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Gaming with kids

  

Board games are a wonderful hobby for kids. No iffs buts or maybes. There are so many skills imparted from game mechanics, maths, accountancy, negotiation and more cooperation than a whole season of Sesame Street

My experience of gaming with kids comes from 

A. Being a kid at one stage and having a great memory

B. Still Being a kid albeit a big kid

C. Gaming with my kids

D. Gaming with other kids (at knavekids etc)

E. Working as a teacher for five years
So turns out I may know a bit. Anyhoe on with the rant
Engage

Many years back I worked with teenagers who were early school leavers and young offenders. At the interview I was asked how I would maintain discipline with a group like this. My answer was I’d keep them interested so they wouldn’t get bored and I wouldn’t need discipline. It worked too. 

I was always an avid gamer so I used games to engage them. Simulations to teach them. Completions to reward them. They were rarely bored and ALL of them were devious intelligent players. 
Age matters

Younger gamers will usually want to get to the good stuff quick so you’ve got to let them. Pick games that are simple and quick but with some skill. I can’t stress this enough. Predetermined random games like snakes and ladders just don’t work. They might as well not turn up for them. If you’re an older parent like me. It’s all well and grand that it was the height of entertainment when you were a kid. It’s not now. Move on. On Rail games you can play them as well with other players as you can without them and you’ve got no game levers to exploit to make the experience more fun
Prepare to lose

For anyone who’s ever role played and acted as the GM the key is to work with the players and make it an enjoyable experience. It’s not about beating your players. It’s about letting them have a fun experience. Let them win. Stack the deck in their favor. Make them work for it but don’t stick to the letter of the law with rules. Remember the objective. Get them hooked on games so they’ll look for games for birthdays and xmas you can benefit from that. Lure them in with easy wins. Judge it. Judge the age. 
Short and simple

Make games age appropriate. Kids vary in ability. Don’t ignore any game you already own. Simplify the rules to accommodate younger players. I do it the whole time. Then add in more of the rules in second then third plays. You don’t introduce games to adult players with all the expansions the first time they play. Simplify and if all else fails make shit up. Kids don’t mind. It’s time with their parents where there’s no distractions. 
Coop

Younger kids love coop. They don’t feel overpowered, they love having a parent or two working with them. They just want to be part of it. Avoid competition with younger kids. It’s too heartbreaking for them and while I’m on the subject lets talk about losing
Losing

The hardest thing for a child to do is loose a game. It’s heartbreaking both for you and the child. Tears, sobs, snots full meltdown. Kids need to learn to lose but not continuously. It kills them. It will come with age and you need to judge it. Cook the rules. Let them win more than they lose. Multiple kids? No problem let them all team up against the parent and win more than they lose. 
Time together

Your kids will love you if you game with them. This is a special time. It’s something you enjoy they can experience as well. It’s your thing and you’re saying to them I want you to enjoy what I do as much as I do. Welcome to my world

Huzzah!

Vic 

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Good people

  
I have to say this. I’m struck by the fact that gamers are good people (in general and within the hobby). Why am I saying this?. Well recently I posted a blog article in which I was critical of the game imperial settlers. I wasn’t a fan after one game and wasn’t overly bothered to play it again…..

Now. There was a lot of replies to the post. A number of people came back and expressed their opinion and it was all in the form of. Well I like it. Maybe you’re missing something. I’m not s huge fan. I agree. I disagree. I think it works better this way etc etc. the point is not a single person was rude, abrupt or aggressive in a group of 7.5k people. Think about that. With such a diverse crowd of gamers. All passionate about their hobby. Everyone of them was civil and helpful. Thats amazing

What’s more I was persuaded that it definitely needs another play and another blog article. 
So thank you to all and group hug
Huzzah!
Vic 

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Fur coat, not much else

Wombles

I’m not sure (apart from snazzy graphics) what I was going to be getting myself into when I got to play imperial settlers but I was eager to have a lash of it. Oh I do know what I thought might happen. Some sort of develop your village attack your neighbours….. It IS like that but not in a slick and easy way….

