Call My Bluff

When you starting playing board games regularly, you’ll eventually develop the skills needed to succeed.  Strategy, planning, cooperation are all things you’ll need to hone when you start your board game hobby.  Bluffing and deceit are also key skills in certain games.  Cooperative games are becoming quite popular, but that doesn’t mean you need to give up your poker face.  Bluffing games will still remain as top favorites.

Game Night with the Guys… and the baby

The first game night in what seemed like months was organized and executed last night.  We tackled some new games, and I had to relearn some others.  I know Cam missed it.  Game night has been a staple in his life long before I came along.  I decided long ago I haven’t much to worry about when he stays out until 2 a.m.  I know he’s probably playing a game of Magic: the Gathering, Twilight Imperium 3, or some other game that went too long.

It was games as usual last night, except for one small difference.  About 12 pounds.  And crying.  And feeding.  And rocking.  One of our friends had a baby a couple of months ago, and his wife wasn’t able to come with him.  Lucky baby, he got to come to his first game night.

Kid doesn’t stand a chance.  He’s going to grow up to be a geek like the rest of us.  His grandfather was the game night host, fondly referred to as Grandalf.  Just to give an example of the geeky level of conversation: while none of us could remember when the Super Bowl was, there was far greater concern and curiosity given as to when exactly the Weird Al tour was coming to our town.

We kept it mostly light and simple last night.  Our first game was Love Letter, a simple and fun card game mainly focusing on deduction.  Our second was Coup — the bane of my existence.  It’s like Love Letter, but utilizes more deceit in being effective.  And I suck at lying.  On the flip side Cameron can win fairly consistently. Whether or not this should worry me, I haven’t yet decided.  After Coup increased my anxiety, we moved to Cosmic Encounter, which I had to relearn.  I have played it twice, and came in dead last both times. This game revolves more around alliances and playing the group to your benefit, with the caveat of special alien powers for each player.   We played Tsuro next. Well, I started to, but decided it was my turn to feed the baby and stepped away from the table.

After returning to the table we learned Sushi Go!  It’s a cute little game of cards in which you pass your hand around the table, trying to built the best plate of sushi for points, and at the end of 3 rounds, the player with the most points wins.  It reminded me of a slow-paced Spoons game.

The final game we played was Gloom.  It was my favorite of the night.  It’s a card game in which you each have a family in front of you that you are trying to kill. You draw modifying cards to place on each family member.  Some have negative points, while others have positive points.  The idea is to place the cards with the negative modifiers on your family, while putting positive modifiers on your opponents’ family members.  The cards represent events that happen to them.  You can really get into the storytelling aspect of the game if you wanted to.  The objective is to make your family as miserable as possible while making your opponents’ family happier before finally killing them off.  While this sounds depressing, the cards all feature an array of cutesy dark humor and alliteration — like playing a ‘Burdened by Boils’ card on my family or a ‘Delighted by Ducklings’ card on Cam’s. I managed to get the win.

Overall, the return to game night was a success.  I missed it over the holidays.  Hopefully we can get back on a regular schedule again. It’s getting harder, definitely.  Schedules get in the way.  Growing old gets in the way. Baby did not get in our way.  A pleasant but challenging addition.  A game in itself.

Now we get to train a whole new generation of geeky game-players.  Grandalf’s youngest usually joins us.  I sometimes forget to watch my foul language.  I really need to work on that, or Matt will never let me babysit.  I’m counting on baby returning next time.  It’s never too early to start learning about D&D or Cthulhu.