Author: Cassandra

Bacon-Opoly

That’s right folks, the only meaningful industry is bacon! At least, that seems to be the premise of Bacon-Opoly, where you’ll make or break your fortune on the profitability of pork.

As the name implies, this is one of the many Monopoly variants. Given how prolific Monopoly is, I don’t feel I need to go too deeply into the mechanics, but for anyone who hasn’t played, a brief overview: dice determine movement. When you land on a space, you play out its effect; if that space is a property and it’s unowned, you may choose to buy it, while if it’s already owned by someone else you have to pay them rent. If you have all the properties in a color-coded set, you can develop them (houses and hotels in Monopoly, pounds of pork and smokehouses here) to charge more outrageous sums for your product. You can also mortgage your properties in a pinch, when you need more cash. The goal is to bankrupt all the other players… or survive until everyone else gets bored and forfeits. That’s usually how I win!

This game took the bacon theme and went “how far can we run with it?” Instead of $200 for passing Go, you get $200 for passing Sizzle. Jail is Burnt, visiting is Just Crispy. There’s a card where you have to say the Pledge of Allegiance… to a bacon-eater’s guild. Our most frequently used player tokens are the skillet, the bacon strip, and the pig. And the properties are all some sort of bacon. Which, I mean, some of them sound good – Bacon Wrapped Filet, Cheesy Bacon Popcorn, Bacon Bits… and then there’s the more questionable enterprises. Bacon Floss. Bacon Bandages. Chocolate Covered Bacon On A Stick. And Bacon, Ohio, which is an actual place, and while that’s not a problem, I have no idea how you’re supposed to buy and own a whole city. Or loan it. Why is it only $22 to rent?!

The photo above has been fondly titled “Many, Many Mortgages.” It’s what one’s side of the board looks like when they are losing. On the bright side, though, the mortgage face of each property has a snippet about the product! Or city, in Bacon, Ohio’s case. Some of them are more informative than others (while the Bacon Bandages description just reminds me of Sokka from Avatar: The Last Airbender) but they’re all fun to read. There are also a handful of (multiple choice) bacon trivia cards in the Cured & Smoked deck, which are surprisingly educational! …and the fact that I’ve played this game enough to have them all memorized is possibly a little concerning, but oh well. Bacon!

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Would You Like Noodlers For Lunch?

Good news! There’s 80 of them. Which is a lot of puzzles, and you may not want to do them all in one sitting, but they’re there!

Noodlers is a spatial reasoning game. Each of the 80 cards (puzzles) has an array of symbols across its face and a number of plastic noodles that you’re allowed to use in solving it. The goal is to section off every symbol into its own, separate space… like quarantining with spaghetti.

The puzzles vary from 3 sticks (easy) to 6 sticks (hard), and while the concept is wonderfully simple, actually solving some of those 6-stick cards is not. Straightforward, perhaps, but only in that the sticks you’re working with are linear. It’s a neat challenge! More so for those with an abundance of patience, or extreme talent in spatial logic. Either works!

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This Game’s Gone Globle!

A few months ago, I posted about the suddenly ubiquitous game Wordle. Since then, I’ve been introduced to quite a few variants (at varying levels of masochism), but the handful I consistently come back to are foreign language Wordles (Duolingo‘s blog has a list of those here) and Globle.

Globle is effectively the geography edition of Wordle. Each day there’s a mystery country, and as you guess each nation it gets color-coded by its geographical distance from the correct answer. That distance is listed numerically as well, under the map and the list of your previous guesses. Your list can be organized by order of input or by which is closest; personally, I’ve found the latter quite useful when dealing with island nations, where I can at least approximate which continental areas it’s closest to.

Since there are so many countries in the world, this game has no guess limit; you only lose if you give up. Because of that, I consider it to be a low-pressure, fun and challenging sort of educational resource: I’ve become a lot more familiar with where countries are in the world – and in relation to each other – and even learned about countries I hadn’t known existed. It’s fantastic!

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Can You Pick Up Those Sticks?

Pick up Sticks is another classic, of the Jacks and Tiddlywinks variety. I actually have a combo set of all three, which is why they’re getting posted in such quick succession.

Setting up Pick up Sticks is really easy. You take all the sticks, save one, hold them upright in one hand (hand on the table) and then you just… let go. Whatever crisscrossing spread they’ve landed in is what you’ve got to work with!

The goal is to pick up the sticks (shocking, I know), one at a time and without jostling any of the other sticks in the process. The exception to this is the stick you set aside at the beginning, which you can use to help pick up the other sticks. When your efforts move any piece other than the one you’re trying to remove, your turn is over and the next player gets a go at it.

