Aug Kickstarter heads up.

Just a few I thought worth noticing.

Games:

Havok & Hijinks - Don't slay a dragon... BE one!
I thought this one looks really cute!

Havok & Hijinks™ is a family-friendly, light strategy card game featuring cute, humorous dragons competing for treasure.

THE AGENTS - A Double-edged Cards Game

Tom Vasel Approved, looks interesting

A strategic 2-5 players card game of clever tactics & critical consequences, set in a world of spies, sabotage, secrecy and subterfuge.

Belle of the Ball: A Fancy Schmancy Card Game
It's the eve of Carnivale on the Victorian isle of Ludobel, and you're invited! Do you have what it takes to throw the perfect party?

Smash Monster Rampage
A huge monster is attacking your city! Mobilize your troops and dispatch the beast before it's too late in this cooperative game.

Game Accesories:

Cthulhu's Chaos - Unique Dice Towers

Unique Dice Towers adds individuality and fun to your game. Cthulhu adds chaos and insanity. Complete Cthulhu adds shock and awe!

The Collection Aug. 2013.

So i figure, why not, let's talk about 'The Collection'.

My husband and i have been tabletop gaming for about a year now, and it is very much our own shared hobby that started outside of our identities as parents.
We turned out minds to sharing this hobby with our kids about 6 months after we started recognizing the capacity of learning ad quality time together that it created.

It started as most peoples game collections do with the mainstream additions yous see there, monopoly, hungry hippos, scrabble, and so on.
But we knew there were other kinds of games out there and as I've written before we slowly made our way into this world and this is how the collection looks as of yesterday afternoon.
It looks like a lot but it really isn't we can still look at this and think 'there's nothing we want to play there' because we've played them all very often and love them all but sometimes something new is in order.

I'd love to see other peoples collections not necessarily through boardgamegeek.com, that takes a bit of work but a photo would be awesome.

Share!

Compare!

Bloggers envy

Yep i has it.  Bloggers envy.
Well to be honest it's access envy but there is a blog that i've been following for awhile called 'Growing Up Gamers'
They review games, and preview games and talk about the importance of gaming with your family, and have access to new stuff etc.
This is really just a short post to draw peoples attention to the blog, they have some great material s here have a look!

It's all About Taste ~P.3 Dice Games.~

Dice Games

Some people just love Dice
D6, D12. D20, D100, D16, D13 (i'd like a few of these)
Dragon dice, destiny dice, wooden dice, volcanic rock dice, metal dice, combat dice, defense dice, scatter dice.

QUARRIORS!

OK that last one was a game not a kind of dice but this is about dice games so it fits.

Collecting dice just because would be quite the enjoyable task i think.  But I prefer my dice to have the context of a game attached to them.

Of course whats a dice game?  Some are obvious, Quarriors, Dice garden, Castle Dice, Rory's story Cubes, D&D.
It was brought to my attention though that there are games that seem to fit into other categories also fall into the dice game category, for example Descent, Arkham Horror, Battlestar Galactica.
With that in mind it makes it really hard to comment on all dice games, because i just haven't played them all, heck i haven't played all the 'all' dice games that i mentioned.  I want to but haven't yet.

But i'm not here to review all these games i'm just putting my thoughts on these kinds of games out there into the webisphere.
I like them, they're fun.  rolling dice adds an element of chance that is a lot of fun.  And like my first game of Quarriors last night it could just be that my luck sux, or like my second it could be a lot better.  There is a lack of strategy in the rolling of the dice but in some games like Elder Sign, and king of Tokyo there is some strategy in what you do with what you rolled and how effective it is at helping you in your game.

What can kids get from this?
Well for one they usually love rolling dice, that's just fun.
If the game is language independent then kids can 'get' the game easier as with 'Zombie Dice'
They can begin to develop and concept of chance
and then there's applying the concept of making what you get work for you, instead of being sad about what you didn't get.

