Everybody hail to the Munchkin song!

Munchkin Nightmare Before ChristmasWatched Nightmare Before Christmas? Played Munchkin? Like both? This game is for you!
I know I’m starting to get a little excessive about Munchkin, but this week I’ve decided to write my post about Munchkin Nightmare Before Christmas.

If you haven’t read my previous Munchkin posts, please do so now.

Like in my other posts (told you you should have read them), the main difference is gear and monsters. However, this edition also adds rides. For example, the Wind-Up Polar Bear. You can only have one ride at a time.

You could fight the Platinum Dragon in regular Munchkin, who, while he does breath fire, is sort of cute, or you can face the Oogie Boogie, which is definitely a tougher monster. You can fool around with that Eleven-Foot Pole you never quite figured out how to use, or you could try something more efficient. How about say, hmm, a Guillotine?

I’ll try to keep this short: I’ll play this with my parents and convention friends.

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Make Your Own Mixels

Before I start, I will clarify: I am effectively advertising the Lego Club Magazine. The most recent issue had a little game that I thought was adorable. You roll a 2×4 Lego piece to see how much you move. Each turn you pick up anywhere from 1 to 5 Lego pieces depending on the square you land on.  On one square you even have to put a Lego piece back, and there are a couple squares where you can lose your turn.  (When you lose your turn, we flip the Lego mover token – a piece picked at the beginning of the game – upside-down to remind us.)Mixels, a game from the Lego Club magazine

When you reach the end square, called the New Year’s Party, you start building your Mixel. The person with the Mixel voted best by the players wins.  Our house rule is that you can’t vote for your own.

Question: Which of the Mixels below do you like best? You can send me your answer by commenting on this post!

Mixels

I would play this with most people I know because it’s all creativity and luck.

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Takenoko

There’s a great game named Takenoko. In Takenoko, the emperor has received a panda. He leaves his panda in his gardener’s care. Your goals are plotting the land in specific patterns, growing certain amounts of bamboo, and having the panda eat certain amounts of different types of bamboo.Takenoko

These actions please different people. The emperor wants the land to be in specific patterns, the gardener needs to grow certain amounts of bamboo, and the cute and cuddly panda (who certainly didn’t eat the bamboo) needs to eat certain amounts of the gardener’s precious bamboo.

On your turn, you start by rolling the weather die. Each side has a illustration representing types of weather. Each type of weather has a certain benefit you can use that turn only. Once you’ve rolled the weather die, you place special tokens on each of the actions you plan to do. You do this so that you cannot change your mind after your first action. You get 2 actions a turn, unless you roll a specific condition on the weather die.

There are 5 actions you can choose from on your turn.  One option is that you can place new land tiles. To do this, you chose 3 face-down land tiles and chose which one you want to play. The other 2 get discarded.

You could also choose to move the gardener. He and the panda can move any direction in a straight line. If the plot of land the gardener moves to is irrigated, it receives one bamboo of the corresponding color. Every irrigated plot of land of the same color next to the one the gardener has just tended also receives a piece of bamboo.

The panda moves similarly. However, when he moves, he only eats from the plot of land he is physically on. The player takes 1 piece of bamboo from the bamboo plant and places it in their personal “stomach”. When the player has a specific amount of certain colors of bamboo in the “stomach”, they achieve 1 of their panda goals.

If you like, you could spend an action to irrigate a plot of land. You do this by taking an irrigation stick and placing it along the edge of any plot of land. The last option is to draw a goal card. You can chose from the 3 different types.

The game ends when someone achieves a certain amount of goals, depending on the amount of players. Once someone hits that certain amount of goals, it initializes the final round. At the end of the final round, the person who initiated it gets the ‘Emperor’ card, which is worth 2 points.

Now everyone counts the victory points in the lower left corner of their goal cards. The person with the most points wins!

I would play this with most of my friends and family due to it’s simplicity and peacefulness (except for the gardener… he’s upset with the panda).

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TableTop games.

If you have read my previous posts (yay!), you know that I have mentioned TableTop several times. If you haven’t ever read my blog, welcome! This post is mostly for you.Picture found on http://www.wired.com/2014/04/wheaton-tabletop-crowdfunding/

TableTop is a show on YouTube about tabletop gaming. Can you guess how it was named? In each episode Wil Wheaton explains and then plays a tabletop game with 3 or 4 friends.

The winner of the game gets a prize. The prize received depends on what season you are watching. In Season 1, they had one trophy they gave everyone and then had to take back, so they wrote the winner’s name on a piece of tape and stuck it to their shirt. In Season 2, they gave the winners repurposed certificates to take home. In Season 3, they decided to buy enough trophies so that the winners could take them home.

While the winner receives their prize at the Winner’s Wall, the other players get to hang out in the Loser’s Lounge. Wil ends up in the Loser’s Lounge so often they added a special chair just for him.

My parents and I highly enjoy this show, and encourage all families at home to watch it.

The picture of Wil Wheaton shown above was found on Wired Magazine at http://www.wired.com/2014/04/wheaton-tabletop-crowdfunding/.

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To the Floating Market!

In Floating Market you are Ama’s little grandchildren. The first grandchild to collect 5 different types of fruit wins. Each turn you will have 3 customer meeples Floating Marketwho will do assorted tasks for you.

There are a wide variety of tasks that you can have the meeples do. First of all, you can have them go onto one of the boats that have the fruit. Second of all, you can have them go to the Fruit Stand. The Fruit Stand allows you to take a fruit if one of the boats adjacent to you scores.

