threeoutside

My gaming group played this yesterday. At first it seemed complicated but once we dove in, it turns out to be easy to learn and we played three games in a row. We agreed it’s going right into our Favorites list. We liked it because it has a great balance of luck and skill, and it stretches our imaginations to find that single word that can fit more than one tile word. It also helps to know how your players think.

I bought Spooks when it first came out in 2003, but didn’t get a chance to play it until last year. My little gang of lady gamers (we call ourselves “Eat. Talk. Play.,” so you know where our priorities are) really had fun with it.

The art is beautiful, the cards are high-quality and handle easily, the game is pretty easy to pick up, and the action gets faster the more you play it. We love playing it during our October get-together.

My group played it for the first time today, and it took awhile to get it set up. Once we’d started, things became clearer as we went along. We really enjoyed it, and will be playing it often in the future. We all like the components, except we were unsure how to manipulate train cars when a player had placed a station and could “overrule” another player’s blockage of that line. We tried putting the cars on top of the ones already there but apparently they’re not designed to snap together, so we had cars all over the place. We’re going to think of a better way to handle that. We’re all fairly new to “modern” table top games, so a lot of our fun is just in learning all these newfangled “mechanics.” I’d say this is a great game for *almost* beginners who have played just enough “gateway” games to get hooked on the process, and to appreciate colorful boards and clever rules, and fun game components. This is going to be one of our favorites.

I love the look and feel of this site and how welcoming and informative it is. I’m a grandma who is just this year getting a gamer group together of friends, also women, who have not had any more experience than I have. We are having a blast! And I am so pleased to have found Board Gaming so I can keep finding new ones to try out. I’m a member of the Ravlery.com knitting and fiber arts community web site, and this site seems poised to fill a similar vital role in the gaming world. Congratulations! And thanks!

Context: I’m writing this after playing the game one time, and I’m what I’d call new to the board game world of today. (Played Monopoly, etc, as a kid, decades ago.) I’m retired, and my newbie gaming group are also mature women. Our lives have *not* revolved around gaming at all, and we’ve just recently started getting together to explore this fun new world.

So: Forbidden Island. Three of us played it, we were all new to the game, we started at the Novice setting – and we won, first time out of the gate. The instructions were clear and easy to pick up, it was possible to realize strategies and work together early on. It was obvious that it will be even more fun to play when more players are around the table, too. We especially like that every game will be different due to the random layout of the island features. Also, we prefer co-op games and this is an excellent one.

We liked the colorful board pieces and sturdy and attractive tin (instead of a cardboard box that may or may not survive very many uses).

This will become a frequently-played favorite, is the group’s consensus.