Blood Rage @cmongames #tabletopgames #vikings #ragnarok

I love the Zombiecide games by CoolMiniOrNot Games, so when Blood Rage showed up on kickstarter I jumped in.  I convinced my family to play a round with me last week.  I haven't had the chance to open any of the extras I received, just the base game.

Once you get through the basic setup and rules (took us about an hour), the game is fairly easy to play. They actually have a "how to play" video up on their facebook game page, much simpler than figuring it out on your own.  Since it took us so long to get started, we didn't make it all the way through the game before having to quit for the night.  My son, though, was quite set up to take over the world when we did stop.  Definitely one I want to try again.  My daughter wants to get out Fenrir next time.  Anyone want to come by to play a game?

Ruckus the Goblin Army #tabletopgame #kickstarter

I backed this kickstarter project and received it a bit over a week ago.

My daughter and son played it with me the first time to help figure out how it works.  We then set it up as the family game last week and played it through with my husband.  It took us probably 1.5 hr to play it all the way to the end.  We discovered that playing the Thieves's Guild and putting Bang and Boom in regularly tends to slow down the action.  Of course, I found this hilarious as I was the one playing Thieves.

Our layout on the table isn't quite what it's supposed to be in the book.  However, our table is considerably smaller and we had to scootch things around to make them fit.  It's a cute game. We've only played with the pre-set "starter" armies so far, next time through we'll try it with the advanced set-up and see how it plays.

Pinterest and more

Since I've started going to various table top game meet-ups, I keep finding cool new games.  I'd forgotten how much I enjoy board games.  Yes, we play as a family but we tend to keep to the sames ones.  That's assuming I can get the other residents in the house to get off of their computers long enough to play. 

At any rate, to keep track of the games (as I can't afford to purchase half of them anyway), I created a new board on pinterest.  I'm not a pinterest-fanatic, but it is useful when you find new things you want to track.  If you're anything like me, half the time my brain is focusing on other things and the other half it's just unfocused.

If I find any particularly outstanding games, I'll still try to talk about them here.  But for now, I think, I'll just post them there.  The next table top gaming session I know of will be hosted by Well Played games again on April 19th.  I think they still plan to host it at the Courtyard over at Northlake.  Connect with them on facebook for more information.

Tabletop games

The prompt from the SITS girls for today is your top 5 phone apps.  I decided instead to do my top 5 tabletop games.  So, in no particular order:

Coup - a great card bluffing game.  Plays quickly.

Voodoo Mania - a card matching (or mis-matching) game.  Plays pretty quickly.

Zombicide - a cooperative board game.  We have the base set, I think we need the add-ons.  Can take a long time to play a full game.

Postcards from America - a "traveling" game.

Settlers of Catan - a game of building, trading, and developing.  It can be cooperative, but doesn't have to be.

You can find most of them on amazon, but if you hunt your local card/game shops, you can likely find it for less.  Coup has been one of the more popular games when I've hosted a game day at my house.  Zombicide is what my two tend to head to when going to a Momocon sponsored gaming day.

Games anyone? @Momocon

Momocon hosted a table top gaming session Saturday out at Georgia Tech.  My kids wanted to go check it out (not that I wasn't curious too), so we did.  I was pulled into a few different games.  One was Coup (LOVE IT!) which is a card game.  I'd call it a bluffing strategy game (more bluff than strategy).  I had a blast learning this one.

From there I was pulled into a new game called "Munchkin Quest".  This one is one of those that could easily take a half day to play (if not longer).  It took us around an hour to figure out what we were doing (it was new to all of us who were playing).  Then another hour to really get started.  We didn't finish the game, unfortunately.

While I was off playing Coup, the kids all got into a game called Zombicide.  A zombie apocalypse game.  The apocalypse has happened, now survive.  I did play a short round as they were learning to play the game (before getting in to Coup).  My son really loved this game and has put it on my list for future game purchases.

The boys also got into a game called Ticket to Ride.  I think Jordan liked this one more than my son.   A cute game where you try to build a train line between cities.  There are "tickets" that have which lines you are "assigned' to build.  You get points for putting those lines together, you lose points if you don't.  This one took them a couple of hours to play through.

While the boys finished up that game, the girls and I were pulled into a couple of other card games.  One was Voodoo Mania.  A cute speed game (semi-UNO ish in concept) where you have to figure out what symbol/color is missing from the table card and find it in your hand.  The first person to run out of cards wins.   My daughter picked this one as her favorite for the day.

The last card game I was pulled into was one call Pick a Pig.  I think my daughter's BF Aubrie found this one the most enjoyable.  This is a speed match game.  You have to find a sequence of cards from a grid on the table.  Starting with one card, you find one on the table that is identical minus one thing.  You make that one your top card and then look for one in the grid identical minus one thing.  You continue until someone can't find any matches and calls "stop".  The group then checks each other's sequence to make sure they didn't make a mistake. The person with the most cards accurately sequenced wins.

All of us enjoyed the afternoon.  I think we'll have to try this again.  We try to have family game night around the house, so we now have 2 new games on hand to add in (we brought home Coup & Voodoo Mania from the pop-up store).  We'll have a 3rd after the holidays when I add the Zombicide that my son liked so much to the collection.  Next tabletop gaming day that they have, I'll plan to take food with us (the food court was closed).  I finally got too hungry to wait and didn't want vending food, so when the boys finished Ticket to Ride we headed home.  Then we can take the time to try even more of the cool games they had available.

What is your favorite board game?