I wouldn’t last ten minutes on a farm. The cows would revolt by tipping themselves over on a regular basis…the rooster would crow throughout the night…the sheep would form a circle around me and take turns headbutting me in the behind…it wouldn’t be pretty. Luckily, I can experience the joys of being a farmer without all of the hard work that goes with it…that is…if you don’t count the time you spent trying to make sense of the manual.
Board Games
All posts tagged Board Games
Finally, a Star Trek game where I can fly ships around my head like I did when I was twenty-five eight…the rapid fire shooting noises, the impossible one hundred and eighty degree turns…it’s almost as if it was like yesterday twenty-two years ago. “PEWWWWWW! PEWWWWW! CHHHHHHHHHHHKKKKKK… VERRRRRRROOOWWMMMMM!!! PEW PEW PEW PEW!!!!”
I have to admit, I was a bit skeptical when I first saw this game online. The advertisement went on to describe how players would be picking various races throughout the game in an attempt to get the most points in the end. Territories that you conquered could be wiped out by another player who decided to start with a new race and a fresh hefty stack of army tokens…it seemed a bit too chaotic for my blood. Then, out of the blue, one of my friends recommended this game to me seeing as how I was covering a ton of board games on my blog. This good friend of mine, let’s call him “Booyah!” (his name was changed to protect the innocent), said that the game was a lot of fun once you get used to the racial abilities. “Booyah!” has never steered me wrong before…so I took a chance and bought the game. I’m glad I did.
My, my, how times have changed. I remember when Stratego used to be about Generals, Bombs, Admirals, Miners, and various other soldiers of military rank. I was surprised by how many variants that have been developed ever since I last played it back in the 80′s. There’s a Star Wars variant, a Narnia variant…even a Pirates of the Caribbean variant. *Shrug* If something is that successful…why not? Anyway, I wanted to briefly touch on this classic board game, using a variant recently released by Hasbro. I honestly didn’t know it was a variant when I bought it…all I knew is that my original was somewhere in a house long forgotten and that I wanted to expose my son to the game. I was in my local Wal-Mart and happened to come across a box with the word “Stratego” on it in the board game isle…I didn’t bother looking any harder. Boy was I surprised by what I found when I unboxed the game at home.
Have you ever played Civilization, be it the video game or the board game? If you have, then you’d be familiar with the concept of a ”tech tree.” If you haven’t played any sort of game where you’re leveling up your civilization, then imagine a giant tree and at the bottom of said tree are the technologies that start your civilization off…things like “writing” and “the wheel.” As you go up the tree, you advance in technology, unlocking things like “bronze working” and eventually things like “rocketry.” The tree branches out into different areas of tech, covering different aspects of a civilization like the military and economy.
Whenever I see this game on my shelf, I get a disturbing visual of Quark’s big head from Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. I then picture him playing Tongo with a bunch of other Ferengi…a game that deals with buying, selling, acquiring, and other things you’d normally see on the Wall Street floor. Don’t ask me why…I haven’t had my coffee yet this morning. Continue Reading
Okay, let’s get the jokes out of the way now. No, this isn’t a game where the first person to get caked with urine loses. No, this isn’t a contest to see who has the longest stream and yes, crossing them would mean that all life as you knew it would stop instantaneously and every molecule in your body would explode at the speed of light…a total protonic reversal. I’ll wait while you Google that…
We’re moving on from Pandemic to look at something a little more simple, but still a lot of fun. Castle Panic is a tower defense kind of game with a cooperative theme. Players take turns playing cards trying to slay monsters that are advancing on their castle. Let’s take a closer look at the how the game is played.
Saving the world, it turns out, is pretty frickin difficult…at least it is in the board game I’m about to review. I’ve hyped about it in other articles and am finally getting around to writing about it. Let’s take a quick look and see what Pandemic is all about.
It’s only fitting that I follow up my last article, “Real Parenting: The Power Of Knowledge“, with a review on the latest board game I’ve had the pleasure of playing with the youngest members of the family. It’s quite possibly one of the most educational board games in my collection which makes me excited to play it…especially with my eleven year old son who, at one point, had to take speech classes. It’s a board game that forces players to not only come up with words that fit a category, but makes them spell it correctly too.
I was thrilled when this one came in the mail early…I just couldn’t say no to a cooperative Star Trek board game. With all of the board game reviews I’ve been doing lately, I’m starting to think that I might have a problem. Nahhh…
I honestly didn’t think that matching colored shapes would be fun. I was genuinely surprised by how deep this game is while managing not to lose its simplistic innocence. Continue Reading
If a train left Pittsburgh traveling 45 miles per hour going west and another train left Hawaii traveling 65 miles per hour going east, when would they meet? Unless the train from Hawaii has wings and flies like the one in Back to the Future 3….they won’t. Oh how I hated those problems in high school…luckily, you don’t have to deal with that chapter of math when you play Ticket to Ride. Continue Reading
You know a game is successful when you see it marketed and sold in stores…and has been for over a hundred years. Othello (originally called Reversi) was invented back in the late 1800s and is very simple to play. In fact, I remember seeing this game advertised on television with the tagline, “a minute to learn, a lifetime to master.” I honestly couldn’t sum it up any better.
The below review is outdated and has been retired. To see the new review, please click on the below link:
http://www.dadsgamingaddiction.com/airlines-europe-2/
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Fasten your seatbelts and place your tray tables into their upright positions…we’re about to take a look at Airlines Europe, a board game that deals with airline companies, stocks, and quite a bit of strategy.
The below review is outdated and has been retired. To see the new review, please click on the below link:
http://www.dadsgamingaddiction.com/lost-cities-2/
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It’s been a while since I’ve seen an Indiana Jones-esque game. The last time I played anything remotely close to Lost Cities was the board game Fireball Island back in the late 80′s. You know, the one with the giant head that shot fireballs from its mouth down various paths on the game board? Its high production values…like the mountains, the artistic detail, etc…stays fresh in my mind to this day. Then there was Legends of the Hidden Temple on Nickelodeon back in the mid 90′s, talking totem and all. Lost Cities has a similar theme in the form of cards, expeditions, artifacts, bonus points, and adventurer / researcher playing pieces.