Games and more games
On the weekend we had a play with both Dominion and Castle Panic. The first was quite enjoyable and we can see lots of room for more interesting play as we try different decks and get used to playing a deck building game. The game is only supposed to take about thirty minutes but with us playing the first time plus the slowness with which Lego Lover took his turns, it was more like an hour and a half. Fortunately we started fairly early and had time for a game of Castle Panic afterwards. This was the big winner of the night…at least that seemed to be the consensus of the family. Game Fanatic and Lego Lover overwhelmingly preferred this to Dominion (even though they liked Dominion). The nice things about the game are short set up times and the fact the game goes really quickly. We came nowhere close to winning the game we played but we did have a lot of fun playing it.
Just after that, we watched the Tabletop show for Pandemic which is available on You Tube and looked to be really fun too. I have heard this one is another popular co-op game which is similar to Forbidden Island but a bit more complex. Game Fanatic and I had an appointment in Perth so we went into the city proper to Tactics, a board game and hobby shop that carries a wide selection. On the day it was particularly muggy and this place is downstairs from a shopping arcade…it was miserably hot with no air moving in any direction. But there was a copy of Pandemic there and it wasn’t quite as overpriced as most of the other games there. I didn’t buy it, knowing it was likely to be cheaper elsewhere but it was tempting. One day that will surely be added to our family collection.
This morning the postal van delivered more packages for Game Fanatic. This included the games Evo, Summoner Wars and King of Tokyo. I don’t know much about any of the games except they all can be played with just two players. Game Fanatic had hoped to play one this evening but we had a video to watch and we also got pizza from the shop for dinner…in addition to going to the gym today, there just wasn’t time to play.
2 Comments
Valerie
I’m glad you liked Dominion — we used to like it a lot and play it often too, and had all of the expansion sets. But then we got Thunderstone and like it so much better than Dominion that we haven’t played Dominion in ages anymore. (Actually if I had it to do over I’d buy Thunderstone Advance rather than plain Thunderstone, because the instruction booklet for Thunderstone is really desperately awful to try to figure out, while the instructions for Thunderstone Advance are much easier.)
We have Forbidden Island and like it okay, but I get tired of the constant endless peril. I enjoy games more when I feel like I’m succeeding. I’ve played Pandemic once or twice and liked it okay. It is a little similar to Forbidden Island — though the storyline is different.
We have Castle Panic but none of the kids is ever willing to play it, so it sits unplayed. I remember kind of liking it the one or two times we played it.
-Valerie
Purple Lorikeet
We don’t tend to play Forbidden Island that often so the constant peril isn’t too much of an issue. Castle Panic is rather similar so maybe that puts the kids off it. Our family really liked it but I imagine it would get old if you played it too often. In fact, until recently, our board game playing was pretty sporadic so nothing was getting that much of a look-in and nothing gets too boring.