Entry 101- Trivial Pursuit

        This blog entry is more or less a memorial post and dedicated to my Grandmother who passed away on the 27th. It is a hard one to write but I will do my best. 

        My Grandmother was a lady who wasn’t a huge gamer but she loved trivia and all things knowledgeable. She watched Jeopardy and Wheel of Fortune each night, loved doing crosswords, and the few games that I remember playing with her were Yahtzee, Trivial Pursuit, and a State of Idaho themed game. I can maybe count on one hand how many times I have won against her (came close a few times when I was older). 

TRIVIAL PURSUIT (1981) 

BGG Description 

Trivial Pursuit is the original trivia game that started it all. 

Each player has a circular playing piece with six pie-shaped holes. The goal of the game is to collect a pie in each color. The colors correspond to different question categories. 

The board consists of a circular track with spaces in seven different colors. Six of the colors correspond to question categories while the last color gives a new dice roll. Six spaces along the track are "pie spaces", and from these there are "spokes" of track leading to the middle of the board. 

Players roll a die and move along the track in any direction they like. When a player stops on a color they get a question of the appropriate category. If the player answers a question correctly while on a pie space, they get a pie of that color (assuming they don't already have it). A correct answer on another square allows the player to roll again. 

Once the player has one pie in each color, she can move along the spokes to the middle of the board to win the game. 

—description from the designer 

Weight 1.64/5 

My love of the game… 

        Let me just make this clear to everyone… the description above is for the original game of Trivial Pursuit. There are a lot of editions (a few hundred I believe) to the game and I actually have a decent collection of them, especially the older editions. 

                                        (not my collection, but I have most of these)

        One of the few games that my Dad would play with us growing up was Trivial Pursuit because he loves knowledge, like Grandma, and winning the game (he probably won’t admit that it is the reason). I want to credit both of them for my love of learning. I know in high school my grades didn’t reflect it, but I did love learning new things. 

        What I really love about the game is that it is broken up into six different categories. My Grandmother (if I recall correctly) excelled at the Entertainment category, my Dad is a History buff so that was his go-to, and my favorite is the Geography category. 

        Subsequent editions of the game, the booster boxes, and various themed editions had different categories to play so there are endless opportunities to expand your knowledge base. 

        Going on road trips as a kid (you know early-portable electronics days) we would always bring trivia cards with us and quiz one another to pass the time. 

Playing the game 

        Now to talk about playing the game, the BGG description explained the basic rules of the game well. 

        

        What I want to add to it is that in between each “pie” space are two “roll again” spaces that help you to zoom around the board because there are seven space between each “pie” space. Which means if you roll a 2 or a 5 if your game piece is on a “pie” space you will get to roll again; and if you are on a “roll again” space, a 2 or 5 gets you onto a “pie” space or a 3 or 4 gets you to the next “roll again” location. Why I remember this, I don’t know, but I do. 

        To end the game, you need all six different “pies” in you game pieces and return to the middle of the board but wait… there’s more. To win the game, you will need to answer a trivia question that your opponents (without looking at the card) gets to select while in the center. If you answer incorrectly, you must move away from the middle and return to it to try again. 

        My Grandmother would do fine with this because I do not recall a category that she was weak in. My Dad would always have to answer an Entertainment or an Arts & Literature question (which are my weakest categories too). 

For Families?? 

        You might be asking, is this a game for families? And the answer is a huge YES. 

        There are editions of the game that is designed for families that have younger kids. For me, there is not a better time to instill the love of learning and knowledge than with a younger child who shows interest in learning. 

        My three year old knows that each week day she has 30 minutes of “school” that she needs to do each day and will approach me to get it done if she didn’t do it before getting ready for bed. 

        I am looking forward to the day when my daughter and my dad can sit together at the table and play Trivial Pursuit with my daughter taking the win. 

Conclusion 

        To close out this entry, I just want to say goodbye to my Grandmother. I love you and miss you greatly. Thank you for being such a wonderful and beautiful lady all these years and for instilling in us the love of learning.

Grandma Berry (1930-2023)

Entry 100- Hamlet: The Village Building Game

    Well, we just hit a milestone in this Blog. Today’s entry is #100. To be honest with you, I didn’t know if it would have lasted this long or not but I am sure that that it has. 