I suspect scoring varies by set, but for mine it’s color-coded: 10 points for yellow, 25 for red, 40 for blue and 50 for green. This can serve to even out the game, if all the easy pickings for the first player are yellow and red, or pretty much settle it from the get-go if they’re blue and green. Depends on the luck of the draw… or more accurately, the luck of the fall. Beyond that, it’s sort of like Operation, without the buzzing and with a lot more angles to go at it from.

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Agent 299, Report!

Agent 299 is a great game I was introduced to at GameholeCon – it takes a little strategy, a little memory, and a little deck. Seriously, the whole game is 10 cards, 9 if you exclude the rules. It’s a pocket card game!

It’s also a game of the rarer sort, where you don’t look at your own cards. Cards are instead laid out face down, split evenly between the players, with the leftover card (in a 2- or 4-player game) face down in the middle. Who goes first is up to you to decide – we flipped a coaster – but whoever that is gets the rules card, which doubles as a First Player marker. Starting with them and working around the table, each player must perform an Interrogation. This can work one of two ways: firstly, by peeking at one face-down card in front of another player, and swapping one of their own cards (face-up or face-down) for any one of that player’s. Alternatively, in a 2- or 4-player game you may instead peek at the card in the middle and swap it with any card.

After all players have performed an Interrogation, the person with the First Player card must flip one of their cards face-up. Some of these have abilities that are usable once revealed, but only for so long as they’re in front of you… and again, face-up cards can be stolen! (Ok, swapped for, but if you’re getting a Blown Cover worth negative 3 points – and nothing else – for your super useful ability card… it’s not exactly an agreeable trade.)

The game ends when the active player can’t perform an Interrogation (everyone else’s cards are all face-up) or a Disclosure (all of their cards are face-up and they don’t have Secret Documents, which would let them skip this step), at which point scores are tallied from the cards you have in front of you. Check them all – most cards only score when face-up, but the Blackmail card gives you a 2-point bonus if you have it face-down at the end of the game. In the case of a tie, the winner is whoever has the Top Secret Documents card face-up… or, failing, that, the Secret Documents card face-up, or failing that, the Blackmail card, regardless of where its face is. It’s a very thorough hierarchy.

I like this game a lot, mostly for how portable it is – I’ve actually taken to keeping it in my phone case, in case the opportunity for a game arises. And don’t they always?

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What’s The Worst That Could Happen?

Those famous last words are, as it turns out, an excellent basis for a card game. The Worst-Case Scenario Card Game, to be exact. This game is all about comparing hypothetical bad scenarios and trying to guess how your opponents will rate them from 1 (bad) to 5 (the worst). Since many of these scenarios can kill you, the player to go first is whoever has the worst survival skills.

The active player, entitled “The Victim,” starts their turn by spinning the Victim Wheel – this will affect scoring later. Next, they’ll draw 5 scenario cards from the deck and lay them out face-up in the middle of the play area. For instance, your five scenarios might be “only eat one food for the rest of your life,” “wake up to find tarantulas in your bed,” “snowmobile off a 100-foot drop,” “recurring nightmares for weeks,” and “exposed to high amounts of radiation.” At this point, everyone will grab their numbered chips – color-coded by player, with X’s on the backs – and The Victim will rank the disasters by which they deem the worst, while everyone else will rank the disasters by what they think The Victim deems the worse. This is very much a “how well do you know your friends?” type of game, and it would probably be morbidly fascinating to play with people you don’t know. Yet. Because all good friendships start with uncovering one’s deepest fears, right?

…Alright, maybe not. Regardless, each player places their chips X-side up next to the corresponding cards, ideally with The Victim’s chips on the far side from everyone else’s. Once everyone has placed their chips, The Victim will go through one card at a time, first revealing everyone else’s rankings, then their own. The goal is to match numbers with The Victim! For each successful match, a player gains one point… unless the Victim Wheel landed on Score Your Chips!, in which case each match is worth the number of the rank. Other Victim Wheel effects include Double Up! (all players double their points for the round) and Bad Is Good! (players who match The Victim’s #1 chip get a 1-point bonus). The Victim’s score for the round equals whichever other player scored the highest, including bonuses, and a score sheet is included in the box. In a 3, 4, or 6 player game, there are 12 rounds, while in a 5 player game there are 10, so everyone gets an equal amount of turns being The Victim. And whoever has the most points at the end wins!