You can also send them to the Boatsman.  The Boatsman allows you to retrieve all of your out of play dice that turn only. You can build a Dock, to improve your chance of collect coins. Or perhaps you would like to visit the Artist’s Hut to add a surprise to the Dice Pool. If you please, you may stop in the Temple, to send a Fixed Tile to the Dice Pool. There’s also the Woodworker’s Stall, the North and South Traders, and the famous Tailor. Of course you can’t forget our other 2 friends, the Fishmonger and the Office. And then there’s the Market. You can place meeples on 3 of these places each round.

In addition to the loads and loads of places the meeples can go, you must also place at least 1 of your dice into the Dice Pool. This die will contribute to the roll that decides which boat of fruit scores. Under each boat there is a range of numbers printed on the board.  This range of numbers shows which fruit boat will score depending on what the dice in the Dice Pool roll. If you have a meeple on the boat that scores, you get one of that type of fruit.

I would play this with my family and convention friends.

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Munchkin in the world of Oz

Another Munchkin variant! Munchkin Oz, like Munchkin Legends (see previous post), mostly varies from the regular Munchkin because of the monsters and the equipment. However, in Munchkin Oz, everyone needs allies, just like Dorothy. So now allies are another wonderful object you can find!Munchkin Oz

In my previous post, I compared Munchkin gear and monsters to Munchkin Legends gear and monsters. As I said then, regular Munchkin gives us the Eleven-Foot Pole (2 handed item, plus 1 bonus to combat). Munchkin Oz provides us with Oil Can (1 handed item, plus 1 bonus to combat) instead. For monsters, you could fight the Platinum Dragon (*Yawn*), or you could fight the Nome King (“Aaah!”).

Please note that a lot of the references are from the books, not just the movie. Therefore if you have not read the books and are playing this game and don’t recognize something, that’s why.

I would play this with my parents and my convention friends.

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Nothing like a good game day

I just went to board game day at Games Plus. (Board game day is the first Saturday of each month.) There I learned two great games, Coup and Medieval Academy.  We ended up buying both of them. It was hilarious that I learned Coup, because just the day before we watched the TableTop episode about it. I also learned how to play Stanley Cup, which is like a hockey version of Foosball.

Though we only played three of the games, there were several other games being played as well. One of the nice things about Games Plus is the wide variety of games it has. They have some new games, like Evolution Flight, as well as some older games, like Ogre. They also have a wide variety of role-playing games and miniatures.

Our goal in our trip to Games Plus was to try new games, to see if we liked them. We enjoyed all of the games listed above greatly, and I highly encourage you to play them.

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How am I going to escape this Labyrinth?

In Labyrinth, you are trying to be the first person to land on all of your magical objects and characters and return to your starting square. Simple, right? Sorry, no. Why? Because the magical objects you need to find, and the paths you follow, are always shifting.Labyrinth

At the start of your turn, you look at the top card on your personal draw pile. This is the current goal you are trying to reach.

Each turn you place the spare path at the end of a row and push. The piece that comes off the other end of the board becomes the next spare path. Once you have shifted the paths, you may move your piece anywhere that a path connects to your tile. At the end of your turn, place the objective back on top of your personal draw pile.

When you land on the symbol on the board that matches the symbol on your card, lay your card face up to show you’ve completed it.

I would play this with my family and friends.

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Don’t Pop that Belly!

There is a lovable game called Pop Belly. In Pop Belly you are feeding pigs until they burst (the stomach piece pops out). Pop Belly

You start by choosing a color. This color is the color of your feed chips and your pawn. Place your pawn on the barn door. It will stay there until somebody else pops a pig’s belly.

On your turn roll both the the numbered and colored dice. The numbered die shows how many pieces of food (feed chips) you will feed the pigs that turn. The color die shows what color blanket one of the pigs you are feeding is on. The other pig you feed is your choice. You may only feed two pigs each turn.

Points (movement) happens when the belly of any one pig pops. You must then count how many chips you put in the pig whose belly just popped and move that many spaces. The person who fed the pig last, causing it to pop, does not get to move. (“We were raising that pig for bacon! You overfed it, causing it to get sick!”) The first person to exit the barnyard wins.

I would play this with most people I know. It’s very simple and it’s super fun.

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Note to all intense gamers: This game is really weird in that play goes counter-clockwise instead of the usual clockwise.

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Munchkin is a Legend?

Munchkin, oh lovely Munchkin. And now I’ve got Munchkin Legends to add to my collection! Munchkin is a fun, competitive game where you kick open the door, fight a monster, loot the room and then stab your friend in the back. Doesn’t that sound charming?Munchkin_Legends_web

In Munchkin, you earn gear. This gear helps you in combat. Each piece of gear has a different bonus it gives you during combat. Combat is when you choose to look for trouble, and is occasionally when you kick down the door.

The difference between Munchkin and Munchkin Legends is mostly the gear and the monsters. Gear in Munchkin may be simply an object you might see every day, like the Eleven-Foot Pole, while Munchkin Legends may be more unusual, like Paul Bunyan’s Axe. The same goes for the monsters. What’s a Plutonium Dragon for oddness when Shiva the Destroyer is in town?

When you win a combat or play a Go Up A Level card, you go up a level. The first person to reach level ten wins.

I would play this with my parents and my convention friends.

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