Gameapalooza 10: Dominion Intrigue

Dominion, in general, is a pretty good game.  It offers a lot of flexibility and tons of options when playing the game.  Dominion Intrigue, which we played "solo", without the original Dominion.  It is a fast paced card game with your turn divided into two basic steps: action and buy.  The action comes from the cards you purchase (varying in price from 0-8 money) and then you can purchase money (copper (1), silver (2), and gold (3)), victory cards (estate (1 pt), duchy (3 pts), and province (8 pts)), and any variety of other action/attack/defense cards for 2-6 money.  All the cards go back into your own personal deck and you reshuffle as needed.

As with most games, the point is to win.  Last night, Sandi won the first round (And I'm still writing the review, LAME). But I came back with a vengeance in the second.  Games last from 20-40 minutes depending on how many players you have.  The great thing about Dominion and its progeny, is the great flexibility.  You can play with as few as two players (like us!) and basically as many as you want.  You can also buy one of the many expansions (like Intrigue!) and change up the game with all sorts of different cards. Be warned that you do need a "base set" to play from before you go out buying all the cheaper expansions.

Mike: 9

Sandi: 8.5

Gameapalooza 9: War...(what is it good for?)

Absolutely nuthin'. (Say it again!).

After a daring try at two person Clue (who knew you needed 3 people?  Not us, apparently) we moved on to the easiest game ever: War.  One deck of cards, highest card wins.  No strategy; well, there's nothing really, other than turning over cards and seeing whose is highest.  So, pretty high on the meh, scale.

Mike: 4

Sandi: 7

Gameapalooza Game 8: Skip-Bo

Last night was Skip-Bo.  I don't think I ever played Skip-Bo until I was married, but it is fun and not too time consuming.  We played 3 games last night, with me winning 2 out of the 3. There just isn't much to be said about Skip-Bo. 

Ratings:

Mike 8

Sandi 7

Gameapalooza 7: Farkle

Last night's game was a couple of rousing rounds of Farkle.  Farkle is great because, unlike our Monopoly marathon, we were able to get it all wrapped up in about an hour.  My biggest beef with Farkle is you have to roll the money makers all at once, rather than the Yahtzee approach, but I guess that's what makes them different games.  Sandi's biggest beef is that it is based too much on luck (can you tell who lost both games, BOOYAH!).  All in all, Farkle tends to reward the risk seeking side, and as someone who is risk adverse, it can be pretty fun.

Mike: 7

Sandi: 7

Gameapalooza Game 6: Monopoly

Okay so last night's game was Monopoly.  For the past several years whenever anyone mentions monopoly I cringe.  I don't ever feel like playing.  Perhaps it's because Mike once turned everyone against me and no one would trade with me.  This resulted in an agonizingly long game since I had almost one of each type of property .  Or perhaps it has to do with the time as a child that my mother dumped the board upside down because there was too much fighting (she had previously warned us).  Or perhaps it has to do with the unfair trading that my older sister Emily seemed to always manage to procure; one time she told Heather that she should do a trade with her since she was going off to college and wouldn't be around much.  Yeah that's right, my college aged sister played with the feelings of a 10 year old to get some monopoly properties, man my family is awesome! (No sarcastic intonation intended, I seriously think that is awesome).  Anyhow, Gameapalooza forced me to play  Monopoly and it was ok.  I got Boardwalk and Park Place the first game and it was just too much for Mike's little pink Monopoly.  The second game (Mike wanted revenge) was more competitive but still ended in a victory by me. (Mike wants it to be known that he had a good chance of winning but then had to pay a total of about $2,000 for the chance and community chest housing appraisals cards in short succession.)

Ratings

Sandi:6.5

Mike: 7

Gameapalooza 5-- Husker Du

The title of this blog would be more appropriate if I could type umlaut, but alas, I can't (but I did learn the proper spelling of umlaut in case it comes in handy in Boggle or Scrabble).

Husker Du is a kid's game.  In fact, it's a game that I played as a child.  I've played it with Eve before but she didn't seem to get it, or at least she didn't get the part about taking turns.  But last night, she was on fire.  She very nearly beat both Sandi and I with the amount of matches she had (though she did beat Sandi).  The second game we played she thought it was much more fun to not find the matches.  All in all, I think it will be a game that we'll get out more often; it is much easier to set up than Memory, and is also much faster.

Mike: 7

Sandi: 5

Eve:6

The game is not be confused with this, either.