Dice games can be expensive due to the cost of the components, particularly if the dice are custom made but in the end i think there's a lot of replay-ability in many of them and enjoyment is usually high.
It does of course depend on the game not all dice games would be worth the cost, but i think thoe that we have have been worth it.
I'm going to focus on Quarriors for our next Age Down Adaptation to see if i can bring this game to my girls sooner rather than later.   So stay tuned.

Zombie Dice and a 5 year old

Well this blog is supposed to be mostly about families and games more specifically children in games.
So with that in mind i figured i ought to do make a post with that sort of theme.

I recently acquired Zombie Dice, a short little push your luck dice game.  It is what i call a 'filler game' and I've been slowly building my collection of these games for a number of reasons.  The cost of these games is one reasons, many of these games run n the expensive side, which for the amount of fun you get form them isn't to say they aren't worth it, it's just that it can make it hard to collect a selection so that one might have a choice when a game is proposed.  Zombie Dice put us $20 out of pocket and is one of the cheapest in our collection now.  However the main one being to accommodate the attention span of the wee folk.

5 year olds aren't known for their attention span and even less so three year olds and so the short running time, quick turn over of turns and language independent nature of this game made it quite accessible to my girl.

So did miss 5 like it?  Yes, yes she did and at out recently local games festival i was very proud of her, she TAUGHT the game to a grown up who hadn't ever played before.
The only problem I can perceive there potentially being is the theme.  Some parents MAY think that zombies aren't terribly appropriate material for kids to be playing with.  I was one of them for awhile but the market is so saturated with them these days that as soon as miss 5 started school, she became exposed to the concept and the battle was lost.  Despite that the theme in this was nice, one collects brains and tries not to get shot too often, that's about the sum of it.  With that in mind the person with the most brains once one person reaches 13 is the winner and it's a great opportunity for basic math skills to be practiced  in a 'real world' situation (being the paying of a game not the collecting of brains).

We first saw the game on Tabletop as we see many of our games and like Tsuro which is in that same episode it is a wee folk favorite now.
As for miss 3, she's not there yet.

TLDR Verdict: fun game, kid loves it, cheap, entertaining, educational.

2013 Hobart Winter Games Festival ~p1.~

Yesterday July 10^th was the 2013 Hobart Winter Games Festival held at the Mid City hotel.

I had the pleasure of attending form just after it started al the way to almost close thanks to my amazing babysitters. That's not to say the kids didn't go but 10 hours of gaming would have been a little too much for them.

I'm going to start with some photos of the space we were inhabiting

This was our games table, anyone could take one of these games and play them in a group.  They were all provided by HOGS members so generously letting people play with their games, given the price of these things i think that is a truly remarkable thing to be honest.  The selection was phenomenal!

Area 52 is our local games store and they set up an impressive display for people to buy and discounted prices.  They also sponsored the event ad helped pay for the venture which was amazing.  This is 2/3 of their display my poor little phone camera couldn't get it all in.  The wonderful thing about this was, if there was something they hadn't brought up to show off, and they had it in the store, Caroline was perfectly happy to either go get it form the store of have it sent up which was above and beyond.

There were three raffles, 3pm, 5pm, 7pm.  All prizes donated by HOGS and Area 52 (I believe).  The money raised through this and the old coin donation entry fee, went to the children's hospital.  the prizes were great!

The second hand stall, selling games here helped us fund an extra new game which was awesome.  It was good to see happy smiley faces walking away with games at significantly reduced prices.  

 And last but not least, food for the masses.  Soup, chicken and veggie, as well as tomato vegetarian.  All free, all delicious, all home made.

Everyone had fun, the turn out was good, the bar was close the atmosphere happy.  I don't know about numbers but i do know we had a whole page of new memberships signed up for the local games group HOGS which is exciting.

As for the games that i got photos of and saw played, i'll do another entry to cover that to stop this one being GIANT.

Competition without rivalry ~musings~

Competition without rivalry

Recently I’ve been giving some thought to what games teach us, as adults about ourselves, our society. But as usual also what they teach our kids as they develop to be the adults of our future.

