Spooky

We had a small Halloween party at our house. We ate candy and once enough people showed up Liz had us play...

Pictionary 3-16 players

The only reason we have this is because we wanted extra words for Concept, so we nabbed it from Liz's parents. For those that have forgotten, teams roll a die and move on a board. The team then draws something from a card that is in the category that is landed on. If your team can guess what you are drawing in the time limit, you get to go again. There are occasionally opportunities for the other teams to steal. The player that gets to the last place first and has their team answer the drawing correctly wins.

We had two teams of three: Jess, Thom, and Other Guy against Liz, Spencer, and Me. We started, but didn't get too far. The other team was dominating. It took us a while to gain back control. Mid-game was neck and neck. We finally pulled ahead and made it to the last space. Liz had to draw and I was able to identify it as "booth" just before Other Guy did.

It was was right around then that pizza arrived. I hooked up the VCR to put Hocus Pocus on the TV. Raeann and Kevin showed up and once the movie was done we finally got to the game I was dying to play. No pun intended.

Mysterium 2-7 players

I just bought this the day before. I had been eyeing the game for a while and I didn't really have a Halloween themed game to play that would be easy for a group to play and enjoy. It's a cooperative game that acts like a mix of Clue and Dixit. One player plays a ghost and the rest of the players play psychics trying to determine who, where, and what caused the death of the now ghost. The game has two phases. In the first phase, over 7 or less rounds, the ghost player, who never talks, gives clues to the psychics in their dreams in the form of Dixit cards (cards with crazy and trippy illustrations on them). Each player, at first, is using the clues to determine who killed the ghost. Each player has a different suspect. Once a psychic determines the suspect, they move onto the location, then the weapon. If all players can discover all three of their individual clues before the end of the 7th round, they move to phase two. In the second phase, the ghost picks one of the psychics clues and gives three cards (one for each of the clues) to represent the real murder. The psychics who scored better get to see more of the cards than the psychics who scored fewer points. Each player votes privately. If the majority votes correctly, they win. If not, the soul is forever doomed.

We played with the full player count and I was the ghost. This was very difficult, but an awesome puzzle. Each of the player's slowly made their way to their clues. They nearly failed before round seven, but they were able to work together and help each other interpret their cards correctly. In the final phase, only Liz got to look at two of the three cards. The rest only saw one of the cards. The majority vote was wrong, but it was still and exciting game. Most people left after that, but Raeann and Kevin stuck around. We busted out another 4 player game with Liz as the ghost. This time we were successful.
I really like this one. I'm curious to see how Liz's sisters will like it.

Tally: 139/176  Bonus: 34/50