We are always searching games that would be fun to play with our friends and family. Some of the things we look for is theme, mechanics, re-playability, and difficulty in learning. While we do find “gems” from time to time, we have also found some hits and misses in our collection. Games that my wife and I enjoy are not necessarily one that my mother and sister like (or our friend that games with us); for my dad, most games are misses since he is not big on playing board games. Let’s look at a few games in each group.
MISSES
Because our game collection is always growing, we can not guarantee that every game we get will be one that we all enjoy. Some games have formulated a big “I don’t see us playing this much” because it fell short in our eyes.
Migration Mars
Migration Mars is a game that we backed on Kickstarter. At the time we backed a few space themed games that looked like it would be fun to play. Well, this one should have stayed on Mars.
The colony (city) building game fell short because the way you collect resources is not the traditional worker placement way. You roll two dice to move your rover (1 die) clockwise around the board and collect the number of resources from the second die. There is a chance that you may be collecting more of one resource and not getting what you need to build. This phase is also what you do at the end of your turn so it doesn’t sit well with our style of game play.
In the first phase you can trade resources with other players to get what you need to build the required buildings but depending on if your opponents need the resources themselves, they might not want to trade with you. There are also action card that do various things that just didn’t mesh well for us.
There are other things about the game that also doesn’t sit well with us but that was the biggest reason why the game fall short to us.
Brikks
We normally really enjoy roll and write games because you can typically get a larger group together and everyone can play. This game you can only play with four players. What makes this game fall short for us is that if we wanted to play the classic video game Tetris we can easily do so. This game is essentially Tetris on paper.
You roll two dice to select the shape that everyone needs to “drop” onto their game paper and fill up the rows to earn bonus points. That is the game in a nutshell. Sounds fun? Well, not really. There are a bunch of other roll and write games in which you essentially do the same thing.
The designer, Wolfgang Warsch, has designed about 20 games which most are a hit and the ones that we own and have tabled we really have enjoyed so far, however, this one did fall short in our eyes.
Out of the 600+ games we own, these two have really left a memorable mark as ones that we will not play that often. If someone would like to try them, we will not deny the opportunity of playing a game with friends.
HITS
This section is all about games that my family members would play over and over and even games that they want to add to their personal collections. The best example of this would be playing Tang Garden with my sister. Once she got the “bug” she wanted a copy for herself and for her birthday this year I was able to secure a copy of the full Kickstarter version with the exclusive expansions. Now to look at a few other games that have become hits with us.
My City
We had introduced my sister to the legacy mechanic by playing the new game My City. Once you get to a certain point in the legacy format of the game you can switch over to a “standard” version that can be replayed over and over. The actual campaign is played in eight chapters with three episodes in each (24 total games from start to finish).
This game was such a big hit with her that we ended up purchasing another copy of the game since the price of the game is below what most legacy games are. Why would we want another copy? Because my sister wanted to play through it again to try to beat her previous score. We haven’t started the second run through because we are currently playing another legacy game in which she has also taken a liking too.
Play Nine
I know I had spoken of this game in previous entries and the reason why it is a big hit for us is that everyone in my family will play it, yes, even my dad will play it on a regular basis.
Because it is a just a card game and not one that has any extra pieces or player boards, it is a simple enough game that young and old can play and enjoy. Sometimes it is the simple games that can garnish the most attention.
HIT AND MISS
As I had said before, we don’t always find games that are a hit with our family. I know there are few games that come to mind but I will only talk about the most recent one we played.
Fire Tower
We backed the Fire Tower expansion on Kickstarter and got the deluxe version of the base game with it. I had thought that my dad might like the game because of the theme but it turns out he isn’t which is fine because my wife and I find the game fun to play. So last week we introduced the game to my mom and sister thinking they might like it because of the fire gems and ease of play.
Well, it turns out that we were wrong about it. Because the premise of the game is to cause the fire gems to burn down your opponent’s watchtower and make the fire spread away from your own tower they didn’t like that in the game because it is too “mean.” Oh well, can’t win it all. For a family who likes lighting campfires and fireplaces, the thought of spreading a blaze and “burning down the house” is apparently not cool. Maybe they will like Flash Point instead.
FINDING TIME
With the holiday season now here, the weather is getting colder (in the northern hemisphere) and with families coming together from various locations across the country during these holidays. Finding time to sit around the table to talk and play some games is a novel idea.
That is the reason why I really enjoy playing board games. The social interaction with other human beings in the flesh is something our society has been drawing away from over the past few decades. People tend to send text messages and emails instead of calling you can interact with other while playing video games but you still miss out on the personal connection to others.
Even the workforce has changed drastically due to the Covid crisis in which people now work from home more and see coworkers less. Yes there are video conferencing but it is still not the same as being to able shake someone’s hand and look at them directly in the eyes.
This holiday season, get together with friends and family and find a game that everyone can play together. Introduce them to something new or if your tradition is to play The Settlers of Catan or even Monopoly, enjoy the time you have with your loved ones.
Very well written.
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