Let us play games!

I am very fortunate to have two roommates who love games. They have about 80 games. Are there games we haven’t played before? Yeah there are but a goal for this year was to play all of their games. We’ve been slowly working through some of the game we’ve never played or it’s been a while since we’ve played them.

The first weekend of the stay at home order, we played Alcatraz Rummy and appropriately Pandemic! Alcatraz Rummy is similar to normal rummy but you’re trying to expose the attempted escapees plan. I wasn’t that good at it but I enjoyed it. My favorite part of the night was playing Pandemic … on level six.  Ever since this whole thing started my roommates and I had been wanting to play because it seemed an apt time to. We did pretty dang good with this game - we only had two outbreaks, cured blue and won the game. Corporative games are some of my favorite because you’re working together with your ‘talents’ toward a common goal. It’s also nice that everyone either wins or loses.

We’ve learned quite a few new games in the last couple of weeks. The most difficult one that we have learned is Lords of Waterdeep. It’s a game where you help build a city and complete quests to gain victory points. Each player has a secret objective that they need to complete - it may involve buildings, types of quests, etc. You also need to assemble your own group to complete each quest. With a little bit of strategy and luck, you might just be able to become a Lord of Waterdeep. I would highly recommend this game because it is a lot of fun and you have to be creative with how you play your cards and people.

A new game for me but not truly a new game for my roommates was Agricula. This is a game set in the years right after the Black Death. You need to work hard to earn everything - especially your food. There are many rounds where different skills, objects and expansions take effect. As you play you want to build up your farm so that it’s self-sustainable. I’m a very good farmer in this game but I’m not a great rancher. I will say though that the second time around I had way more grain than I knew what to do with. I’m very much still trying to figure out how to play this game well but I would give it another shot or two… maybe three. It’s fun (Just make sure you know that you can plant as soon as you have one grain and a plowed field…. That messed me up significantly the first time I played.)

A couple easier games that we’ve learned are Guillotine and Citadels.  In Guillotine, you’re trying to kill French aristocrats for points. (Yes I know killing people is bad but it’s the point of the game ok?) There are three different rounds and each player has a hand of action cards they can choose from. It’s a bit of a cutthroat game at times but it’s still fun to out fox everyone else. Citadels is a bit similar but very different. With this game, you’re trying to build a city before your opponents do. Each round you’re given a new character(s) and you must decide what you want to do. You are only able to each character in the order they're assigned in the game since the assassin needs to go first for obvious reason. Each character has a special ability they can do to help build their city. You need to outsmart the people you’re playing with and pay attention to the details but it’s a lot of fun.

The games I’ve talked about so far have been actual board games my roommates have. We haven’t just been playing physical games, we’ve played some online games too. We started with JackBox games and some friends. One of my roommates got some new JackBox games and wanted to try them out. We did the rap one, the art for the city, a weird trivia one, and maybe another one? I can’t remember. JackBox for the most part isn’t my favorite but there are some that I really like like the Murder Mystery Trivia one. 

Another online game I’ve played with some other friends has been CodeNames. It was a small group to play but we had a lot of fun. It’s not too hard of a game to play thankfully but it also helps to have someone who remembers how to play (shout out to a friend’s husband). If we hadn’t had that guidance… it might have been a very long weird game but we would have gotten there.

I saved the best for last though! My favorite online game that I have found so far is … Dominion! If you’re never played that’s ok. Dominion is a deck building game with a bunch of expansions. The website allows you to play the base game for free and a random expansion that rotates every 36ish hours. If you’ve never played Dominion before stating with the base would be a great way to learn the game. The website tells you what you need to do with your turn as your buy cards. The website itself does take a little getting used to but given how many cards there are and how complicated a card can be, it’s a lot of fun to be able to try new versions of the game on a regular basis.

We’ve been busy playing games, what have you been up to with your self-quarentine?