This come as I watch my daughter sit on my husbands knee and watch an NFL game between the Miami Dolphins and the Jacksonville Jaguars. He's in heaven that she asked to come up onto his lap and watch and she's asking questions where her older sister has about as much interest in the game as I do (which is to say, none).

As they sit there and she asks questions I hear him say, 'we are going for these guys, not those guys we hate those guys.” and “Who goes for those other guys? Silly people do.” and I realise just how much bigotry and hatred cam come from the fandom of these 'games'.

I know it before of course, the rabid fanaticism that comes with any fandom baffles me, from the screaming and crying fans of Bieber, to the riots at soccer games, to the twihard moms who queue up and drool all over someone young enough to be their own child.

However I notice that within the competition world there's so much...hatred involved. One can be a fan of an artist for example ad that doesn't automatically create a rivalry, it merely expresses and appreciation for the creations of said artist. When it comes to games, sport, board, and even computer, there is by nature competition.

I encourage my husband to share his favorite sport with the girls, and the environment of friendly competition, I however discourage sentiments of 'hating' another sports team simply because you support someone else. Even more so I discourage the fostering of rivalry amongst fans. Really? Why is it even a thing? I can like something, you can like something else, do we need to compete amongst ourselves? Can't we leave that competition to those who are paid absurd amounts of money to play that game?

How does this translate to board games which is what this blog is about? Quite simply, I want to encourage,

competition: “a contest for some prize, honor, or advantage”

without,

rivalry which is synonymous with, antagonism; jealousy.

This is probably to be expected given my preferred kind of board game is the co-op game, the idea of working together to achieve a goal versus defeating someone else in order to secure your own win. However there are many games that are adversarial, or competitive and they are fun. Depending on how the other people to play it. I have labelled player elimination games as the 'glorification of bullying' and I stand by that, anyone who deliberately and relentlessly targets someone in order to win a game or for the increase of their own enjoyment of the game is participating in bullying behaviour. And I see the rivalry that is created within sports fans as a similar sort of thing.

So what would I like to see my kids raised with?

Competition without rivalry.

Support a team,

celebrate their achievements,

cheer

play your own game

don't

boo the other team,

don't revel in their losses.

No gloating

NO HATRED! (seriously hatred is a serious, sad, and dangerous thing, games don't warrant it)

I know some people have a hard time with the distinction, it's really not that hard. I see it as standard human decency really.

I can even say I have been in the past a fan of a sports team, in the days of Rodman, Jordan, Longley, and Pippen I was a Chicago Bulls Fan I followed tier games watched them, perched on the edge of my seat as I watched them play their way to the NBA championship back in high school. I liked that team and hod no particular opinion of any other team, why would I give them my time when I was following he Bulls? And buying into a rivalry that's 'always been there' as a matter of course (because the teams themselves obviously will form such backgrounds and rivalries amongst themselves) is just being a sheep and following the crowd.

Ok enough preaching.

Now that I’ve possibly offended every person I ever knew, I’m off to the gamesfest! Another blog entry tomorrow on today's event.

Zombies for the whole family.

Zombie Dice

Our most recent acquisition is one we've been meaning to acquire since we saw the Table Top episode featuring to some time ago.

At the moment I’m on the look out for fun, QUICK 'filler' games. Those games you pull our during the dinner run or while you're waiting for the other table to finish their game. Quick, light and just plain fun.

Not surprisingly anything that the kids can play NOW instead of 'in the near or not so near future' also wins my attention.

So how do I feel about the theme? To be honest it's not one I'd have shown my girls so young, but very shortly after Miss 5 started school she started talking about zombies. Well OK then that burst that little bubble I was trying to maintain and there was no putting it back together. With that in mind...the theme in zombie dice, while fun and quite accurate it's light, there is zero theme immersion for this game, it's a dice game after all. Meaning tat it has turned out to be a fun little game to play with miss 5 and much to my surprise she not only understands the rules, and tactics but she is good at it. So far she's won more than half of the games she's played.

Educational value on a game like this could be overlooked but watching her I could see what she had already learned, and what she could learn by playing this.

