Short & Sweet

At our biweekly work gaming session we had time to play 2 different games. We started with one of Justin's.

Unspeakable Words 2-6 players
I had seen this game on Tabletop before. It's a push your luck game in the loosest way possible. You all have 7 cards with a letter and point value on each. On your turn, you can create any Scrabble friendly word with your cards. You score the total points indicated on the cards, but after playing them, you need to roll a 20-sided die. If you roll less than the point value you made, you lose some sanity (oh... did I mention it's Cthulhu themed). If you lose 3 sanity, your out of the game. If you get 100 points or are the last person standing, you win.

We played and Justin won. He never rolled below 14 for the entire game. This gave him free reign to score whatever he wanted. The rest of us went crazy in pretty close succession.

I'd rather never play this game again. The whole time I was just hoping other people would get screwed. You can only have two mindsets. Go all in, or hold back. I'm okay with games that hinge on a die roll, but it's a little different when it determines whether or not you stay in the game.

The Resistance: Coup 2-10 players

I got sucked into the hype on this game. It's a little like Love Letter in that you start with a deck of very few cards and each card has special abilities. But that's pretty much where the similarities end. You all start with 2 cards which are kept secret from the others players. These cards give you powers like getting money, getting lots of money, stopping people from getting lots of money, assassinating a player, preventing an assassination, or swapping out your cards. The twist is you don't have to have the corresponding card to take an action. You can bluff. If you get called on the bluff you're screwed and have to trash one of you're two cards. If you call someone for bluffing and they weren't, then you trash one of your cards. If you trash your second card, you're out. This leads to interesting situations. For example, someone claims that they have the assassin and wants to take out one of your cards and you don't have the right card to stop it. Do you A) Call them on it hoping they are bluffing about having an assassin, B) Bluff and say you have a Contessa for protection, C) Take the hit, or D) Sit and think for about 5 seconds about whether to go with option option A or B and then realize you've been thinking too long and reluctantly take option C. It seems good, but every game I've played so far has blown chunks. That is probably my fault though. It's a horrible game for just 2 people and most of the games I've played were with 2. Also, I think I suck at bluffing or at least I do when I don't have a few seconds to prepare.

This time was different. Everyone seemed to pick up on the concepts quick and everyone had a good time. We even played a second game and added a fifth player. I didn't win either game, but I was close on the first one. I definitely enjoyed this much more than previous times. I'm certainly going to try to shoehorn this one into the regular group.

After work Liz and I headed out for dinner at some nearby food carts. I brought along...

Dominoes 2-10 players
My parents had a large set of dominoes that we'd play occasionally when I was in high school and college. Of all the styles of dominoes to play, we only every played Chicken Foot. In this variant, the starting double tile has 6 branches coming off of it and every other double has three branches emanating from it. Each double will end up looking like a chicken foot, ala the name of the game. We play with an additional rule and I'm not sure when we started this rule. When you play a double meaning you start a new chicken foot, you must squeal out loud, "Chicken Foooooooooot!" It's almost as if you are trying to call the chickens home.

This time we did not play Chicken Foot, but I played a version that I had seen played at work. They didn't know the name of it, so lets call it Fives. You play with only the dominoes with 0-6 (although there is nothing truly preventing higher).  All players begin with 7 dominoes. A player starts the round with any domino. Same placement rules apply, but only the first double played in a round has branches. Players score points if the total of the ends of every branch is divisible by 5. So if you add a bone and the ends are a 1, 4, and double 5, that would score you 1+4+5+5=15 points. The first player to go out scores bones (individually rounded down to the nearest multiple of 5) not played by the other players. After a number of rounds (we went with 7 to make it quick), the highest score wins.

Liz played quite well. We were neck-and-neck for most of the game, but in the last two rounds she dominated. I enjoyed it. It called for some interesting choices and seeing scoring opportunities. Now if only there was a way to add a squeaking mechanic to the game.

Tally: 83/164  Bonus: 22/50