Month: April 2017

Garden Gnomis

Gnomi is a cute game about compost, gnomes and mushrooms. As we all know mushrooms have a high magical content when dealing with fairies and gnomes. Or, if you didn’t know, now you do (“What can I say except you’re welcome…”). Gnomi is kind of like Spy in the fact that the cards always remain in your hand.Gnomi

You have two types of cards: gnomes and mushrooms. You start with four mushrooms and three gnomes. Mushrooms can be used as follows: use one mushroom to ask for one mushroom of that color or use two mushrooms to get any mushroom regardless of color. “Using” a mushroom means you flip it upside down, which is called “composting”.

The gnomes have special abilities that allow them to steal mushrooms, grow mushrooms from the compost (flip the mushroom back to usable), and wake other gnomes. “Waking” a gnome happens because when you use the gnome, it gets flipped over to say that it is “asleep” and not usable.

The game ends when only one person has good mushrooms or awake gnomes left.

Facebooktwitterredditpinterestlinkedinmail

Time to go Gold Digging!

Gold Digger is an Out of the Box game in which you are prospectors (sort of). There are 6 mines, up to three of which you may own later in the game. You put gold (and fool’s gold) in the mines and place people there to mine it.Gold Digger

This game is pretty simple to get the hang of, making it ideal for time constraints. This also adds to making it so fun.

Unfortunately, the company is closed. This makes it a little harder to buy. I’m sure you can still find it around, if you look, though.

The puns are awful! I love this. For instance, one of the Explorers is “Sackapotatoes”. This is a play on Sacajawea. It’s quite amusing.

Facebooktwitterredditpinterestlinkedinmail

Rock Me, Archimedes!

Rock Me Archimedes is, needless to say, a mathematical game. In it, you have marbles that you are trying to get to one side of the rocking board without letting either end touch the floor or table. You have to get four marbles to your goal zone before your opponent gets four into theirs. Rock Me Archimedes

I like the chance, strategy and math that go into getting the marbles across. You have to be careful to get across first, but not too far ahead so your side dips. You also can’t be too far behind, or you drop their side when you move and lose.

Make sure the place you are playing is level and still. Do not play in an airplane (for obvious reasons). It isn’t portable enough for airplanes anyway.

I also like the board itself. The rocking mechanics are clean and simple, since it’s just rounded wood on flat wood. I like the way the pieces go into each other to minimize the amount of box space the game takes up.

Facebooktwitterredditpinterestlinkedinmail

Time to Spy

Spy is another Pack O’ Games game. Like the others, it is very small. Big difference though: this one doesn’t require a table. Everything is done in your hand. In it you are spying on other players and trying to go through all four of their safes before a) they go through yours or b) you set off their bombs. You set off a bomb by spying on it twice. The first time, the other player flips it upside down. The second time, it goes off leaving a nice crater.Spy

I like the lack of table necessity. Very useful for car rides. It’s also very simple, there are only like three types of cards (bomb, safe, top secret safe). And the spies. Is it just me or does the red spy seem very Soviet?

You definitely have to know how to mirror things to play this. The hands mirror each other for parts of the game. This is how you “spy” on people. They tell you the card type that mirrors the place your spy in your hand is.

I will always go back to the brilliant portability of these games. It makes it really simple to take places and its another reason that this can be played in the car.

Facebooktwitterredditpinterestlinkedinmail

Adepticon-Home of the Minifigs!

Alright, alright. That isn’t the name of the con. It’s just Adepticon – though I think the Home of the Minifigs part would be a great addition. I was surprised when my godmother (she comes up a lot on this site, doesn’t she…) asked me day of whether I wanted to come with her. Not knowing what it was, but having been told that it was mini-figures, I went Aw heck, why not? and came along with her. I was very impressed and excited with what I saw.Adepticon 2017

There were a lot of games going on, tournament games I couldn’t play since I didn’t have a badge. I didn’t mind, since that meant I just free-ranged the room and took photos of cool figurines.

There was a demo running at a table, which turned out to be Blood and Plunder. We went over because a) it had ships with cannons (ships are a less common sight in figurines; I have a thing for cannons) and b) the table was freaking awesome! You could see little islands kind of under the surface, and the table was filled in with resin. It wasn’t smooth resin either-it had current ripples pressed into the surface.

I played the demo (the simple version without wind factors) and enjoyed it immensely. I played the Spaniards, and when my opponent named the sailor his ship lost, I decided to name mine (Ferdinand, if you must know). My strategy was pretty much “Bold and Stupid wins the fight.” (Thanks a lot, Dirk and Guido!) There were Fortune Coins for each team, which when spent allowed a re-roll. I spent most of the game fingering a particularly shiny gold colored one, and when the game was over, when I reached to set it down they said I could keep it. I guess that Spanish ship had stopped at El Dorado on the way to the fight?

Facebooktwitterredditpinterestlinkedinmail