        For this week’s entry, we decided to switch up and play a new game that we had Kickstarted that came just in time for Chirstmas. How excited are we about this game? Read on to find out more. 

HAMLET: THE VILLAGE BUILDING GAME (2022) 

BGG Description 

When you think of a Village builder you sometimes think of card tableaux or static hex tile grids. 

Think again! 

Lots of buildings, all with different shapes, all fitting together in interesting ways. 

One central Hamlet that the players contribute to, with its own self-forming demand and supply economy. 

Villagers walking through the Hamlet, delivering food to households and building resources to construction sites. 

And one day, the Church will finally be built, and the once-little Hamlet has become a fledgling town.

Who will be the biggest benefactor when that happens? 

Including solo mode by Nick Shaw & Dávid Turczi 

—description from the designer 

Hamlet is a medium weight competitive village builder where players are communally turning their Hamlet into a bustling little town. In this tile placing game, players construct buildings that everyone can use to create materials, refine resources, earn money and make important deliveries to construct the Hamlet’s big landmark - the Church. 

The game features irregular shaped tiles that connect together without a grid to form a village that is completely different every time. The tile placement organically creates interconnecting paths that the villagers use to transport resources across the village. This leads players to construct boards where no two games will ever feel the same. Since the buildings are communal, this also creates a fluid economy, where players are always working hard to provide the village with the resources that are most needed. 

The game is designed by David Chircop (Petrichor, The Pursuit of Happiness). It plays between 1 to 4 players, with a solo mode currently being developed. It will be published by award winning studio Mighty Boards (Excavation Earth, Posthuman Saga). 

Weight 2.85/5 

Our Take on the Game 

        What we should address first are the three mechanics that are listed on BGG for the game which will help you to understand it a bit more. They are the following: Network and Route Building, Tile Placement, & Pick-up and Delivery. 

Network and Route Building: 

    

        To efficiently move your materials using your donkeys as transporters you need build your routes from the buildings that are placed through the village you are creating. The buildings help you refine the raw materials (wood, wheat, and stone) into refined and high-quality materials (flour, milk, brick, and timber) all of which is needed for building more buildings and completing the Church. 

        How do you go about building said route? By laying tiles down. 

Tile Placement: 

        Expanding your Hamlet into a sprawling town requires you to add more buildings. You do this through the network you have already established and using your donkeys to transport the goods from to your build location. 

        Where do you get the tiles? In the game the tiles are called “Blueprints” which you can get from the Townhall. Once you have the tile, you can build it on future turns if you have an established route to transport the goods. 

Pick Up and Delivery: 

        As mentioned above you need to have a good network of donkeys to transport the goods. Beginning with where the good starts, you can pick up and transfer the good from donkey to donkey moving one space at a time until you reach the final destination spot. 

        This is the one aspect of the game that is unique because it doesn’t matter who made the goods because everyone can use them but to move the goods you need to use your own donkeys. So therefore you must, absolutely must, plan out well ahead how you are going to accomplish this. 

How do we like it? 

        After only playing the game once we had decided that one game was not enough to understand all the rules and game play. We did enjoy the game and thought it was beautifully done with the exception of the 3D church in the Founders Edition (that could have been done better). 

        We loved the idea of the shared goods in which the person who made the good gets rewarded when it is used by anyone even if they made it themselves. 

        What also makes the game unique and enjoyable is the different shapes of tiles and how you are supposed to place them on the board. To us, this makes the game stand out from other tile laying games and drew our attention to it. Each game will have a completely different layout. 

FAMILY GAMER VERDICT 

        We rate this game a 7 out 10. 

        This game will need to hit the table more in order for us to really give it either a higher or lower solid rating but for now, it is one that we found enjoyable after one play.

LETTER TALLY 

A: 0 - 

E: 0 - 

G: 0 - 

H: 1 – Hamlet: The Village Building Game 

J: 0 - 

K: 0 - 

L: 2 - Long Shot: The Dice Game, Legendary Encounters: Firefly 

R: 0 - 

U: 0 - 

Z: 0 -

Entry 99- Lengendary Encounters: Firefly

Take my love, Take my land, 

Take me where I cannot stand, 

I don't care, I'm still free, 

You can't take the sky from me, 

Take me out, To the black, 

Tell them all I ain't coming back, 

Burn the land, Boil the sea, 

You can't take the sky from me, 

There's no place I can be, 

Since I found Serenity, 

You can't take the sky from me.

