Session Report: PHase 10 - Gaming with the PHolks

Ok, bad play on words... anyhow, last night my wife and I got together with my parents for a game of Phase-10. We have been starting to get together and play a game once a week, and it has been a lot of fun. No cool wargames or fantasy type games like I'm into, we are talking more along the lines of Scrabble and Trivial Pursuit type stuff.

At first, nobody was interested in a 'card game', but I really wasn't up for Scrabble, so somehow managed to talk everyone into playing. The players were 

D-Rock (me)

Wifey-Rock

Mom-Rock

Dad-Rock

My wife and I had both played several times together and with others, so we were quite fimilar with the game, however, we did decide it would be best to do a read through on the rules before starting, just so nothing was left out or forgotten, and everyone would have a fair chance from the first round.

The game started off pretty well, and everyone quickly picked it up, my wife blew through the first few phases like nothing, quickly taking the lead, before long Mom-Rock and Dad-Rock started to catch wind of the fact she was completely leaving us in the dust, and for several rounds every "Skip" card was assigned to her to give the rest of us room for advancement.

As we caught up and narrowed her lead down, we all hit the last few phases with amazingly close scores. As we neared the end of the game I managed to be on the last phase, while Wifey and Dad-Rock were on Phase-9 and Mom-Rock somehow fell behind and was stuck on Phase-7.

I knew people were going to target me with skips and do whatever they could to hold me back from completing my last phase. The hand I was dealt was actually really good, but I had to put on my best poker face and pretend it was a bad one, I let out a huff when I looked at my cards, and quickly threw everyone off my trail by drawing a couple of cards from the start that I didn't need. 

My plan worked, because Wifey (who was on my right) thought I was after the cards I really wasn't after, and as a result she discarded the card I needed to get my phase, and luckly I was also able to go out of the game in the same move, not only ending the game, but leaving the other players with full hands of cards.

As the game ended, I realized I not only won by getting to Phase-10 first, but I also had the lowest score as well.

Final scores:

D-Rock: 435 points

Mom-Rock: 465 points

Dad-Rock: 470 points

Wifey: 485 points

It was actually quite funny that my wife came in last place, having blown through the first few phases so quickly. Looking back at the scores, for the first five rounds she only had a total of 15 points, where as we were all between 170 and 220. So it was quite the turn of events the second half of the game.

Overall everyone enjoyed it and was happy to have played, even though the initial reaction was to not play it because it was "just a card game", I know this game will see some table time again in the near future, and it is nice to play something with my parents. I really have no memories of playing games with them as a child, so it is great to have that experience now (as I rapidly approach being 40 years old myself).

Session Report: Battleship Express with my 5-year-old

My friend Wil (I have mentioned him before, he is from my old gaming group) picked this game up and sent it to me in the mail, he said he had fun with his son and thought I might like to try it out with my 5-year-old.

There are two versions of this game, we played the basic version of the game which is easier with less rules. The players were Dad (me), Mom and Parker (5 year old).

Mom isn't much into gaming, unless it has to do with Sex and the City or Friends Trivia, but we somehow managed to get her to take command of a fleet. We all sat down and went over the rules (which took about 10 seconds). Anyhow, I think the game is for ages 7+, but my 5 year old had no problem understanding the rules, and figuring out how many dice to roll and count the hits to determine is ships were sunk or not.

The game went pretty quick, with a slight stall towards the end where we went about 10 rounds with nobody scoring a hit, overall though, for our 3 player game, I think we played about 15 minutes.

Although I haven't played the more advanced version, I can't really see this as being a 'must have' unless you have some kids to game with. I really can't see anyone in my gaming group pulling this game out while trying to decide what to play.

With that all being said though, the game itself was decent, and playing with my son made it enjoyable. I am sure we'll play this a few more times, but I don't know how long term it will last.

Session Report: Scrabble with the Family

I have always hated Scrabble. Now don't get me wrong, and if you are a fan I don't mean any disrespect or harm, it is just my personal opinion and up until yesterday I was stickin' to it. :)

My wife apparently like Scrabble as a kid, now while I was a kid it was a world of games like Axis and Allies or D&D, not 'Scrabble'... I had played it a few times and remember it being long and boring, not my style.

Well the other day we went to Barnes and Noble, and while my wife wandered off to look for some celebrity gossip magazines and I took a gander at some things I was interested in, she came back to me carrying a huge dark box, I had no clue what she was carrying until I saw the words and muttered to myself "oh crap, scrabble!"

Well, apparently this Onyx Edition was some high end deluxe game, and it was marked down to $20 on clearance, so I couldn't refuse. Thinking of all the games I've bought in the last few years, there is no way I'd say no to her for a $20 game, so we went home with it... (NOTE: The image at the top of this blog is NOT the Onyx Edition, this is the Parker Bros. image of the "Deluxe" Scrabble, which is almost identical except for the color scheme).

Last night it came out and ended up coming to my parents house for dinner. After dinner we broke out the game and my Mom, Dad, Wife and myself all began to play. Now also keep in mind, I can honestly say I never remember playing a single board game with either of my parents in my entire life (and I'm rapidly approaching 40)...

Now, I don't know if this is a special rule only in the Onyx Edition, but there is a variant to draw and use 9 tiles in the game instead of 7, and let me tell you this, the 9 tile draw is a blessing, it made this horrible, boring game that I was dreading into a fast paced and fun game that lasted maybe 30 minutes on average (for 4 players), for the most part words were pretty easy to make, it became more of a strategy to see who could make the longest words or hit those triple word score areas... Actually, if you use 7 or more tiles in a word, you also get a bonus 50 points according to these new rules (again, I am not sure if these are new to Onyx or not).

In any case, we ended up playing 4 games. I won the first game and took second place in the next three. My wife took 3rd in every game and my Dad took last in every game. My Mom was the overall winner... How my Dad took last in every game is a mystery, he had some sweet words with Q's and Z's and what not. Hmm... now that I think about it, my Mom kept score each game...

Anyhow, My childhood horrors of this game have been shattered, I had a lot of fun and am actually looking forward to playing it again, it was nice to spend some family time with my wife and my parents and this game seemed to make everyone happy.

I do think that if we only used 7 tiles, the game would have been slower and harder and I probably wouldn't have liked it as much, and while this game is certainly no Axis and Allies or War of the Ring, it was a nice change from my normal gaming routines.

This is more of a session report than a review, so I'll post it as such, but I would like to take a moment to let you know my thoughts on the game itself... It was very nice compared to the fold out board I remember as a kid, the tiles each had a little 'slot' they fit into on the board so they wouldn't slide around, and the board itself spun around so each player at the table could look at it in the correct direction, they included a nice pad of score sheets and a little sand timer for keeping track of turn time (which we didn't need to use). My only complaint is the little holders for the tiles were made for 7 tiles, and while 9 did fit on it, they did not leave any room to 'shuffle' them around while trying to make words before your turn, that was a little annoying.

Finally Shipping!!!

Well, I got notification this morning that my order for Mutant Chronicles will be shipping out to me on Monday, that is a relief, I have been really waiting for this for some time now and only seemed to get frustrated week after week when I would hear about delays and push backs over and over, to the point that it almost became a joke.

I hope this game proves to be worth the wait, some of the reviews I have read so far kind of make it sound like it might go either way with me, so we'll see. My teenage son and I will get a game in this coming week at some point, I'll post my thoughts on how it goes.