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The Skinny on Game Night


Jacob and I go to a game night about once a month. Do you do a recurring game night? This one is organized by a friend of ours named Chad and originally it was just the guys, I think, but some of us wives like games too. So, it has been a mixed group for a while now.

This last month six people were in attendance, and we played two games. (At least, two games were played while Jacob and I were there. . . .We are usually among the first to leave when we both attend, since we have a babysitter on the clock!) The games were Codenames and Libertalia.



I've played Codenames a couple of times before with this group and it's fun. It's a good one to play at the start of a game night because it's a fairly short game. So, while you've got part of the group and are waiting for the rest of the people to show up, you can play Codenames. In it, you have a grid of a bunch of word cards, and two teams (you need at least 4 players, 6+ is better). Each team has their cluemaster and their guessers. The cluemaster for Codenames looks at a little map that shows which cards his team is supposed to guess, which cards the other team must guess and which cards cause no points or sudden death. Then you come up with clues! There's a little more to it, of course, but it's got the fun of Taboo and the fact that the opposing team might guess one of your cards and earn you a point is really interesting. Being the cluemaster is totally a nail-biting experience, especially if your guessers are chatting amongst themselves and headed in the wrong direction!



Libertalia is one I hadn't played before, but Jacob had. (He went to a previous game night without me, you see.) It is one of those board games with tons of pieces and a complex turn-taking sequence, like 7 Wonders. This group loves those kinds of games. In Libertalia you've got a pirate ship and you're ranking and out-ranking each other and splitting the booty and taking certain actions "morning," "noon," and "night." What I liked about it was that you needed to look and be able to plan a few "days"into the future, but not very many rounds ahead. I'm good at that middle ground, and came in a close second place. It's also a good game to jump into the middle of. I was helping the baby while the rest of the group played the first of three "weeks," but they just let me take Jacob's week 1 score and jump in for weeks 2 and 3.

We had a good time playing both of these games, and have talked about buying Libertalia. I think our kids are too young to successfully play Codenames with us, but I could really see the boys getting into Libertalia. At ages 7.5 and 9.5 they're enjoying Dominion and getting some of the strategy down pretty well.

photo credit to Jubilee, age 4

I'd love to hear what games you've been enjoying lately!

1 comment:

  1. My friend has a cool blog post you might like, then: https://objectionable.net/2017/12/14/board-games-so-many-recommendations/

    ReplyDelete

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