The Joy of Gaming: 1 Day Until International Tabletop Day - Mice & Mystics

The minute I saw Mice and Mystics I knew I needed to have it. The adorable miniatures... the compelling story of a mouse determined to save his kingdom! It was the kind of game I knew I needed to own.

But my husband and I dabbled in the world of "real" RPG with our friend and Mice and Mystics took a bit of a backseat to our experiment. We had decided, though, that we wanted to play with our daughter. My husband was starting to consistently game with her and was sussing out her gaming level. This past December we finally felt it was the right time to move away from Hero Kids and move into Mice and Mystics! First of all, I didn't have to do a ton of planning on my end to make the game happen. Secondly it had all the little adorable mice figures and allowed for more diversity with the play. Don't get me wrong, I love Hero Kids, but I was a little RPGed out after what went down with my group.

I fell in love with the character of Filch and he is my signature character. I almost never don't play him. I did have to give him up for Tilda one our last adventure that we were trying to conquer... no seriously... 4th time around! I wear my Critical Role hoodie with the hood up, because it makes me feel all scampish. The only problem we have with the game is my daughter's occasional attention span. I love that she wants to play the characters, but she's always touching things and moving things and... ahhhh! She's 7-almost-8-years-old, btw. She always says, "But mom! I just have so much energy!" To which I silently answer, "Then how do you spend so much time on your Kindle playing games?"

I digress. It's been a great family game and the adventures keep us on our toes and having to look for ways to work together. So we break out the sliced cheese and prep out table every other Sunday for Mice and Mystics! Let's just hope we don't have to keep playing scenarios over and over again, because it does have a tendency to steal away the enjoyment. But we love it!


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The Joy of Gaming: 2 Days Until International Tabletop Day - Sushi Go!

Oh Sushi Go!... let me count the ways... that you have been played throughout your release and Tabletop's demand that I purchase and play it immediately! It wasn't a hard sell, to be honest. I am a sushi addict! Or.. was before I had this whole "change of lifestyle." Granted... I am not going to deny myself something once in a while. So I will have a Naruto Roll from my local sushi place in honor of this most delicio... I mean... enjoyable games!

First of all, I share it with my students all the time (club and other) and they sometimes struggle with the game, because it is like nothing most of them have ever seen before. Then the scoring is strange to them. Once I get them through the game and teach them how to score, the game takes off and everyone is trying to teach it to everyone else! This year, it is one of the most popular games as a Mentor Game for my game unit. I'm waiting to see how that turns out.

Sushi Go! is also a game that I love, because it has the set collecting aspect that I love. I don't always win, but I feel I'm good at the game and that's a nice feeling to have.


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The Joy of Gaming: 3 Days Until International Tabletop Day - Legendary

On the eve of the early releases of Avengers: Infinity War, I am so excited to write about one of my favorite Deck Builders. Legendary hits all my favorite things about a game. It is cooperative, it's a deck builder, it's got super heroes and different combinations of teams you can make, and it is fast-paced.

We, of course, have a ton of (though not all!) the expansions for the game. I have fun playing around with the different teams that can play together. Sometimes I like to be silly and pick unlikely heroes to work together and other times I like to play the classics.

My husband sometimes makes the setup take forever, but most of that has to do with picking the people that you want. When teaching it as a new game, I remember it took forever. I was teaching it to my kids at a game convention I help run. They were being crazy choosing their people and then their turns were so long. I had way too much time to socialize during other people's turns. I think that's the best way to phrase that experience. This is not an ideal game for my game club kids-- too much mucking about.  It is one of my favorite games to play with just my husband though!

The whole Legendary series makes me happy. I just love it. Now I know there are lots of Marvel games coming onto the market, because of the whole MCU craze, but it's sometimes hard to suss out the quality games. Legendary hit the mark with this one and I can't gushingly recommend it enough.

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The Joy of Gaming: 4 Days Until International Tabletop Day - Love Letter

Oh Love Letter... you pop up so often in my gaming life. Probably because you are my absolute favorite travel game and you have some neat pop culture skins. The game is also one of the most popular games in my game club and when non-game-clubbers play it, they love it to. Sometimes the skins are what make the difference, because the kids get weird about the title. Either way. Love, love, love.  Here's an entry I wrote for Valentine's Day.