The standard lessons apply, turn taking, waiting, and good sportsmanship, all a part of playing games and important aspects that make the game fun for everyone.

She's beginning to learn that not winning is OK so long as you had fun.

The one that I see she's grasping very effectively that just blows my mind is the risk reward aspect of the game. Only one gunshot, OK she'll roll again but two? NO that's not worth it and it's time to bank the brains. She's even grasping already that the green is good the red is bad and the yellow is in between. It really is quite remarkable to see her understanding this and implementing it. She's only 5! Still a baby!

As for what she can still learn by playing game, the mathematics involved in scoring is a learning curve for her. You have three brains, you just banked five, so how many do you have. It's simple addition. I think at her level it'd be easier if we used tokens to give her a visual and a physical element to count out her brains. The dice we're using to keep count of our score is a little abstract for her at this stage.

Still it's a fun game that is great to play with the family, it doesn't take long so multiple plays are inevitable.

August Kickstarters 2013

OK i haven't done this for a few months but here we go

Hard to pass this one up straight off the bat

Firefly: Out To The Blackby Game Salute

Cooperative card game that pits you and yours against the 'Verse. Do the job, earn your credits, keep your honor, avoid the Alliance!
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/gamesalute/firefly-out-to-the-black?ref=category

I like the look of this one and wish i had the money to back it

Chaos and Alchemyby Game Salute

A quick playing card & dice game for 2-5 alchemists. Build up a laboratory of exotic innovations and be the first to turn lead to gold!
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/gamesalute/chaos-and-alchemy?ref=category

I'm fairly certain that i saw Tom Vassel mention this one in one of the MANY videos I've watched of his lately.

Freedom The Underground Railroad by Academy Gamesby Uwe EickertFREEDOM: THE UNDERGROUND RAILROAD is a cooperative game where players are Abolitionists striving to end slavery in the United States.

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/617871702/freedom-the-underground-railroad-by-academy-games?ref=category

That's it for now, nothing else really jumping out at me, enjoy browsing for yourselves though.

It's all About Taste ~P.2 Player Elimination.~

From my Favorite genre of games to my least favorite genre.
Player elimination.
This is as it sounds games in which players work towards the elimination of other players to secure their own personal win.
I would possibly be understating the fact if I said, this is a some what popular category of games.  Although it could be said the genre was in fact NOT popular because of the chance of someone floating around with nothing to do while the others continue on playing.   I know people who would choose this style of game over all others, because competition is the point of a game. Needless to say I find it difficult to find games I enjoy playing with people who feel this way and try to avoid this kind of game as much as I can.  For that reason I will be unable to do a top 3.
I've just watched a Dice tower Top 10 on this subject matter though.
So what can i say about a genre i take every chance I can to play something else?
To be honest not a lot but I'll say what i can.

The nature of these games is adversarial, from those I've seen played elimination is the primary goal and it isn't a byproduct of some other action in the game, no, it's the focus of your actions.  I don't like competition in these terms, people will so readily turn on one another as it is, have fun being mean to each other in the real world, i'm not entirely sure whether the lesson of these games is 'toughen up and laugh it off' (not something that should be taught at all) or 'learn to accept it' (never!) or 'here's how to be better at it than others' (Nonononono).  I would be told by some i think too much into such things but i'm just not a fan of making a game out of something that in a different environment, could be considered bullying.
To take liken it to other popular mediums of entertainment, i don't watch reality TV shows.  Anything where someone is voted off, or ganged up on is not entertaining to me it's bad behavior and shouldn't be rewards with a million dollars or whatever the going prize for those things are these days.
This isn't going to be a rant about those shows which i could do for hours, but i don't really see player elimination as anything more than bullying and victimization under the guise of 'fun'.