Imperial settlers has you working through more hoops than 1970s spaghetti. You can’t do THAT until you have THIS and getting that you’ll need this. It was the second game of the night but I could feel the “let it end now” mood swinging in.

The game sees you with a hand of cards each with a resource cost on them. Getting them into play costs you a mix of apples, stone, wood and little pink people. Each round you draw a set of resources depending on your race and you try to build your economy as best you can via worker placement (On the cards you’ve been able to bring into play). There’s no map.  It’s a card game. so… no map.

settlers2

Ok I’ll say it straight out. I didn’t like this game. There’s only five rounds and every turn is unforgiving and to be honest tedious. By the time you get a reasonable economy together it’s game over. Granted after repeated plays you’ll be able to get things off the ground faster but it doesn’t matter. It’s just not that exciting planning to be able to generate an extra wood next turn if you play your cards right. Couple this with the lack of interaction and you have a pretty dull economy game. Yes you can attack other players economies but doing so will use resources better spent developing your own so we have a fairly solitaire experience. Granted again once you learn the game you’ll start to see different strategies emerge but I couldn’t be bothered. I only have a hundred years or so of life left and I don’t want to waste any of it.

There’s lots of economy games out there. This needed to be something special to raise its head above the rest. The nice pictures didn’t do it. To me it’s over hyped just like machi koro was. I won’t be rushing back. (I may saunter back)

Huzzah!

Vic

settlers

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Enjoy your death trap ladies!

 Gloria Mundi is an interesting game. Ok interesting is a bit vague. It’s got a neat theme. The goths are coming from the north (represented by a big plastic el diabloesque counter). They’re mad as hell and they’re not going to take it anymore so they’re stomping towards Rome all “Kill! Burn! Pillage!” Once they’ve wound their destructive way through the thirty odd provinces and reach Rome its game over man. 

  
Meanwhile you are trying to get out of dodge and away to the relative safety of Africa. The player who gets as close to Africa before the game ends is declared the winner (the others become goth be-atches).

To power this headlong flight, each turn a player plays a resource card from their hand (they start with a dozen plus) . This is of three possible colors and when they do any color of that type in front of any players pays out that resources machi koro style. Resources are used to buy buildings that firstly move you a couple of steps towards safety and secondly give you a special action of which there are many (or legion if you prefer)(see what I did there). Actions can be as simple as gain three gold, change one resource type for another, pay two green resources to get three white, pay one gold to move one space on the escape track) ecetterra ecetterra 
 

buildings for sale
 
The other thing resources are used for it paying tribute to the goth. This will delay them from their stomping for a turn but will store up trouble for the future. When the tribute cannot or will not be paid by a player the goth gets thick, hoovers up the tribute already laid before him and welshes on the deal, running amok and destroying what he was paid not to destroy earlier. 
Destruction is ever present in this game. The goths path to Rome is littered with cities, farms and legions (gold, green, white) sometimes more than one in each space. When the goth moves into them starting with the current player they have to lose a card in front of them of one of those colors stomped on. Once the current player has paid up (if they can) the remaining items stomped on have to paid up for by the next player and so on. A clever player will allow the goth to destroy resources they don’t have in front of them so other players further along with that type showing will have to pay up “skin that one pilgrim” style. 

  
It’s a very interesting game. The rules appear to have been translated from Native American to German then English via Google translate but they’re not overly complex and you can piece it together. It plays pretty quick. We played four (it will accommodate six) and had it done and dusted in an hour and a half or so. 

It is very chaotic. You could sit and figure out the patterns of what can happen from what’s in front of the goth, what players have in front of them and what resources they recently acquired and good luck with that. Checking goats entrails might be more accurate (and thematic). Under no circumstance let this game near an overanalyser it will slow to a crawl. 

