Sweed

My family understands now that we play games at Christmas after a few years of grooming them. We have always been a gaming family but I’m the only Avid gamer the rest are social, casual and family, so that makes me in charge. I have for at least the past 14 years had a Christmas game that I create and run for our Christmas eve sibling gift exchange. (I am the fourth of 6 kids and 3 of us are married.) it usually is based on the fact that I have a gift for everyone, there are 19 of us total, and the presents have mixed up names. The game is different ways of figuring out whose present is really whose. This year I went back to an original idea from like my second year which was a logic problem to find out whose name was on each persons present. I chose an easy one to do this year since I am due with my second son on Jan 1st.
The games I received for Christmas this year were: Agricola, Innovation Echoes of the Past, Bohnanza High Bohn Plus, Puerto Rico and Aquire.
I gave as gifts: guillotine, love letter, sleeping queens, arkham horror, zombie dice, fish cook, cargo noir, telestrations, and ultimate werewolf.
We managed to play Love Letter, Aquire (twice), Arkham Horror (twice), Boss Monster, Puerto Rico, Stockmarket, Shadows over Camelot with Merlin’s Company, Sleeping Queens (several matches), Bohnanza (twice and then once with High Bohn exp.) Innovation with Echoes exp, The Walking Dead Game, Power Grid, Telestrations, Pandemic and Therapy.
So a very successful Gaming Christmas with some new games and mostly old favorites. I’ll have to go over the rules of some of the new games and present them for play on a Sunday afternoon soon.

Bootleggers! A kickstart game I got two Christmases ago, which needs to be added to this site.

My husband and I played The Magnificent Race for the first time this weekend. I really liked it and can’t wait to play with a full set of 4 players as soon as possible.
Some of my favorite 30 min games are: Ticket to Ride Card Game, For Sale, Innovation (2 players), Guillotine, and Bohnanza.

I have played this game three times and each time the Good side won. Although the second play was a very close game. It seems the shuffle can make it a blow out or close depending on if you can get the more powerful cards. I’m hoping its not impossible to win as the Colty Gang, because I already like this game, but if it turns out that the Colty gang can’t win that’s just lame.

I have a vintage 1977 edition of LIFE and I like it so much more than the newer versions. I have played LIFE all through my youth and I always liked it, always trying to get the most kids I could. When I was 22 I read the rules for myself and discovered bidding on peoples spins. TOTALLY changed the game for me and made it even more fun. Overall a classically great game and easy to learn.