Unfortunately it is however the only experience some people have with games and therefore now as an adult trying to get epople to play if that's all they have to think back on, no wonder they say they don't like board games much.  Perhaps this would be true even if they tried some of the other stuff on the market these days, perhaps not, but it's hard to get some people to even try because this is all they know (This or the 'roll and move' game *shudder*)

Of this Genre in recent times I've played
King of Tokyo

I won't make a list of ones i want to play that'd just be lying.
Having said that...most of the time i'm willing to try anything, and something may one day change my opinion.

N.B. Shadows Over Camelot is named in Dice tower video as an elimination, I will note that in another though they state that this game has a 'drop in drop out' feature, so really if you die you could just pick up a new character and keep playing.

It's all About Taste ~P.1 Co-Ops.~

I'm starting with my favorite Genre.

Co-op games.
So any people who play games love the adversarial nature of games, I know people who like the idea of pounding their friends to make their bread and if they can't do that in  game then the game holds no appeal to them.
I however prefer the more co-operative approach to my games, much as i like things to be in life.  Teaming up with my friends and family to defeat something that would hurt us or knock our homes down.  Banding together in the face of adversity is a theme i love in pretty much all aspects of my life.  enough about me as a person on to my favorite kind of game.
My journey towards gaming has been  a life long one, and painfully sow but i eventually got there ad somehow managed to be/have a part of gaming history on my shelf.
In the year 2000 the worlds first non childrens Co-Op game hit the shelves in our stores.
'Lord oft he Rings' sits on our shelf and though we don't play it anymore, it is safe from the periodic culling of games we do because this game was the first of it's sort, ours is even from before 'Fantasy Flight' bought the rights to LoTRs and republished it.
In this game my co-players and i had to work together, sacrifice, and hold our breaths as the bad guy closed in on us and we tried to get that damned ring into the molten river it was destined for.  I think, we managed to do it maybe once.  It's tough, and that's amazing.  I love having that piece of history on my shelf.

from that point this subcategory of games grew until it became a major part of the yearly releases, Dice Tower stated in their latest top 10 co-op (of which we have 6 on our shelf) video that in 2012 something like 20 co-op games were released.
The sub category of games is now big enough to have two of it's very own sub categories, full co-op and partial co-op.
Easily differentiated by the fact that in full co-op group, everyone worked together against the board such as in Arkham Horror, Lord of the Rings and Flashpoint, partial co-op is marked by the traitor mechanic that's found in 'Shadows over Camelot', 'Battlestar Gallactica', and 'Pandemic: On the Brink'.
personally i'm not a fan of the traitor mechanic, however it is something that can make these games much more palatable to those who enjoy a more adversarial environment in their games ad thus opens up this category of games to more potential players.

The biggest problem tat people seem to have with co-op games is that one person can play them (which i kinda love).  I've heard things like

'It's solitaire with a group'
and
'If I can't win the game it's not really winning'
and
'it's not really a multi person game it's one person directing the troops'

In the light of my intro post to the series i'm going to said, that all of these are fair thoughts and ideas, if it's not your thing, that's fine.  Co-op games can certainly suffer from a 'lead' personality and many followers and they shouldn't by any stretch of the imagination be played by everyone.  I have people in my life that don't so much as play these games as follow a leader, sometimes that leader doesn't even mean to lead but when asked 'well what do you think' it's hard not to voice an opinion sometimes.
I however have only experienced this very rarely in the people who surround me, and as such i find playing these games rewarding and in some ways a good way of strengthening the bonds of friendship and family rather than undermining it as i feel some other 'games' do.

My personal issue with so-op games falls with the partial co-ops and the traitor feature.  I have 2 adults in my house and therefore with this mechanic most games can't be done between 2 people there needs to be at least 3.  For the most part we've found ways to ignore that mechanic thanks to boardgamegeek.com, and even with more players i'd just rather not have it in my games, given how much I prefer t work as a team i am not a huge fan of the suspicion and mistrust the traitor mechanic can cause.

Now I've not played all of those I've mentioned, most but not all, but I've played others and even own others not mentioned either here or in the Dice Tower top 10.  There are many games i still want to try.

