Yeah For Bugs

Liz was at work today, so any games were just between Emily and me. When we got around to it we played...

Three Cheers For Master 2-6 players
This is the final game I received from Game Box Monthly. The basic idea is that you are a foreminion (like a foreman, but for minions) and you are trying to cheer up the evil master by having the tallest and coolest tower made of minions built by the time he gets back. The deck starts with a number of Big Hairy Fight cards shuffled in and the game end card inserted near the bottom. Each player gets 3 cards and on a player's turn, they play two of them. Cards either add to a tower or effect a tower. The ones that add to it are minions and each has their own characteristics. They may attack to the right or block from above, or die when completely surrounded, etc. The effect cards will move cards already placed in a tower or cause a minion to freak out and attack. You can use cards for any tower, not just your own. After you place cards, you can move your foreminion token one space. With your third card, you can keep or discard. Finally, you draw up to 3 cards and pass the turn. If a Big Hairy Fight card shows up, every tower goes crazy and attacks the other minions based on where the arrows point. If there are holes left, then the minions above fall unless they can fly. Once the Master Is Here card pops up, there is a triple attack and scoring occurs. Each minion has a point value (1-3) and each value is multiplied by the height in the tower as long as the foreminion is at least that high. High score wins.

I did my best to teach Emily, but there is a lot to keep track of in this game. You need to be able to decipher about 15 different symbols to play. She did pretty good. Her strategy was to minimize the number of attacking minions in her tower. It worked for a while. She was up to a 6 level tower at one point. But you have to be mean to win and I got a really good blow in near the end. I think her foreminion ended at level 2 or 3. I had a pretty stable 4 level tower since my high ones could fly.

It's an okay game. It is really hard to have a good first game with newbies. I'm trying to imagine a 6 player game. Just trying to keep track of everyone's tower and all the little symbols in each would be overwhelming. I don't think I'd want to do more than 4. Maybe not even that many.

After A Nightmare Before Christmas and a nap, we played...

Hive 2 players
This seemed like a neat little game to get, especially since I could get the travel edition. I love travel editions. Unfortunately, Liz hates it. She says the bugs are mean. She doesn't even call the game by it's name. To her it's just the mean bug game.

Imagine a game of chess with no board and all the pieces had to touch each other. That is Hive. You are two opposing teams of insects. You are trying to completely surround the opponents queen bee using the other bugs in your arsenal. The game starts by players adding tiles. Each tile must be added next to a tile in play. Except for the first two plays, all tiles added must only touch tiles of the same team color. Once the bee is added (within the first 3 tiles), players are allowed to move their bugs if they want instead of adding tiles. Each of the bugs has their own movement rules: ants surrey anywhere along the edge, grasshoppers jump across the pile, bees move one space, spiders move 3, and the beetles can move one space, but can also move on top of the pile. There are only two types of illegal moves. You can't split the hive into to separate hive by moving a piece, and you can't move a different piece in order to slide a piece out of wedge it's in. Both of the rules allow you to trap other players tiles. I find the game pretty interesting, but I don't play it to much because of Liz's hatred.

Since I was with Emily, I could final get this to the table. She understood the rules pretty well, but she didn't quite grasp a strategy. My strategy was to hinder myself by not using ants. In the final moves, I did bring out an ant though. It was a mercy kill really. Emily was playing the game, but she wasn't really caring for it, though not for lack of trying.

Tally: 131/175  Bonus: 31/50