Friday Fun Time

Last night while working karaoke, I was headed to the bar to refill my drink and I noticed Cody reading an instruction manual. I didn't take any more notice than that and started filling my glass. Cody said, "Hey! I got a new game." I gleefully said, "Really!" and quickly swiveled my head. I was immediately disappointed at the game: Jersey Shore Trivia Game. I don't really know what I expected, especially at a bar.
This weekend is nice because we get to spend all weekend with Saba, our friends' dog. I even took today off work to get extra time. When we weren't petting her or taking her on walks we were playing games. We decided on Boke Bowl for lunch, but that meant leaving Saba behind. Poor Saba. We got chicken buns and played...

Qwirkle 2-4 players
This game seemed like the perfect compromise. Liz likes scrabble, and I hate words. Okay, maybe I don't hate words, but I don't know anywhere near as many as she does. Qwirkle is Scrabble with colored symbols instead of letters. So there's no need to know how to spell anything or if a word is even legal. There isn't even a board. You place tiles vertically or horizontally. The tiles you add must either have all the same color with no symbol repeated, or all the same symbol with no color repeated. You score a point for every tile in the row and column you added to. You score a bonus 6 points if you finish a set of 6 (there are only 6 symbols and 6 colors). It's called a qwirkle. All the rules for placement are exactly the same as scrabble, but since there are no word restrictions it tends to clump a lot more.

Most of the game is spent holding on to 1 or 2 pieces waiting to get the right piece or waiting for the other players to place the right one in order for you to finish a qwirkle. Near the end you'll be counting blue clover leaves to make sure no one will be able to qwirkle off of your placements. It's really good and better with 3 or more players. Of course, if one of the players is just giving all the qwirkles to the next player it can be seriously frustrating. I have the travel edition so there isn't much room to add a threatening weapon in the bag.

I took a commanding lead pretty early scoring at least 7 or 8 qwirkles before Liz scored any. She was pretty grumpy by the end, but she did pretty well for making so few qwirkles.

Afterwards, we were so close to Guardian Games that we walked over there and I had Liz pick out something she liked. She was a bit overwhelmed. She got more into it when we started looking at the used games. She eyed up a number of them, but she talked herself out of all of them. As we were leaving the section she noticed a bean farming game and I suggested we just get a smaller game about bean farming.

Bohnanza 2-7 players
Liz had heard a lot about this game, but never really looked into it. I had heard whispers of it, but looked into it more when she mentioned it to me.
You are bean farmers. You all start with 5 cards, but must keep them in the order you have them in. On your turn you must plant the first bean in your hand and possibly the next. You only have 2 fields to plant so think wisely. Next you draw cards from the deck and flip them up. You make deals with other players to trade beans. This is the only way to get rid of beans in your hand you don't want to plant. After the dealing is done you add the beans to plant to your fields. Then you add a few more cards to the back of your hand. Once you get enough beans in a field you can sell it for profit. How much depends on how many beans you have in there and what type of bean it is. Most coins wins. I'm not really sure when the game really ends since the rules are changed a bit when you play with just two. In fact, with two there is no trading, more like getting left overs.

To play, we picked up Saba and headed to a park. We played two games. One to learn, then the second because I forgot to take a picture. We also fixed a rule that we missed in the 2-player variant which made it a bit more interesting. Even without playing with more people, it's obvious it plays better with 3 or more. After cleaning up the beans and tossing a stick with Saba we moved to...

Jaipur 2 players
Liz and I were in the market for a new game as we so often were years ago, so we headed to Cloud Cap to peruse the section. The owner gave a glowing recommendation for this game saying it was the perfect couples came. In the card game, you're getting goods (cards) to sell for profit. On your turn you can do one of three things: grab one card from the market and replace it from the draw pile, grab multiple cards from the market and replace them with cards from you hand, or sell goods from your hand. In addition to goods like spices, silk, and gold, are camels. You can't sell camels, but they don't count toward your hand limit of 7 and if you have the most of them at the end of the round, you get a bonus 5 points. When selling goods, you can sell only one type of good a turn. Each good you sell gets you tokens for each good. If you sell 3 or more on a turn you get a bonus token. The round ends when the deck runs out or 3 of the goods token piles run out. Best of three rounds wins. It's a nice game. The only flaw to the game for me is that it takes a little while to set up this small game. you have to stack the goods piles in the right order with the most valuable of the goods on top of each pile. Not that big of a drawback, but it does sway me a bit when I'm selecting a game.

I won the first round by a bit. Liz killed me on the second round. I made a glorious come back in the final round. The cards had forgiven me for whatever wrong I had done them. Thank you cards.

We headed back to the house and had Darrin over. We started with with a game of Bohnanza. It is much better with more players. We also noticed another small rule we missed. I like it. Up next:

Agricola 1-5 players

I picked this game up at Cloud Cap a while ago. I went there with Liz with the purpose of finding a new game to play. I showed Liz a number of games that I thought she might be into or that I thought I might be into. Agricola was one of the first ones I put in front of her. She didn't think much of it at first. We looked at a number of others and eventually we regrouped and focused on two or three games. We came back to Agricola and Liz noticed something in the corner of the box: Now with Animeeples. For those who have no clue what that is, they are small wooden tokens cut into the shape of animals, in this case sheep, boars, and cattle. There was no doubt in Liz's mind. I was a little worried since most of what I had heard made it seem like this was a heavy game to learn. We played the family side of the game first to get a handle on it. The idea of the game is that you are a farmer in central Europe in the 1670's trying to build your farm and grow your family. Sounds like a game you can't pass up, right? It wasn't as hard to grasp as people had made it seem. It's hard and stressful, but pretty cool. Liz likes the game more than I do. I think it might be her favorite worker placement. I think the cards make it a bit random. We've played with drafting and that levels out the randomness a bit, but it makes the lead-up even longer. This is also the first game that I got an ArtBox to organize all the bits in. It makes things so much easier than bags.

We used the an expansion deck (Gamer Deck). I didn't get much use out of it, but that's not much new for me. I was able to grab start player and keep it for most of the game. I was able to get a good vegetable food system going. Liz had a lot in the way for agriculture, but not many animals, Darrin the reverse. My diversity paid off in the end.

Liz got tired of games and needed time to eat so Darrin and I played...

Chez Geek 2-5 players
Darrin brought this with him. It's a little like Munchkin because it's made by the same designer.
You are each roommates with different crappy jobs. Depending on the job you each have a certain amount of free time and cash to spend on your turn. You play cards you gain slack. You're limited in cards only by free time and cash. There are other cards that invite friends or pets and cancel cards. It's pretty random, but it doesn't ever seem to last too long.

I was a security guard with little in the way of income. I barely pulled off the win. It came down to a die roll to determine the slack I'd get from card game. Pretty meta.

I'm looking forward to tomorrow so many other good games coming.

Tally: 13/148  Bonus: 3/50