Large group, no game components? Play these games

There is a large group and you want to play some games. No game components available. Check this out. They are a sure fire way to pass time especially with some little children around! Hoping to catch a few these with my kids when we travel in summer this year.

Yehuda: 12 Games With No Components For Large Groups

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Goa – Some thoughts

Goa is a highly ranked game on BGG. It is basically a gamer’s game as explained in the many reviews I have seen of it. We managed to open it and get it going this month. We had 3 plays with 2 players and here are some initial impressions.

• There is a similarity to Puerto Rico in some ways. Though not directly it is more to do with the Euro feel of the game I think. There are so many ways of winning. As Srikanth likes to say, ‘Euros are games that give you many ways to win!’
• For first timers there will be some difficulty in assimiliating all the different ways of accumulating victory points, but after a few plays the game is very clean and smooth.
• The amount of choices are a bit overwhelming. For instance you have 6 different actions to choose from. In addition you can play expedition cards any time and also play some of the tiles that you won in an auction. So the choices are really huge.
• The game plays very well with 2. It is for 2-4 players but the initial auction mechanism is also quite engrossing even with 2 players.
• The only grouse if any in a 2 player session is that because we have only 4 rounds for each set of tiles, there are more tiles that never get used as opposed to the ones that get auctioned.
• Am really waiting to play with more players to see the difference.
• In the final analysis rock solid game with lot of strategy and flow. A trifle dry you can say though.

Boardgame Knowledge

&games: Boardgame knowledge.

Check out the above link. A super post on how one acquires boardgame knowledge. This is something people whom I introduced games to haev always wondered about. How did you know about this? Where did you find out about all these games?

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Puerto Rico – 2 player session!

Puerto Rico is the no 1 ranked game on BGG. But it is meant for 3-5 players. I actually got San Juan, the card game version of Puerto Rico, and we enjoyed the 2 player sessions so much. Finally when we got PR and started playing it we had stopped SJ. Until recently we rediscovered SJ and have been enjoying it a lot. Now finally I managed to download the offical Alea 2 player rules and got it going. We played a great game, it was tight and perfect and aarthi just exclaimed “This is better than San Juan because we can see everything!” Yes I agree, it was much better than SJ and I am so happy Aarthi got down to playing it today. Now there will be more such sessions in the near future. But I would advice a word of caution here. In case you have never played either PR or SJ then I would not advise this variant for 2 players. My personal progression would be to play 2 player SJ first, then play multi player PR and then move to 2 player PR. But this is because I had no one to teach me these games and had to struggle through the initial plays until we got more familiar. If you have someone to teach you the game play anything! They are all great fun and excitement!

Games played January 07

 61 plays logged for the month. The evenings rarely passed without a game being played before retiring. Mostly 2 player sessions with the missus.

Game of the month – Ticket to ride: USA 1910 – 17 plays

Am not going to elaborate on this except to say that we even find the 2 player sessions engrossing and the fever is still continuing!

Surprise of the month – Thurn & Taxis – 8 plays

Plays had petered down after the initial excitement, but we recently rediscovered this and it is occupying us quite nicely. And we found out that Alan Moon loves the 2 player game and plays it a lot with his wife!

Bohnanza, High Society, Mystery Rummy: Jack the Ripper, San Juan – 4 plays

Mostly our staple 2 player games except High Society that we played for the first time this month. The game is an excellent gateway auction game. can be compared to For Sale but I personally found For sale far more easier to teach others. I like both the games and would rather not compare the two. After all when we love auctions so much having a game that can provide another texture is always welcome.

Important new comer – Power Grid – Benelux/Central Europe – 3 plays

I finally managed to get the new map of Funkenschlag (Power Grid) open and we played the Benelux map all 3 times. Have to play Central Europe soon. But this another worthy addition to my no 1 all time favorite!

Carcassonne – 2 plays

Still no Hunters & Gatherers but Carc always makes up the plays every month.

Atlantic Star, Cartagena, Crazy Chicken, Hansa, Lost Cities, Lowenherz, Mr Jack, Power Grid, Rat-a-tat Cat, Risk, Samurai,  The Settlers of Catan, Through the desert, Tutankhamen, Union Pacific – 1 play

Funny that Atlantic Star seems to have run out of steam at the moment. I really want to play more of Mr Jack but it just does not interest Aarthi so much especially with her current obsession with TTR USA 1910.