Love Letter Livestream - Tabletop Day 2014


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The Joy of Gaming: 5 Days Until International Tabletop Day - Five Tribes

5 Days and 5 Tribes! #numbernerd

Bruno Cathala is one of the hobby's most brilliant designers. He is one of three designers who get their own shelf in our collection, with our current count of his works at 12. Six of his designs are in my husband's current Top 100 Games of All Time. His games are just works of art.

Five Tribes is no exception. While not my personal favorite from his catalog of work, Five Tribes nevertheless is an amazingly fun, thinky, tactical game.  The game consists of a grid of tiles peppered with a metric ton of little meeples in five different colors.  On your turn you pick up all the meeples from a tile and travel to another tile, dropping off meeples one a time along the way so that the last meeple you drop off lands on a space with members of his own tribe. You claim all those meeples for points and you then trigger different special actions and abilities based on their color. Each tile you stop on has its own potential bonus effect as well and when you clear a tile out on your turn, you gain control over it, earning more victory points.

There's more going on in the game. Collecting goods from the market, summoning powerful Djinns, building palaces and discovering oases. But the real bread and butter of the game is the Mancala-esque meeple collection and dropping off.

Five Tribes is a remarkably rich game, enhanced by its expansions (though certainly not requiring them) and one of the best games of 2014 despite that year being filled with outstanding games.


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The Joy of Gaming: 6 Days Until International Tabletop Day - Concept

Concept is a party game that really has its focus in charades, but you have to use the images that are on the board. I know kids love this game, so we brought it as a weekly game for our game club. As I listened and watched my kids playing the game, I was horrified when I heard "RACIST! RACIST" being yelled from the back gaming room. I didn't know what was going on, so went to find out what it was... sadly, it was a student I had been having some difficulties with and while the comments may have been taken out of context, the yelling of "RACIST" during the game didn't fly. So it sadly left a bad taste in my mouth and, I think, also ended up affecting how the kids perceived the game. While in school there is the idea of fun and appropriate fun. I can understand being overly silly, but that kind of silly I can't have on my head.

We did break the game out again at our Lock-In and while I missed out on the game play (because sometimes people need their sleep), my husband just raved over how brilliant kids were at the game. It's always so shocking that in my club they seem so anti-gamer, but they get to the Lock-In and it's like hardcore. So strange.

Either way, I can't wait to break out Concept again and really start to appreciate how awesome it is.


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The Joy of Gaming: 8 Days Until International Tabletop Day - Dead of Winter

Dead of Winter is another game I adore that I also needed all the promotions to! Felicia Day is so much fun to play and actually led to one of my most epic events as a gamer. I wrote an entry back in July of 2015 after playing a session with my husband and our friend Jim. I had played Felicia Day and was very excited about it. As we played, a Crossroads card finally came up that applied to me and what occurred scared me for life. I won't retell it here, but you can read the whole experience here. Just understand that I did in fact post the Crossroads card, but it's too late for you anyways, because I spoiled it.

I also love the game so much that I wrote about it in my Meet Me at the Table series I used to go for the International Geek Girl Pen Pals Club (IGGPPC). You can read all about it here.

Like Pandemic, there are varying degrees of success in this game depending on all sorts of things. We played it for the first time with my game club kids at our lock-in and it was a huge success. Shockingly we survived with no traitor. I love the zombies and the cooperative atmosphere of the game. Even ran out and bought the expansion. But seriously... go read the bit about a girl and her horse.

Note: This episode also includes Ashley Johnson (Critical Role) and Grant Imahara (Mythbusters) and I love them so very much.

The Joy of Gaming: 9 Days Until International Tabletop Day - Sheriff of Nottingham

Sheriff of Nottingham is the most fun game to play with your students. Why? Because you already know all their tells and know how to keep a straight face around them. Ha! Sheriff of Nottingham is all about bluffing  and trying to get contraband past the Sheriff. I've been told I'm not a very good liar, but when it comes to this game, I'm actually not that bad.

I loved the game from the first moment I played it. The laughs were nonstop and it even became something I taught as part of a women's event at GenCon hosted by ConTessa. They're a group that supports minority-led gaming, empowering women, people of color, and LGBTQs in the gaming community. It was a great experience for me to teach this game while trying to break my anxiety over teaching games to predominately male players. Until you've experienced situations that make you feel uncomfortable, you won't really understand how damaging it can be. So I appreciated this opportunity and the game itself went swimmingly.

This game is definitely close to my heart for the special moments I've had playing it and I would recommend it to players looking for a bit of fun, coupled with a good bit of strategy. I know it sometimes seems a bit silly, but it's a smart game with some great bluffing.