I picked this up at the last knavecon for a song and it’s definitely worth a look. I like it. I like the theme and I like the art work of the hefty Roman fiddling while Rome burns (methapor). Like a lot of games this will require more plays. No bad thing
Huzzah!
Vic 

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More mod it Monday

mod

Cash and Guns is a pure party game. It was out of print for a long time and the new version is a fine game. However we can make it better…

The original version had the option of an undercover cop and THIS turns the game from a throw away filler to something much more solid by adding a traitor element. Traitors are Such fun in games.

Here’s what you’ll need. A deck of cards or tokens for recording shame and eight cards with “call made” written on one side and eight more cards with the word COP written on one…. I’ll wait while you get that together

Before the game begins secretly deal out the cards so one player is secretly picked as the COP. Everyone checks whom they are discretely. Everyone else are normal mobsters

Mobsters play the game as normal. The cop has a harder but more fun task. They have to Telephone the FBI three times and survive until the end of the game

There’s an extra mechanic for everyone. Shame. Anyone who ducks their character in a shootout gets a shame token. Each of these are worth -5000$ at the end of the game

reservoir-dogs-mexican-standoff

The game clips on as normal. Once loot has been split up an extra phase takes place. The phone call

Starting with the godfather they pick up the call made card with the blank side face up and place it under the table hidden from everyone. Now IF you’re the cop you have the option of flipping it over secretly before you hand it to the next player under the table who was also standing at the loot share. The card will work its way around and the last player will stick it up on the table showing the call happened or it didn’t

Repeat this exercise for each round. If at the end the cop survives and three calls are made they win otherwise it’s back to first principle and the mobster with the most money wins.

There’s one extra rule which is, the cop cannot have more than one shame token in their possession AFTER the first call was made. So they have to sweat it out til the end

Go on try it. It’s how were going to roll at Knavecon. We had a lash of this last Thur and it really makes the game so much better.

Huzzah!

Vic
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Hyper Active

hyper

Hyperborea is something new to me and maybe you too. It’s a “bag em up” conquest game with a bit of worker placement thrown in for good measure.

The game sees you and up to five chums squaring off on a smallish random hex map trying to get the highest score by a number of routes.

You start on your home city with three dudes and three cubes of six possible colors drawn from your opaque bag.

Now it’s up to you to shape your destiny by allocating the cubes to a variety of actions each costing particular colors. The actions range from movement to attacking, building temporary defenses, point scoring , increasing your supply of cubes or teching up to open up more actions for your cubes to power.

IMG_3495

It takes a little bit to get your head around and you’ll see mechanics similar to Lords of Waterdeep, Dominion and a number of other games in there which help you along. A few turns in it will all make sense. Even the icons which are plentiful are all very logical.

The game is map based but it’s not really an area control game. Not in the usual sense. There are a limited amount of ruins which yield one shot resource tokens and cities which offer free operations like move a unit or advance a tech. The further inland you venture the better the options but the more exposed your dudes are to attack. It’s a bit king of the hill right in the centre with the best operations available to your brave minions.

IMG_3496

This is a very interesting game. You’ll spend your first few games (I reckon) figuring out optimum moves with the other players constantly drizzling on your parade. They don’t rain accept with deliberate malice (game two onwards).

There’s also a stack of ways to earn points in the game all valid.  Taking victory tokens, killing neutrals (ghosts), killing enemies, researching Technologies and so on.

A cool feature which I applaud is the ability to set a short, medium or long game.  There are three conditions that end the game (getting 6 tech cards, getting all your men on the board, exhausting the point token pool). A  short game is when any one of these is met.  Medium you have to complete two and Long sees you reaching for all three end game goals.

Just like Eclipse players can be Johnny generic or pick a specific race with some special traits.  Haven’t tried this yet.  I will.

IMG_3497

Presentation wise its shiny. Good solid pieces. Lovely artwork. Nice platicky pieces, each a different shape and colour per player. I picked it up second hand but unplayed for a great price and i’m glad I did. This is a neat game. It needs more replays and with different numbers of people but I’m eager for more. Always a good sign

Huzzah

Vic.

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