Gameapalooza Game 4 - RISK

Tonight we played a 2 person game of Risk.  I was pink/red, Mike was black.  I haven't played this game for some time, but I did play a little bit when I was younger.  Perhaps one of the last times that I played as a youth was the time that I threw the dice at (and struck) my younger sister in the head because I felt she had cheated.  This wasn't a long range throw either people, this was pretty much point blank range.  Definitely not my finest moment as a game player, but slightly funny now looking back on it (Right Heather?).  Anyhow this game does take a while but is pretty fun, I mean who doesn't want to dominate the entire world?  Which is exactly what I did, check out all that pink!  Oh and I apologize for the low quality pictures, it was just easiest to take them from my phone.

Rankings:

Mike - 7

Sandi - 8.5 

Gameapalooza Game 3-- The Settlers of Catan

If you read our blog, we have more than likely played Settlers with us, maybe even against your will.  Needless to say, Settlers plays a large part in our game universe.  We played with friends when we first started dating; we played when we were engaged (even if there were some silent rides back from Sandi's parents house to her apartment); we played in Washington DC, Rexburg, Moscow, Boise, and just about everywhere we've been.  And the best part is that our game is in great condition because we always play with someone else's game! In fact, when we lived with Sandi's parents, I dare say we played on average 4 games a week.  (Sandi says it was only 3).

The more we've played, the less tension there has been afterwords (usually).  This past weekend, Sandi's parents were in town and that usually means there will be high dosages of Settlers, not that there's anything wrong with that.  Sandi and I each managed to win one game, though her dad took 2 and her brother one as well.  Our preference for the game lies in the original 4 man with no expansions.  It allows for a lot of strategy and gameplay.  Its greatest advantage lies in the fact that no two games are going to be the same.  The board changes each time, the numbers change each time, and you never know what the dice are going to roll (like the time I won because the 12 was rolled.  Or when I lost because of the stupid 3. Stupid 3!). The game can get heated, competitive and can involve copious amounts of swearing: internally, muttered, exclamatory, and celebratory.  But in the end, it's all fun, right?  Oh and victory, too.

Mike: 10

Sandi: 10

Gameapalooza Game 2- Hand and Foot

After last night's (indifferent) beat down, the random game generator took us to Hand and Foot tonight.  To be honest, Sandi pretty much hates the game because she hasn't ever won (according to her).  I, on the other hand, enjoy card games.  So, thanks random game generator (!) for putting this game on Valentine's Day.  

Anyways, Hand and Foot is a variant of Canasta.  The great part is that you can play with a ton of people, if you have 1 ton + 1 decks of cards.  

(The amount of cards needed for a two person game, or 3 decks).

And the larger the group, the longer it is in between turns and the like.  If you'd like the rules, we play something like what is explained here.  But basically you need to get rid of 2 decks of 13 cards each, one being your hand and the other being your foot, by making "melds" of the same cards or those cards plus wilds.  

So, if you're interested in playing, let's play because Sandi isn't really interested any time soon.

Mike: 9

Sandi: 3.5

Presenting Mike and Sandi's Gameapalooza + Pictures of the Girls!

Yo People (meaning my mom, Mike's mom and maybe one other person), this is kind of a post involving several aspects.  Lets start out with the exciting news that Mike and I have decided to play all of our games (one a day if possible, and only those which two people can play) and keep track of who wins and how much we like each game.  Mike compiled a list, put it in excel, and randomized the order in which we would play them.  Well I was very excited to see that the first up was MasterMind!  I LOVE this game.  Mike however.....well I think it could possibly be his least favorite game.  It would be too difficult to give a good explanation of this one so if you really are dying to know how to play give me a call or come over sometime.  Anyhow, a very short back story to this game is that we never play it because: 1. Mike hates it, 2. He hates it, resulting in him not paying attention, often resulting in an accidental mess up. 3. He is then forced to play another round of an already highly despised game.  Anyhow, he was less than thrilled to start our Gameapalooza with this one but at least it is now out of the way and long story short I won and here are the ratings (on a 10 point scale) we both attributed to this game.

Sandi: 10

Mike: 2

 

In other news, here's a little comparison of my two girls...but which is which? Decide now before scrolling down and looking at more pictures!

 

 

 Look at these cute picture of my little girls!  Claire looks like a seal in this first one!

 

Oh yes and finally before I let you know which baby is which, check out my girls' hand gestures.  One of them is flipping you off in one picture, the other is doing the Vulcan sign, you know the "live long and prosper" one.  Anyhow that's about it.  The top baby picture is Eve and the one below it is Claire, I think they look decently similar.  Peace out!