Note: We got the expansion not long ago and we're breaking it out. I'm going to be using it at my next Tabletop Game Club Lock-In to celebration International Tabletop Day. Really excited about that.

The Joy of Gaming: 10 Days Until International Tabletop Day - The Hare & the Tortoise & Council of Verona

The Hare and the Tortoise introduced me to a whole new series of games called Tales and Games from the excellent publisher Iello. It uses fairy tales to create games, such as Little Red Riding Hood, Aladdin & the Magic Lamp, and The Three Little Pigs. The Hare and the Tortoise, though, was our first introduction to the series and offered a new look at games that feel like they're for kids, but have the ability to completely enthrall an adult. It's a great little racing/betting game.

The other part that I loved was that it fit into my game unit. The students have to write a narrative to go with their game and these games all have accompanying stories. It was really quite nice.

I still share The Hare and the Tortoise whenever I get the chance and several of my students have used it as a Mentor Game and created some really interesting games based on the mechanics.

This past February I wrote a little bit about Council of Verona. See my article here.

The Joy of Gaming: 11 Days Until International Tabletop Day - Tokaido

Tokaido stands out for me, because I remember my husband was so excited to introduce it to my students in my game unit. He set the directions down for them to play and it became the biggest directions fiasco I have ever had in my classroom. This one group literally sat there and just, like... silently protesting playing because we would not explain to them how to play. See... the point of the research phase is to 1) be exposed to game directions, 2) learn the pros and cons of direction writing, and 3) see what mechanics look like in-game. I am familiar with stubbornness, but that which was demonstrated on that day was beyond my comprehension. It's not a difficult game to play, but reading directions is something many, many people struggle with. The visual impact of 4 sulking pre-teens in the middle of a sea of joyous pre-teens engaging in games is seared into my mind. I did not use this game for the game unit this year. (We actually revamped this portion of the unit slightly, because you have to tailor the units to the students and it just needed some changes.)

My husband, though, brought the game in for my club and it was enjoyed. It, again, requires some thinking, which doesn't always seem to go over well in my club, but for the time it lit their fire, it was a joy! Recently on Daddy-Daughter-Tuesday-Game-Day, my daughter and husband played it. My 7-year-old won (again with support from my husband). My husband doesn't "let" people win, but it was her first time playing and he guided her through it. Her winning, though, was not a condition of teaching the game. Like me, my husband is very firm about character being built through winning and losing.

Tokaido is a beautiful game with a lovely premise and it has definitely found its way into my book of games that I developed a connection with.

The Joy of Gaming: 12 Days Until International Tabletop Day - Qwirkle & 12 Days

I took the opportunity to cover two games in this entry not only because it's a double of Tabletop, but because Qwirkle is a game I just wrote about for my Women Game Designers series this past February. You can read my article here.

12 Days (2011) I like to keep around of the holidays. It is a trick-taking, set collection card game based around the 12 Days of Christmas. My kids break it out for fun and I do enjoy having an occasionally play. I just really love the game, because I like theme games that fit into "events." If you've had any experience with my writing, you should know I love to theme out everything! I mean... goodness... I did 30 days of Star Wars Apparel counting down to the release of The Last Jedi. It makes me happy, so this is one of those games that does that for me. A good family game, too.


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The Joy of Gaming: 13 Days Until International Tabletop Day - Fortune & Glory

"Fortune and glory, kid."

If that line doesn't immediately come to mind when you hear this title, then you were robbed of an amazing childhood! I can't say that, like so many others, didn't love the adventure of Indiana Jones. Even I wanted to adventure around the world looking for artifacts and defeating the bad guys, but like so many, that dream never came to fruition. But with Fortune & Glory I can play like I am living my dream (sort of).

The game itself was interesting to me, because of the artwork. I was intrigued by the use of these real-life images. It made the game feel slightly real, because who doesn't want to be Indiana Jones, even if it is just in a game? The other intriguing part about this game, which surprised me when I first sat down to game, was my husband asking if I wanted to play competitively OR cooperatively! WHAT?!?! I can play against you AND the game or the two of us can play against the game? Oh my! I, though, love cooperative, especially if it's the first time we play.

While time consuming, for me at least, I don't get to break it out often, but it stares at me every day of my life, since it sits on the shelf right next to my work space... taunting me... calling to me... just like it's doing right now! Willpower... so much willpower.

