Just Me Being Me

DUNGEONS AND DRAGONS

When I first played this game I was blown away. You really had to use your imagination and the different dice you had to roll. Plus you used paper and pen to play. And the miniatures were so cool. I loved getting and painting the figures. And the best part was playing with my friends. As time went by, the game blew up in popularity and controversy. But before I got caught up into all the hype and controversy, I had found a new hobby. That Hobby was video games and pinball. Most of my focus had shifted from board games to video games. But that can be another Blog Subject 🙂

RISK/CHOPPER STRIKE

Possibly the most popular, mass market war game. The goal is conquest of the world.

Each player’s turn consists of:
– gaining reinforcements through number of territories held, control of every territory on each continent, and turning sets of bonus cards.
– Attacking other players using a simple combat rule of comparing the highest dice rolled for each side. Players may attack as often as desired. If one enemy territory is successfully taken, the player is awarded with a bonus card.
– Moving a group of armies to another adjacent territory.

I had to put Chopper Strike too. It was my first real battle and strategy game and Im still on the hunt for this game today.

In this game, each player manoeuvres a fleet of helicopters and a fleet of jeeps (equipped with AA guns), trying to gain air or ground superiority. That is to say, you win by wiping out all of your opponent’s choppers or all of his jeeps.
A d3 indicates how many pieces you will move, and a d6 how far each one will move. Choppers move on the elevated “air” board, whilst jeeps stick to the ground. Terrain obstacles complicate matters for the jeeps at the players’ “border”. Choppers take choppers out by jumping over them (à la checkers); they can also take jeeps out by bombing them (stopping right above them). Jeeps take jeeps out by landing on them; they can also take choppers out using their AA guns (stopping right below them).

CAREERS

I like it because it was a more intense game then Life.

Careers is a game where the players set their own victory conditions. A player may choose to pursue Fame, Happiness, Money, or a combination of all three. The limitation being that the total number of “points” earned in the 3 categories must total 60. eg. 60 Happiness, 0 Fame, 0 Money; 20 of each; or any other combination. The players endeavor to fulfill their goal by going through any number of different “occupation paths”. All paths have some prerequisite for entry, and benefits accrue from going through any of the paths more than once. The different occupations are designed to be suited to different strategies, eg. Hollywood is good for fame points, while “Going to Sea” is good for happiness. In the end it is the player (or team of players) who gets to their pre-set goal first who will be the winner, and achieve everything they ever wanted in life.

GAME OF LIFE

I loved the spinner and cruising around with the car and people in it.

This game attempts to mirror life events many people go through from going to college, raising a family, buying a home, working and retiring.

The intent of the game is to have the most assets at the end of the game, assets are earned primarily by working and earning tokens with dollars amount on them. Additionally the first person to complete the course gets additional money tokens.

There is a very linear board that you move along by spinning a wheel or landing on spaces that tell you to move to a specific space or forward or back. There are a handful of intersections where you can choose to go one direction or another but they ultimately have similar spaces and meet back up quickly. There are a handful of choices regarding insurance and investments but for the most part it is a game of luck.

Trouble

All I have to say is Pop -O -Matic Dice Roller.

This is the game with the Pop-O-Matic dice roller. It’s a simplified Pachisi variant in which only one die is rolled per turn.

The game is abstract, each player has set of pawns of his color. Each turn player rolls a die using the Pop-O-Matic and selects one of his pawns to move. Pawns can enter the track from Home base only on a roll of six. Each pawn needs to travel around the board and finish on the Finish lane. If pawn of another player is bumped, the bumped pawn is returned to home. The goal is to be the first one to get all the pawns to the Finish lane.

For advanced players, we suggest that when a piece gets bumped, it should only be bumped back to its START space, rather than to its HOME. Only when bumped from their START space are pieces sent HOME.

MAD MAGAZINE THE GAME

Each Player starts with $10,000. The board is Monopoly-like, with 2 inner tracks that can also be used. Play is counter-clockwise and you must roll the dice with your left hand. Certain spaces, and the ever present ‘Card’ cards send you elsewhere, make you pay money (good), make you get money (bad), switch seats with someone else or exchange money with another player.

First to lose all their money wins.

Mad magazine was one of my favorite magazines and I loved how this game was just crazy and you had to lose all your money to win

CREATURE FEATURES

Monoploy didnt make my list but this game did.

Blatant Monopoly styled game. In fact in the largest font in the rules at the top is this quote “This game plays similarly to the famous Monopoly game”.

The track is your standard circular track with movies(properties) and actor, award, dead or alive (chance, community chest) spaces.

As you travel you buy movies. There are two actors (houses) associated with each movie and upon landing on a actor space you draw three actors for purchase. Any actors in which you own the corresponding movie you may buy or if non match you may still purchase one card. Card prices are driven by dice. If you own both actors for a movie and you land on an award space you can draw to see if you win anything. If it is a major award (hotel) you place it on the movie and anyone landing there has to pay you a premium.

To me Monoploy was fun but could go on for ever and most people I played got bored with it quickly. Creature features was great as I loved all the old movie monsters and the shoiw know as Creature Features. I loved that you could buy different movies and needed the actors/actresses for the movie. This is one game that Im still trying to hunt down and buy.

CANASTA

This was the other game I learned to play with my Family. It is probably the only game that MY WHOLE FAMILY knows how to play and all have played it at one time or another. Whats pretty wild, is that when I met Robin, her family was always playing a card game called Hand and Foot which is just another version of Canasta.  The only reason its not #1 on my list is that its just a basic card game. But as for great memories and familty time, It will always be #1

Canasta (/kəˈnæstə/; Spanish for “basket”) is a card game of the rummy family of games believed to be a variant of 500 Rum. Although many variations exist for two, three, five or six players, it is most commonly played by four in two partnerships with two standard decks of cards. Players attempt to make melds of seven cards of the same rank and “go out” by playing all cards in their hand. It is the only partnership member of the family of Rummy games to achieve the status of a classic.

RACK O

The reason I like this game so much, is that I remember learning and playing it with my family. It was an easy game to learn and one of the first  games I learned to play with my family. The other game is my #8. Rack O is still in my collection and still playing it today.

The object is to score points. Each round, you replace cards in your rack so their numbers read in any numerical progression from a low number at the front to a high one at the back (the racks hold the cards behind each other); achieving this ends the round. The cards are numbered from 1 to 60; you initially place them in your rack in the order they’re dealt. On your turn, you draw from the deck or the discard pile, swapping the card with one from your rack.

KISMET

Players roll any or all dice one, two or three times attempting to obtain dice combinations fitting a scoring category. Players fill 15 scoring boxes and add bonuses for a total score. The player with the highest total score wins the game.

Similar to Yahtzee. The difference in this game is that the die faces have three different colors. Five new ways to score are presented such as flush, full house (same color) and others.

I love Yahtzee and many games today are based off of a Yahtzee stlye dice rolling. Why I liked Kismet over Yahtzee was the fact that it added more scoring choices as well as colored dice.