The Real Day

After work I was surprised by Liz being home already. She was able to get of work early. Since today was her actual birthday, she had pick of eats and games. She chose Bollywood Theater and...

Flash Duel: Second Edition 1-5 players
Have you ever tried playing a game by counting cards? It's really hard. I've done it and it takes me out of the flow of the game and I'm never that accurate. I'm also just estimating most of the time. In this game it's really easy. The deck only has 25 cards. Plus if you lose count you can look through the discards. Add on 20 different characters to play as and 7 modes of play and that is what caught my eye about this game when I saw a playthrough.

In the basic game, you each start on opposite ends of an 18 space board. There is a deck of twenty-five cards (five cards of each value 1-5). You each start with 5 cards. On your turn, you can play a card(s) to move(never past your opponent), push, attack, or make a dashing strike. If attacked or struck, you can play play matching cards to defend. If struck, you can play a card to back away. If you don't have matching cards, your opponent wins the round. If you get through the entire deck and both players are still on the board, the player that advanced the most wins. Best of 5 rounds wins the game. The advanced play allows you to play with character abilities. And there are 3 abilities for each character. Each ability can be used once per round.

It's an interesting game. You use what you know about your opponents abilities and what cards they could have to make smart moves. Or you could be daring and just hope they don't have the right cards. I've only played 2 of the 7 modes. I've only played with and against about 4 of the 20 characters, so I haven't gotten too deep into this. It can be a bit overwhelming to pick a character you like by reading through 60 cards. If I were 10 and I had this game, I would have read each card twenty times before having played the game once. I'm not 10 though, so I just pick my characters randomly. Overall, it's not an amazing game, but it does have some pep.
Liz picked some ninja monkey lookin' character. I picked some colonialist. I won 3 rounds and Liz won 1. She began to wonder why she picked this game. I reminded her it was because she liked me.

After finishing our food we played...

Pirate Fluxx 2-6 players

This is my favorite of the Fluxxs. It has only 2 creepers and both are quite easy to get rid of. It's also pretty easy to nab another player's keeper. Most of the keepers fall into a group type (ship, treasure) and the goals allow for a number of general goals. I feel I have the most control in this game even when the piracy involved can make it out of control.

It was a moderately quick game. We each were able to build a stack of keepers and had a bit of back and forth on almost reaching a goal. Liz eventual had a turn of playing about 10 cards and finished with the win. Yup! Still my favorite version.

Once we got home I suggested we try out...

Paperback 2-5 players

I almost kicstarted this game, but I was already in deep with other games so I didn't bother. We picked it up recently. It's the combination of deck building games like Dominion, and Scrabble. You each start with a deck of 5 wild cards and 5 consonants (R, S, T, L, N). You draw 5 cards and try to make a word with what you have and possibly using the letter from the common letter pile. Like in Scrabble, each letter card has a value. The total value of the word can be used to buy better cards. The better cards could have letters you desperately need, or powers that you want to use, or victory points. The game ends when 2 of the fame piles are empty or the common letters pile is empty. The player with the most victory points in their deck wins. There is also a number of extra things that can be added to the game to vary things up.

Liz really enjoyed the game, but played quite poorly. She spent most of her time making really cool words and getting cooler letters to make even cooler words. I spent the game making good enough words and scoring most of the points. She says she knows better now, but I have a feeling old habits may die hard.

Tally: 94/165  Bonus: 23/50