Yet, one of the things I love about this episode is not so much just the basic "woah, what is this game!", but the fact that this episode show the pitfalls of what many of us go through with games. We read the rules, we have someone run the game with us and we are so sold on playing it correctly and we show more people that's how it's played and so on and then, months later, we find out we're wrong about some major flaws. Awe geez. My nephew, in his condescending always arrogant way, could call all those games "false wins" and then be a jerk about it, assuming your misunderstandings were you just cheating to get ahead. Have I mentioned I hate that as well?

So really, if you're going to screw up, at least you played the game consistently with that screw up and you had fun, which really is the point of playing if I'm being completely honest. I screw up stuff all the time, but it's for fun. I'm not in a competition for money and if I'm getting something enjoyable out of the game, isn't that a win for everyone?

Besides... after running a unit on game design and part of the unit being reading rules books and figuring out the game on your own... I already know that direction booklets are the devil and developers really need to spend more time writing directions that can be understood by everyone. Sadly, we all see the world in different ways and that's what playtesting is for, but just trust me... we all have made this mistake and if following rules to the letter is what you find pleasure in, great for you, but for some of us... it's more than the rules.

Love this game!

The Joy of Gaming: 14 Days Until International Tabletop Day - Unspeakable Words

Fun Fact: 14 Days and today is April 14th! #numbernerd

I learned about Unspeakable Words from watching Tabletop. I immediately fell in love and bought the game. The scrabble style quality of points via word construction, but also the opportunity to fall victim to the insanity of Cthulu was too much of a draw for me. The little figures were so cute! The art on the cards was unique. And I'm a Literacy teacher!

Being silly is one of my things. It's even my teaching style, because I have learned over the years that students retain more information if you can give them something silly to latch on to than if you just straight-up teach them. It also stops class clowns from derailing teaching by making absurd comments that then derail the concepts you're teaching and enter false information into your lesson, because it was a joke. "In 1492, Columbus sailed the ocean blue, but the whole ship smelled like poo and everyone died of the flu." NOOOOO!!!!!!

This is a game that offers a bit of silliness, but as a teacher I saw the potential for an informal assessment opportunity. When getting to know kids and see where their comprehension level is at, there are things teachers pay attention to. Testing and papers and writing don't always do the trick. So one day there was a field trip for music and it left behind 2 kids in my class. I didn't really know what to do with these two kids, so I decided to break out some games and the three of us play. Unspeakable Words was one of the games, because I wanted to test my theory that this game can informally assess spelling and the accessing of larger than average words (so not just cat, hat, mat kinda stuff). And oh my goodness... it did the trick. It literally helped me to see where my one student was in a way that wasn't test taking or doing an essay. Immediately I was able to start planning for how to reach him as we progressed through out units.

A grandiose story for such a simple game, but it has stuck with me for a long time. It was also the game that sparked how I could use games within my classroom to help teach concepts, beyond just sitting down and laying out the game and saying "let's play 1775: Rebellion so that we can understand the American Revolution better."

Sadly, I had to take the game out of my vault, because I realized it was out of print and I cherished my copy. So there wouldn't be a "you break it, you buy me a new one." Luckily it is back in print, but I like the looks of my copy better. I still hope to have some extra money somewhere to get a copy to put back into my game vault.

Bonus: One of the designers is Mike Selinker (whose name I swear I will never screw up again by calling him Mark........ nerd shame of the highest order). 


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Troy Baker Interview

The Joy of Gaming: 15 Days Until International Tabletop Day - Takenoko

Takenoko is the game that keeps on giving. Not only do we own the game, but the game is in my club vault AND we use it every year for my Tabletop Game Unit. The draw of it really centers around the panda. I've come to the conclusion that the panda somehow makes the players feel less stressed. But this game is not only near and dear to my heart, because the mechanics are something I love and I actually consider myself good at the game, but because I have so many funny stories that go along with the game play.

Several years ago we were starting to introduce my daughter to board games. Now, she was too young to play things like Ticket to Ride and Takenoko, but sometimes it's not about her playing the games, it's about exposing her to games that have "neat" concepts. Takenoko had pandas and she loves animals, so we broke it out to play. The mechanics were a bit outside of what she could handle at age 3, but she gave her the honorable task of being "The Weather Panda." She had a panda hat and wore that and we let her roll the weather die. If lightening struck, she would move the panda and make all the "nom nom nom" voices to go with it. I actually wrote a little thing about playing these older games with her so young if you want to know more about our early gaming with my daughter.

