Hey All,

I’m Alex, and this is one of the stragglers of the 2019’s new year batch of blogs.

I’ve read that if you don’t manage to kickstart your new year resolutions within the first three weeks of January, it’s very unlikely that you’ll honor them, so here I am on the 27th January, grabbing my pencil and frantically scribbling a starting post.

As you may have surmised, this is a no-plan, by-the-seat-of-my-pants endeavor. I’ll write my gaming experiences, musings and reflections on board games, perhaps also on role playing games if it happens.

As for me, I was a bit surprised to find that I fit right within the majority group in the BGG’s 2018 demographics poll for most of the questions asked, so I’m what you would call a regular BGG’er who likes euros, but is eclectic enough to dabble in most genres.

And with these introductions sketched, let’s turn to our regularly schedulled program…

We’re in winter here in rainy Belgium, so a perfect chance for a lazy Sunday playing with the kids. My elder son Vasco (10 yo) is not overly fond of board games, so I tend to play mostly with his younger siblings, Arthur (5 yo) and Livia (3 yo).

It’s always a challenge to find games that keep both of them engaged, but King’s Gold, a push your luck, pirate-themed Yahtzee-like with chunky dice and big plastic coins is always a winner. In this game you are a pirate who attacks enemy trade ships in the name of your king (who gets half of the spoils), and steal from your « fellow » pirates. If you manage to get coins of the five dice you can even steal the titular King’s Gold, and by getting five canons you outright win the game.

credit to Raldake

Arthur plays the game with the full rules, while Livia is happy to throw dice and choose who to pilfer when prompted. The rest of the time she plays with her coins.

The game is random enough to give a winning chance to kids, and short enough not to overstay its welcome for adults, but there’s not enough substance to justify playing it among adults.

Next was a couple of plays of Swingolo, a classic balancing dexterity game. There is a flower on which one needs to stack various pieces (bees, ladybugs, etc) according to a die throw. It’s great to teach turn sequence and linking actions to die results. We played a couple of times, and of course the flower always tanked on Livia’s turn, much to the Arthur’s frustration.

By then it was nap time for Livia, and we could upgrade the level of play with Tino Topini (aka Mausgetrixt), a deduction game where mice are stealing carrot’s from the goat’s garden. Actions are given by the throw of a die, allowing the goat player(s) to pick a carrot of a given color or catching one of the three hidden mice, or the mouse player to steal a carrot. Only the mouse player knows the carrot’s layout in the garden, and secretly picks the carrot’s roots while leaving the leaves, forcing the goat players to try to guess where the remaining carrots are.

The Mouse player wins if there are no carrots remaining in the garden, whereas the goat players win if they catch the 3 mice, or if they salvage 9 carrots.

The game has a nice balancing mechanism (if the goats do their job well, they facilitate the mouse’s work) which ensures a good tension during play, and lots of excitement for the kids.

Since there was still some time left, I decided to seize the opportunity to teach him Summoner Wars. It’s a long shot, because he can’t read yet, but since he likes to play chess, and would probably easily memorize the card effects, I decided anyway to try a play of Summoner Wars: Phoenix Elves vs Tundra Orcs. He obviously picked up the Orcs and off we went to battle.

credit to Cathorsis

By explaining that the summoner is the king and like for chess the aim is to kill him, how summoning, movement and attack rules work, we were soon rolling. He obviously needed some guidance, but very soon he had summoned the mighty Krung champion, crushing my units and walls, while a fast runner directly attacked Eelian, my summoner, leaving him bloodied with half of his life points left.

Krung’s favorite meal : Phoenix Elf porridge on the rocks – credit to Screamingtruth

We had to stop at that time (much to his frustration), but he definitely enjoyed and asked for a repeat as soon as possible, so that went quite well.

That was our Sunday lazy gaming. Thank you for reading and see you next time!