   

        I have been a fan of Firefly ever since it was aired on television and saw the movie in the theater the first weekend it was released. It is fitting that I should write about a game based on the show. Without further ado…. 

LEGENDARY ENCOUNTERS: A FIREFLY DECK BUILDING GAME (2016) 

BGG Description 

In Legendary Encounters: Firefly, players take on the roles of characters from the series and work together to complete objectives for episodes from the Firefly TV show. Players each select an Avatar out of the Main Characters of the game. Each game will have 5 Main Characters and 4 Supporting Characters, so all 9 crew members will be part of each game. The 14-card stack for each Supporting Character is shuffled together to form the Crew Deck, which will be used to build up each player's deck. 

Legendary Encounters: A Firefly Deck Building Game is a standalone game in the Legendary Encounters series that utilizes the Legendary Encounters system set in the Firefly universe. Playing with 500 cards and a roll-up playmat, you'll build up your deck, coordinate with your crew, and upgrade your ship to gain advantages, but be careful that Serenity does not receive too many ship strikes. Get ready to explore the 'Verse! 

Weight 2.59/5

Our Take on the Game 

        What is great about this game? Well, for one thing, it is a game in which you play as the crew, you live as a team, and you die as a team. There is no individual glory (maybe just bragging rights if you are the last active player when you win). You can be knocked out temporally and be healed enough to rejoin but the game isn’t over until it is over. 

        We do like that each character has their own strengths (and weakness, a.k.a. flaw) which you can use to the team’s advantage at various points in the game. Also being able to pick which of the nine characters you want to play is awesome. My first time playing the game I got to pick Kaylee whom is my favorite character of the show and who I had huge crush on in my younger days (who am I kidding, I still have a crush on Jewel Staite). Since then, I have played the Captain Malcom Reynolds. 

        The game with ALL those cards seems very intimidating however, once you get them organized via the dividers that is provided it does not take long to set up and take down. The neoprene playmat that serves as the game board is awesome because it outlines where all the cards go. 

        Even if you haven’t watched the show before, when playing the game, you will not be lost. I have heard people that played the game then watched the episode of the show have the “now I get it” moment. 

        Being that the game is a fully co-operative one, you openly talk with your crew throughout the whole game planning and strategizing the next moves. With the open discussions, we really love that you talk with your team about what cards you want to add to your deck. The main downtime in the game is when you are shuffling your cards and drawing your next hand. 

        The last thing I want to note about the game is that you can just play sets of three episodes, or you can play a full campaign game going in order. Also, you are also not limited to playing the same three episodes all the time, you can mix them up and customize your game as long as you have a set “A,” “B,” and “C” episode selected. 

        We really love this game and my wife informed me that we have to go through all the episodes using the same characters each game until we are done. We may be playing this a lot this year. 

        We also have Legendary: A James Bond Deck Building Game in our collection that is due to get tabled in the future once we finish all the episodes in Firefly. There are other Legendary games that we may just have to pick up in the future as well (the main Legendary game is the Marvel edition). 

FAMILY GAMER VERDICT 

        We rate this game a very solid 10 out 10. 

        Bringing the show to life in the form of a deck builder was something that Upper Deck did extremely well. Do you and you friends have what it takes to survive the Verse? Find out and play the game.

Rest In Peace...

    I wouldn't be a great fan if I didn't acknowledge that we lost the beloved Shepard Book (A.K.A, Ron Glass) on November 25th, 2016. He lived his life doing what he loved most.  

LETTER TALLY 

A: 0 - 

E: 0 - 

G: 0 - 

H: 0 - 

J: 0 - 

K: 0 - 

L: 2 - Long Shot: The Dice Game, Legendary Encounters: Firefly 

R: 0 - 

U: 0 - 

Z: 0 -

Entry 98- Long Shot: The Dice Game

        Over the past few weeks leading up to the New Year I have had a few thoughts about the blog. The first thought was 2022’s entries seemed more like “cookie-cutter” writing rather than writing more from the heart. The second being that even though I was writing about different games that we enjoyed we were saying the same things over and over (i.e., we love the art, we love that it plays fast, etc.). I love writing the blog but it became more like a chore than something exciting later on in the year. 

