have you played the game Set? each card has four distinct qualities - color, shape, number and shading. players make sets of three cards from a pool of twelve on the table. to be an acceptable set, the three cards have to all share or all differ on each of the four qualities. for example, they must all have the same color or be three different colors - you can't use two red and one green - and so on for each of the qualities. i played a game yesterday with greg. it's been awhile since i played, but it didn't take long to remind me that the game is capable of making me simultaneously feel both smart and incredibly stupid. i sit there just staring at those twelve cards thinking, "there has got to be a set in there ..." and then suddenly it's so glaringly obvious which three work together. i'd be interested in playing a series of back-to-back games to see how both playing time and feelings of stupidity decrease as the mind adjusts to studying those four qualities. maybe i should just play it solitaire style as practice. :)
greg also introduced me to a new game called Jambo. it's a card game where players are buying and selling wares, unleashing animals on each other and using various utilities to supplement their game. it was quite enjoyable, and it's specifically designed for two players, which isn't all that common. or, at least, not with the games i have. most of my games can be played by two players, but are better played with a larger group. and some of them are simply impossible for two players (Beyond Balderdash, for example. and Hilarium, Snorta!, Partini, The Game of Things ...) i think with a double set of cards, Jambo could easily be played with 3-4 players without disrupting the flow of the game - but it was a great two-player game. and i learned last night that there are two different expansion packs available. i do love me a good expansion pack.
speaking of expansion packs, yesterday was the first time i got to play Zombie Fluxx with the flamethrower expansion pack. the new zombies are pretty fabulous. and i still won. ;) well, i won the second game. the first game was won by the zombies. those li'l buggers are crazy.
our next visit to the coffee house (did i mention we found a great coffee house to sit at and play games? i even enjoyed - wait for it - a cup of coffee. that's right. actual coffee. i did not order a hot cocoa ... i ordered coffee) will include the game of Agricola, which is a Uwe Rosenberg creation. i'm a big fan of his game Bohnanza, so there's no reason to think i wouldn't enjoy Agricola, too.
sigh. i love game playing.
2 comments:
Fun! We have a place in town called the Haunted Game Cafe, which has awesome drinks and a whole wall full of open games you can play with. You should come with us next time you visit. :-) Is this place you went to similar?
What did you drink?
we brought our own games, but the place was set up beautifully and comfortably. we picked it blindly from a list that bing provided, so we weren't sure what we'd find when we got there.
i had a grasshopper, which had just the right amount of creme de menthe to not overwhelm the coffee. it was tasty.
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