This is my favorite genre and without buying 'bad' games deliberately i'm kinda collecting games of this category.  Which of course means I have a number of games in this category.  I'm going to to a top three where i can for most of the categories, i don't have nearly enough experience to be able to do a top 10 or even a top 5 so i'm sticking to three, although in some categories i won't be able to even do that.  But here's my co-op top 3.

3. Arkham Horror
2.  Shadows Over Camelot
1. Pandemic

And here's why.
3. Arkham Horror - it's only this far down the list because i don't play it as often as i used to.  But this IS my gateway game.  I bought it on a whim and fell in love.  This is the game that made me realize that games were so much MORE than what i grew up with, they were good, complex, and better still i didn't have to 'win' at the cost of everyone else in fact i needed my co-players to beat the game.  It sits on my shelf a lot more than it used to now, partly because i have limited folk to play it with and partly because once a week if not more every week for at least 6 months without expansions to mix it up a bit had me run a little dry on it.  But i still love it.

2. Shadows over Camelot - Due to the shelf price of this came i thought i'd never own it,  i was lucky enough to get it cheap recently though and for the reason of it being new to me i'm quite enamored of it. Nice theme, it's a fun experience and i look forward to playing it with more people.   Some complaints I've heard is that the puzzle or poker nature of some parts of it mean that it's less immersive or plain non thematic, but i enjoyed that too really.  So far we have a 100% loss rate on this one and is the only one that has an optional 'traitor' element in it that we didn't play because there were only two of us.

1. Pandemic - this one still comes to the table with some frequency and i still love it.  I'm ready for the expansion but i'll happily play it without it still and I enjoy it every time.  We have about a 50/50 win/lose ratio on this one but i think it might be time to step up the difficulty on it too.
The only gripe i have about this game is a timing issue.  We bought it and less than 6 months later there was a newer shinier version out and now ours is outdated and can't be expanded upon.  Stubbornness has stopped me from trading up until recently now i'm just too keen on getting the expansion and i think the time nears when we might have to reinvest in this game.

If i were doing a top 4 then Descent 2.0 would have made the list also.

Theses are my top three out of the 8 or so that we own/have on our shelf

Castle Panic
Pandemic
Shadows Over Camelot
Arkham Horror
Lord of the Rings
Battlestar Gallactica
Ghost Stories
Descent 2.0: Journey's into the dark 

Ones i'd love to try:

Flashpoint
Police Precinct
Sherlock Holmes Consulting Detective
Yggdrasil

It's all about taste ~Intro~

Board gaming as with every hobby is all about taste.  Our personal likes and dislikes influence pretty much everything we d from what TV shows we enjoy and what cuisine makes us smile down to what toilet paper we buy and the use of chemicals in our homes.  And all of these things are influences on a micro level, for example, I don't use chemical cleaners in my home, but i dye my hair with products other than Henna.  Our reasons are our own and it's all influenced by our tastes and values.
With that in mind board gaming is the overarching hobby name and yet there are so many levels underneath that arch.

Before i embark on the meat of this series of entries though i'm going to make sure the mind set in which i approach all of this is made clear.
I don't think anyone is or even can be a 'fake geek' per say.
This means in terms of gaming, if a person doesn't enjoy the heavy hard core space games but prefer instead the lighter party games, they are still a gamer.  They are not a fake.  Equally, if a persons gaming collection doesn't include one of any one particular genre within the gaming world, they are not a fake, there are many reasons why someone might  not to own a 'type' of game.
Some people aren't gamers, that's OK and every gamer is their own kind of gamer.
I for instance don't really play computer games, not a lot of them, i do not in terms of computer games consider myself a gamer.  I am a gamer though, board games, card games, Role Play games.  On that note, i haven't done table top role played in years, i play online in an open system...i'm not less a role player than someone who is a table top devotee.
We are what we are.  Own it!

