Games, games and more games, part 2
A few months ago I wrote about our family’s recent interest in board games. I had intended to write another post a short time later but that somehow never happened.
The family was so enamored of the new games that I ordered more games from the supplier on the east coast. They’d had a sale on for all of January and I think I ordered a second time right at the end of the month. New games this time around were Puerto Rico, Blokus Duo and the card game Fluxx. It was a bit like Christmas again when the package arrived quite promptly within a couple of days of ordering. Not only were the prices cheaper than anything local but they offered free one day shipping.
I think Puerto Rico is one of my favorite games now. It seemed incredibly complicated when we first started but once we got going, we all enjoyed it. And once you know the basic play, it sort of falls into place. We’ve played this quite a few times since we got it and it never fails to be a couple hours of fun for us. I somehow managed to win my first game against Lego Lover and the Scientist when we played this weekend. Lego Lover was doing quite well so it was something of a surprise when he was a couple points under me at the end.
Blokus Duo is just a two player version of Blokus. It’s a smaller board and players don’t start from the corner as in the original game. It’s far more competitive for two players. This works really well when we aren’t playing as a family. Unfortunately we are kind of stuck when we have three players, as has happened recently. The original game board is a bit too easy with three players. When we played over the weekend, we all finished equally in one game. In the other one, the only difference between winner and loser was the fact one had played the single tile last. It would be good if there was a travel version available here because it would be a good game to place with Lego Lover on the plane. It has been released on the iPhone/iPod Touch but it takes up 95mb and I don’t want to use up so much space on my iPod.
I bought the card game, Fluxx, on a whim when I placed the last order. The game is incredibly easy to play because there is a very simple basic rule to start and the cards provide new rules as you go. The new rules can get pretty silly and strange at times but it’s definitely never dull.
More recently, I found a Lord of the Rings board game at a Salvos (Salvation army) secondhand shop for just eight dollars. It normally would sell for over $70 new. It is missing one piece, but it’s just a marker and is no loss to game play. We haven’t played this one so I can’t say anything about it just yet.
The next games on my to-buy list are Agricola and Ticket to Ride.
5 Comments
Valerie
Oh cool! I really like Puerto Rico — it’s one of my favorites. I agree about its learning curve. There’s a two-player set of rules somewhere on the web (from the manufacturer) that works really well; let me know if you’d like me to dig it up.
I like Fluxx quite a bit, too. What version of it do you have? The one I especially like is 3.1. I haven’t played version 4.0, but I have the impression that it introduces “creepers,” and I am not such a big fan of those.
Agricola was at some-point the best-scoring game on boardgamegeek.com, so I bought it a couple of years ago. We played it a handful of times but then haven’t gone back to it. (It’s also far more expensive than other similar games, for no reason that I could see.) We only ever played with the simpler set of rules that they suggest starting with; maybe it would be more interesting if we tried the more complicated rule set — I dunno. I should at least try using that rule set. But honestly, I was pretty disappointed in this game.
We’ve loved “Ticket To Ride” in the past, and own almost all of the variations on it. We played it a lot for a long time, inventing our own version of the rules that we liked better than the built-in rules, but then one day it just stopped sounding appealing anymore. I’m not sure why not — it’s a perfectly good game.
Recently we’ve been playing “Power Grid,” which I like quite a bit.
I was given a copy of “Ingenious” a couple of days ago. It isn’t exactly what the package made me expect, but it is a nice game that the whole family can play. I keep finding myself thinking about it and wanting to play it again. It reminds me a bit of what would happen if Othello collided with a brightly-colored set of dominoes. :)
purple
I just bought the Ingenious app for my iPod a day or two ago. I found a really good one for Settlers of Catan ages ago and saw mention of Ingenious but hadn’t looked for it until now. I find the rules and tutorial aren’t as helpful as I would like for a game I’ve never played before. I’ve been working it out by playing several games and sort of have an idea of what I’m doing now.
We must have Fluxx 4.0 because there are definitely creepers. They don’t bother me but then I haven’t played earlier versions either to know how they might affect game play differently.
Depending on the Australian dollar’s value, I might consider buying Agricola while we are visiting the US because the best price I’ve found here is $110.
Valerie
Oh — If you are choosing between “Ticket To Ride” versions, I like the Europe version better than the one with the U.S. map. That’s because there’s one route on the U.S. map that pretty much guarantees that you’ll win if you can grab it first, while with the Europe map there are lots of reasonable ways to win — which I think makes for a much more interesting game.
purple
I think we’ve already settled on choosing the Europe version if and when we get this one. We once played the US version a few years ago at a friend’s house and liked it even though one of the players was a bit too cut-throat about the game for our liking.
Valerie
Two other games that my family keeps coming back to are:
“The Great Dalmuti” — this is just a deck of cards; in each round of the game you start out as “The Great Dalmuti,” “The Lesser Dalmuti,” “The Greater Peon,” “The Lesser Peon,” or a merchant. Your role for the next round depends on your score in the current round. The game has no end — you can play infinite rounds, watching people’s positions change as the game goes on.
Also we like “Frog Juice.” I think this is meant for elementary-school aged kids, but we’ve found it surprisingly playable for people of all ages. It did take some work to figure out the instructions. But then once you’re playing, it is quite playable. It has cards that are things like “newts” and “star and moon dust” and “monkey powder” and casting spells with names like, “Ye Olde Frog To Prince Spell.” What’s not to like about that?? :)