During the holidays, many visit with family and friends to celebrate. What better way to enjoy each other's company than to play board games. I noticed several posts online of games received as gifts and played over the course of this past week. This is a commentary on games I got to play and general thoughts. aGames and the Holidays It just seems like a natural pairing. When family and friends gather, games get played. Sure its fun to just sit and reminisce about the good ole days ... but eventually everyone wants some activity. Board games provide activity while allowing or in some cases increasing social engagement and interaction. This past week I got to play some cooperative video games with my wife and two sons on the Nintendo Switch. We played "Mario and Sonic 2020 Olympics" and "Marvel Ultimate Alliance 3". Though these weren't board games, both allowed for us to play together on a single screen. We had a lot of fun, at times raising our voices at the screen and laughing with and at each other. I also played some video party games. "Use your Words", "Drawful" and "Fibbage". All social games played on a TV or console which allow you to use your phone or tablet to log into an online server and play together. We played these social games along with my dad and sister. The six of us shared a lot of laughs. I have to say that of these games, "Use Your Words" is my favorite. For more information about this game click here. Of course I got to play some board games as well. While our friends Don and Shannon were visiting, we played "Potion Explosion", "Champions of Midgard" and "JAWS". We usually play games when we get together and we had played each of these games at least once before. Much different experiences were had with each. We have played "Potion Explosion" many times. It's probably one of our favorites. This game is a clever strategic game that uses a unique marble dispenser from which players draw marbles (ingredients). When drawing a marble from the dispenser, if it causes like colors to clack together, you get to also pull all the marbles of that color which in turn could cause more marbles of the same color to clack, and so on. Placing these marbles (ingredients) on special potion tiles attempting to complete potions. Though this game seems like it is pulled straight from mobile video games, it is a really fun board game with clever use of a gimmick in the form of this marble dispenser. A lot of fun and surprisingly good amount of strategy. I had taught my wife, Don and Shannon "Champions of Midgard" once, about six months ago. This was an opportunity to play a second time. Of course, I had to give a once-over on the rules, but everyone seemed to pick it back up rather quickly. The game was close all the way through and different players surged ahead at different times in the game. I really like the combination of worker placement and dice rolling for battles. It satisfies both my Euro-game and American-style game itches. I ended up winning in the end, however it was definitely not a runaway win ... Don was very close! The third game the four of us played was "JAWS". This is a game that Don and I learned to play while at Gen Con this year. We liked it enough that Don purchased it. We had played one previous time with Shannon and Brenda (my wife) and it seemed to not go over so well. We thought, in part due to the extra time needed to explain and teach the game, thus dragging out how long it took. This time was our second chance. The first act played rather well, however JAWS (Don) got the better of us and went into the 2nd Act with the maximum advantage. We had difficulty in the second act, but ultimately made it very close. It came down to a couple dice rolls at the very end ... and JAWS (Don) ended up winning. Shannon stated she just didn't like the game, even after a second try. She was baffled at why Don and I like it. Needless to say... it looks like this one is not going to get further plays with this group of four, however Don and I may break it out in the future to play with just two or with others. The holidays aren't quite over. We still have the New Years holiday this week. I hope to get to play more games this week and definitely excited to play into the new year. I hope you are able to play games with your family and friends as well. Happy New Year to all! Please continue to keep your eye out for new blog posts and ...
Game on!
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