The second mind set is a pet peeve of mine.
I'll start by saying i listen to P!nk, Kelly Clarkson, Beethoven, Powderfinger, Glee, Muse, Aqua, Bond, Clive Mansel, Britney Spears and Eric Calderone.  Amongst so many other kids of music.  And I'm not ashamed of any of them.  I liked what i liked when i liked it, before or after it was popular or after.  I sometimes read the book first, sometimes i don't, sometimes the movie really IS enough for me.  I don't feel guilty for feeling as i do on any of these things.  Nor do i feel guilty about the food that i eat when i eat it.   Why should i?
This is something I've tohught for a long long time and then my husband read this out to me the other day and i was doing my version of jumping up and cheering for it (which is to say i was sitting on the sofa grinning like a fool).

“I don’t believe in guilty pleasures. If you fucking like something, like it. That’s what’s wrong with our generation: that residual punk rock guilt, like, “You’re not supposed to like that. That’s not fucking cool.” Don’t fucking think it’s not cool to like Britney Spears’ “Toxic.” It is cool to like Britney Spears’ “Toxic”! Why the fuck not? Fuck you! That’s who I am, goddamn it! That whole guilty pleasure thing is full of fucking shit.”

― Dave Grohl

OK...with all that said this entry is long enough so i'll state what i'm about to embark on and gt on with it.
Board games come in many genres sci-fi, fantasy, steam punk, trains, horror, and even these genres can be broken down by a different set of 'genres', party games, gateway games etc. so i'm going to look at my admittedly limited experience with games, and my favorites in each genre, what i like, what i don't the best I've tried in each or in some cases i only have word of mouth on what is good and what not.
It'd be fun to do this again next year to see how and if I've changed my mind on some things.
here' goes.


Here's some further reading on what i'd said here while i'm writing the next entry.
Wil Wheaton is known to have a voice on this matter.

it's been so long.

i am quite determined to keep this blog going albeit slowly at the moment.  It took a sideline in the face of getting a new job, going to see P!nk in concert and general every day life.
We have found ourselves unable at this sage to go and play as many games as we used to which also limits my access to them and thus material for this blog.
But that's not to say there's nothing happening in my little gaming world, in fact next week i'll be putting together a blog about our local winter games fest which is quite exciting.  Mostly though this entry is about the few things that have hapened since i last wrote.
New Games purchased:
Gearworld Borderlands
Shadows over Camelot
Pirate Flux
Letters From Whitechapel
The resistance
and
 Descent: Lair of the Wyrm
Ticket to ride: Map of Africa

Wow that's  a few isn't it.
I"m not going to do reviews for them all that's already been done, some not great, some pretty good, and to be honest i haven't had the chance to play them all.
But i try to keep things in this blog about translating the world of gaming to be compatible with the wee folk (my kids not leprechauns),
We recently tried  one of my previously declared variants of Ticket to Ride with my 5  year old but we learned something tat seems worth noting.
Life got hectic and we stopped playing games with the girls as often as we used to.  As a result when we did pull the game out with the girls I found that they needed more guidance that they had last time we played and that my 5 year old wasn't quite up to taking that next step as she had been before we stopped playing.  In short there had been backwards progression in her gaming ability due to lack of practice.  It's really like a muscle, if you don't keep training it then it gets weaker.
For her birthday miss 5 got a game of her own 'Rory's Story Cubes' it's such a simple concept, roll the dice, tell a story including the elements that show up on the dice.  A lot like story stones for the more Steiner minded parents out there.  This is a popular game, while the stories told by miss 5 are a little limited and sometimes even jarring to listen to, the imagination is also a muscle and one we practice a lot in our lives.  In the games we have played I've seen her go from making up short sentences involving the props she can see in her immediate vision to longer sentences involving people in her imagination.
It really is quite a remarkable game for it's simplicity while it is such a powerful teaching tool.  Well worth buying one or all of the variants (the more versions you buy the more choice there is in the story).  Or as i mentioned before look into making your own story stones.
Miss three isn't really ready for these yet, but she loves rolling the dice and i let her roll and line them up for me in whatever order she wants so i have to make my story up in that sequence which adds a little bit of a challenge for me.

So there's my latest stream of consciousness post hope someone found something interesting in it.
Have an awesome day!