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Check! …ers

I mean, it’s the same board. Though if you were really hoping for a post on chess, don’t worry! You can find that right here. (Why did it take me so long to write about checkers, especially when it’s the same board? I’m glad that you asked, imaginary other half of this conversation! I forgot that I knew how to play.)

How To Play Checkers, a strategy-free overview: each player starts with three rows of four pieces, all on the same color of space. Taking turns, players move their checkers to one of the forwardly diagonals of the same color; if there’s another piece in the way, you’re stuck, unless it’s your opponent’s and the next space down the line is empty. In that case, your checker can pole-vault themselves over the enemy, gloat and send them to checker jail – that’s how you capture pieces! If you’re really lucky, the space you landed in yields the opportunity to do that again, and you don’t even have to wait for your next turn. Just chain reaction your way down the line! Once a checker reaches the opponent’s back row, it becomes “crowned,” (flipped over to display ridges or wearing another checker as a hat, depending on your set) which means it can now move backwards, too… still only one space at a time, like a pawn that got promoted to branch manager instead of queen.

The game is over when you’ve captured all of your opponent’s pieces, when one of you gives up and surrenders, or, occasionally, when the traffic is so backed up that none of your checkers have anywhere they can legally move.

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Tiddlywinks, Go!

Who’s that- Wait, no, sorry, Tiddlywinks may sound like a Pokémon, but it’s actually another classic game! Where Jacks requires speed and coordination, Tiddlywinks is more focused on aim. And physics, if you want to be technical about it.

As you can see in the picture above, the play mat looks sort of like an archery target if archery targets were smaller, thinner, and laid flat on a horizontal surface. You may also notice that players are seated on corners, not sides, and that we each have a little felt rectangle over our arrows – these are the launchpads from which the “winks” are fired.

Winks are the small, color-coded disks you see scattered across the play area. You turn starts by placing one of these on the felt pad. Then, using a larger disk of the same material and thickness, players press down on the edge of their wink, launching it forward. Once players have alternated their way through all their winks, points are determined by the values of the rings they landed in. The cup in the center is a valid target, and if you manage to get a wink in there it’s 50 points! It’s a challenging angle, though, with a significant potential for overshooting – a lesson we learned the hard way.

There’s definitely a learning curve to the amount of force you use and the angle it’s applied; whether you approach that with physics equations or trial-and-error, it’s a neat new skill to learn! Besides that, the game is quite simple, making it perfect for a lazy afternoon of uncomplicated fun.

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C’mon, it’s Harvest Time!

…just ignore the part where I’m posting this in April. In the Midwest. Because hey, the board game Harvest Time is pan-seasonal! It’s also from the same company as Max, The Secret Door, Eyes of the Jungle, and Caves & Claws, which seems to always be good for some simple, cooperative fun.

In this particular game, players are trying to harvest their vegetables before winter comes. There are four gardens – if you have more than four players have some team up on the same gardens, or if you have gardens to spare, a particularly ambitious player might tend multiples.

In standard gameplay, you start with your garden prepopulated – four types of vegetables, with three of each – and roll to harvest. The green dot on the die means you should harvest peas, the red dot means you should harvest tomatoes, etc. with the black dot denoting good soil – pick any vegetable you want! – and the white dot indicating that winter is on its way. If you roll white, choose one of the six winter pieces to place over the fall scene in the middle of the board. Your objective is for everyone’s gardens to be harvested before the winter scene is complete!

There are a few special rules to help with that. First off, you can help other people with their gardens! Whenever your roll would allow you to harvest, you can choose to harvest that color vegetable from a neighbor’s crop (and give it to them; you’re helpers, not thieves). This is especially practical when you’ve finished harvesting your own of that color, and your neighbor has not. If there’s none of that color left in any garden, reroll the die.

The other rules are even cooler warmer: as soon as your garden is completely harvested, you get to remove one winter piece from the board. Furthermore, when you roll white now, you get to remove another winter piece! If you’re thinking “but seasons don’t work like that!” …you probably don’t live in the Midwest.

If you’d prefer to play the extended version, it’s really easy to set up: just make planting a part of gameplay! The fall scene is actually its own set of tiles that cover the spring scene on the board (Why do we skip summer? Who knows!) so gameplay is the same, you just roll for what to plant and dread fall’s approach instead of winter’s. Or rather, before winter’s, because once you’ve finished planting – or fall has finished your planting for you, whichever comes first – you roll straight into the harvesting part of the game! I personally find this version much more fun because the better you do in the first half, the harder the next part is. And on the flip side, a really dismal planting season means you’ll probably be able to bring it all in before the frost! It’s a “glass is always full” situation, really.

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