Another story, though, involves my game club and, actually, some of my kids this year in my Literacy class. My club has a rule: "You break it, you by me a new one." My club really has no funding. The easiest moneymakers were stopped due to healthy food laws that were passed, so it's down to things like selling cups or working at Culvers to get 15% of their profits. Well, when you have a small club of inconsistent and noncommittal kids, it makes that kind of stuff a bit difficult. So I purchase most of the games and we have a few donations here and there from friends or families of the students.

Takenoko was the first causality of the club. The kids would play it so much that the poor gardeners head finally came off. So our club copy has a headless gardener. When I brought the game out year for our Tabletop Game Unit, the group who played the game came up with a story about the headless gardener. It goes something like this:

The panda and the gardener never really got along. So one day, when the lightening and storms scared the panda, he ran and being the nervous eater that he is, he grabbed the nearest bamboo-looking item, not realizing it was the gardener's hat. With one bite, the panda ate the head of the gardener. Now the headless gardener roams the Emperor's garden fulling his tasks, forever haunting the panda that killed him.

Morbid, I know, but what a story!

The memories with this game are wonderful and it is a game I love to break for new gamers all the time. Plus... PANDAS! Plus Antoine Bauza (we're superfans!).


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The Joy of Gaming: 16 Days Until International Tabletop Day - Betrayal at House on the Hill

There's nothing like a good betrayal to keep a game going. A never ending onslaught of paranormal and horror elements, Betrayal at House on the Hill is always a great time. You and your fellow players go through the doors of this foul mansion to unearth its mysteries. Move room to room looking for clues, finding means to protect you from the horrors that lurk around every corner. Not only is your life in danger, but your very sanity teeters on the brink. In the end, one of your compatriots turns out to be a traitor and each game of Betrayal at House on the Hill leads you down a very different story path depending on a number of circumstances. Is someone bringing forth demons from another dimension? Is their a vampire amongst you? Is one of you a lunatic housing a gang of murderous escaped inmates? Has someone bowed down before alien eye-creature overlords? One never knows what sinister happenings you will discover at the House on the Hill.

My husband recently introduced this game at our Tween Lock-In and it was unlike anything they had seen before. I watched as the person who had the betrayal walked away and read the twist intently and everyone else waited with bated breath to see what would happen.

So epic and great for the spookiest or holidays or late at night. Or if you're my husband anytime, because he adores this game. When we were going through our list of games based on purchase dates, we were trying to remember if it was because of Tabletop that we were finally able to get a copy, because it was made so available everywhere after it showed up on the show. That happens to be the case with several of the games in my series. It wasn't so much that we saw the game on the show and wanted it, but that the show made it a desired game and it became easier to find. Definitely love Tabletop for those benefits.

Note: Another Mike Selinker contribution. 

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The Joy of Gaming: 19 Days Until International Tabletop Day - Forbidden Island & Forbidden Desert

There is absolutely no way to gush enough about Forbidden Island. I've spent countless hours playing it. I've introduced the game to so many people, especially my students. For my students this game literally blows their mind. The cooperative nature of it coupled with the frantic need to get off the island with the relics. It's like Pandemic, but with a better chance of being able to achieve your end goal. The modular board is unique to them and the variable player powers make them excited, because they try to get the best combinations (even though they're not supposed to be all specific).

Forbidden Island is an absolute #1 on my list of games to share with people. A true gateway to seeing games in a whole new light. I can't wait to break this out with my daughter. The funniest part about it all, though, is that every year that I do my Tabletop Game Unit the kids are so enamored with the game, a large portion of them always choose it as a mentor game in some capacity. At least, those who play it. It is also the most played game for those who choose to come in to play additional games for extra credit. I'd say poor game, because it's so warn, but that's one game that deserves to be played until it is nothing more than faded everything, that's how great it is!

If we loved Forbidden Island, you know Forbidden Desert was next to add to the collection. I do find it interesting that in my game club, Forbidden Desert is now picked up a bit more than Forbidden Island, but I think that's because it adds a few new levels of challenges and after playing the one for so long, it's nice to change things up a bit. What I love is the flying machine and the hunting aspect of the game. Talk about a challenge!

Now I'm really looking forward to Forbidden Sky. I don't have many details on it, but I am so stoked! Matt Leacock has something really special going here and I'm psyched about it.