        Now for my last thought about the blog, I know on Facebook I had said I will writing about games that begin with certain letters of the alphabet and writing each month a new letter that was selected, well, instead of doing a letter per month, we will now pick any game that starts with the selected letters at any time in the year and keep a tally of how many entries are written with the selected letter. 

        To refresh you (for those who follow our FB page), the letters are: A, E, G, H, J, K, L, R, U, Z (with alternates of V, X, & Y). At the end of each blog entry you will see what the tally of each letter is. The entries will not just be games that are new to us but games that we enjoy playing and have not written a review about. For example, we mentioned Unicorn Fever in the entry about upgraded components but did not review the game so it is included for this year’s blog. Whereas Lost Ruins of Arnak had review so it will not be included this year as a featured game. 

        For the game review’s, I will continue to provide the BGG description and weight and then I will write what comes to me about the game via inspiration. This will make it more real for me and less like a chore. Also, as always, we do welcome your thoughts and ideas as well. This blog is for all of you as much as it is an expressive medium for me. So now, onward to the first game review of the year… 

LONG SHOT: THE DICE GAME (2022) 

BGG Description 

This is your ticket to the track! In Long Shot: The Dice Game, you and up to seven other players will strategize and push your luck as the action unfolds in a tense race of eight horses. During the game you buy horses, place bets, influence race movement, and utilize special abilities. The roll of the dice determines which horses move and the options available each turn, so be ready to adapt your plans. Once three horses cross the finish line, earnings are totaled. While there are many ways to earn money during a horse race, only the player that makes the most money will be declared the winner. Will you play it safe, or risk it big on a long shot? 

—description from the publisher 

Weight 1.93/5 

Our Take on the Game 

        The first thing that I want to point out is that the game is 1-8 players so you are able to grab more friends and play one game together rather than the typical 4 player game in which you need multiple copies going at once for a larger group. This is a big positive for us for when we have more people that want to game at once. 

        The description states that you push your luck in the game and I want to make it clear that this is NOT a push-your-luck mechanic such as The Quacks of Quedlinburg where to take you chances by drawing chips from a bag. The push your luck in the game is referring to how much you are willing to gamble on a horse finishing in the top three and/or crossing the no-bet line. 

        The two main mechanics of this game is dice rolling and roll-and-write. You roll an eight sided die (d8) to see which horse will take the primary movement and a non-standard six sided (d6) die to see how far it advances in the race. Additionally, each horse card has a secondary movement bar at the bottom which provides the horse numbers with a X on it to move one space as well. 

        Once the rolling is done and the horses move, the writing portion comes to play via five different primary actions you can take (concession, helmet, jersey, bet, and buy). Each one requires you to make a mark on your dry-erase player board. However, the key thing is that the actions correspond to the horse number rolled on the d8. You also have three wild actions available in which you can change the horse die to any number you want (but just for yourself and not the other players). Details of all the actions can be found in the rulebook which you can find in the game files on BGG. There is one last action that you can take if you do not want to or cannot do any of the other actions and that is to erase one of the marks on your wild numbers section to earn one back. This comes in handy later in the game if you already have used your wilds and most of the other actions spaces have been used. 

        The game ends when the third horse crosses the finish line and everyone takes their last actions. Final scoring is done with four easy steps. Most points at the ends wins. Our first game was won by a single point. 

        What makes the game replayable is that the base game comes with different sets of the horse cards with each horse providing a different ability. Since we picked up our copy at Barnes & Noble, the exclusive edition also included a mini-expansion that included an additional set of horse cards. 

        It is easy to learn and play. If you love roll-and-write games, then this one would be a good fit for your collection. If you love betting/wagering games, such as Camel Up, then this one would be a good fit plus it takes up little table space. 

FAMILY GAMER VERDICT 

        Did we have fun with the game? Heck yeah. Will we play this again, of course especially with a larger party. 

        We rate this game a very solid 9 out 10. 

 LETTER TALLY 

A: 0 - 

E: 0 - 

G: 0 - 

H: 0 - 

J: 0 - 

K: 0 - 

L: 1 - Long Shot: The Dice Game, 

R: 0 - 

U: 0 - 

Z: 0 -

One last thing....