but not enough to buy a copy.
Our latest acquisition is Munchkin (the original version). I had avoided that for years, because the box talks about backstabbing your opponents, and I don’t enjoy that at all. But the kids in my Girl Scout troop had played it and liked it and said it didn’t need to be like that, so we tried it at the Game Archive and then went and bought our own copy. It turns out that there are some backstabby parts to the game, but it’s at a level that I can cope with. And the cards are pretty funny, and play very nicely together. So I ended up glad that I’d bought it.
You wanted to hear all that. Right? :-S
Purple Lorikeet
I don’t think I’ve heard of Thunderstone yet. Of course now I will probably see it everywhere now that I’ve said that. :D Probably won’t be getting any more games for a while after this new bunch of games arrives. Unless Game Fanatic buys boards games instead of video games again…
We have Munchkin but had only played it once. We did like it but just never played it again for some reason. Until tonight when we tried it again and liked it again. :)
Valerie
Oops — I am looking back through replies to my older comments, and am struck by how much my first paragraph here matches what I just wrote on another entry. My apologies about repeating myself. I hope I didn’t post exactly the same thing toooo many times! My brain is scary…..
-Valerie the repetitious