Family Game Night #8 & Family Game Night #9

Sorry it’s been so long since my last post! It’s great to be back! This post will focus on mine and Em’s 8th and 9th family game nights! 

Our crowd from the 8th family game night!

Our 7th family game night (which you can read about in an earlier post) ended up as just three of us, so we decided to invite a few more people. Lo and behold, we ended up with seven people showing up to our 8th family game night! This time, joining Em and I were “old-hats” Dave, Leigh, Lydia, and Sean. New to the table was our buddy Laura! As usual we started with some delicious appetizers (both of the savory and the sweet variety) made by my beautiful wife Em!

Sadly, I don’t have any links to specific food items that she made for the 8th or 9th game nights because mostly she went to old favorites. But, as usual, you can go over to her blog, A Tasty Mess, at http://www.tastymess.org to check out her previous game night appetizers or any of her other delicious food.

For our game choices on Family Game Night #8 we went with Diamonds to start out the night, and with Poop: The Game to end it. Diamonds is a fantastic little trick-taking game by Mike Fitzgerald which takes games like Spades and Hearts and gives them a little nudge into the modern gaming scene. In this game you have a hand of cards and you are laying down cards in order to take the hand. 

You have to lay a card in the same suite if you have it, but if you don’t you are able to take a “suite-action” which gives you a bonus. This is the reason that I prefer this game over most trick-taking games. Instead of just relying on getting a great hand to take all of the tricks, you can also use the off-suite cards to get point as well. This game plays from two to six players, but I was able to slightly tweak the hand size and it played just as well with my personal seven-player variant. Lydia walked away with the sneaky win, but everyone loved this game!

Next up we went with Poop: The Game. This is a game somewhat similar to Uno where you are trying to get rid of the cards in your hand before you “clog the toilet” and are forced to take all of the cards that are on the table at that point. This is a very quick and fairly silly game as some of the cards force you to make farting noises and such. This is one of the first Kickstarter games that Em and I funded and we’ve loved having it as it is just a simple fun card game to pull out with large groups of people. Em and Dave pulled out the wins in this game. On a fun side-note, this is the first time Dave won a game! He is no longer just the bridesmaid, but now the bride! (If curious about this, just read previous Family Game Night posts!)

Family Game Night #9 was just a couple of weeks ago and we didn’t have as many people as the previous. Due to previous engagements only Sean and Laura were able to join Em and I for the game night. Again, we started with the appetizers, but since they were ones that had been done before, I’ll just go straight on to the gaming.

Slightly smaller crowd for the 9th family game night!

We decided to have an Antoine Bauza game night for this particular evening. We started off with Bauza’s super-fun gateway game entitled Takenoko. This is a beautiful, colorful game that uses tile-laying and set-collection as its main mechanics and it uses them perfectly! Plus, one of your main moves involves moving a panda around the board and eating colorful bamboo! How can you not love it? Sean was able to take this teaching game with a slight win over Em who came in second place.

We then pulled out one of my favorite card-games, 7 Wonders, also by the fantastic Antoine Bauza. This is a quick-playing, civilization card game that plays in just about 30 minutes when everyone knows what they are doing. Both Laura and Sean were new to this game but they picked it up within the first couple ages of the first game. Laura was able to take the first win by crushing us in civic structures (the blue cards) as we weren’t paying close enough attention! I was able to eke out the second win as I focused on a more balanced approach in last game of the night with everyone involved.

After 7 Wonders, Laura needed to leave and Em decided to turn in for the night. That left Sean and I to pick up and play two quick games of the wonderful tile-laying game Carcassonne. I was able to take both games that we played by being a bit of jerk and stealing castles that Sean was building on. Don’t feel too bad for him though, he tried to do the same to me...on a side note, I scored the largest castle I ever have with 40 points!

These were two more great nights with our friends (or as we call them, family!) and we look forward to many more in the future. Em is already planning out our next night’s delicious treats and I think we may break out a game I’m getting for Christmas called Elder Sign. As always, thanks for reading and I hope you all have a wonderful holiday season! Until next time, game on!

Unboxing: Diamonds

Recently I received my first Stronghold Games release.  This game, entitled Diamonds, is designed by Mike Fitzgerald and was released at Gen Con this year to rave reviews.  Diamonds is a trick-taking game that plays somewhat like Hearts or Spades but really kicks it up a notch.  The great part about this game is that even when you are unable to get a trick you can still get “suit-actions.”  These are simple actions that you are able to take by playing card off-suit when you don’t have the same suit that is started.  This makes the game much more interesting than a “normal” trick-taking game.  These suit-actions give every player a chance to get points even when they aren’t taking any tricks for the round.

Enough of the gameplay, as that isn’t what this post is about.  This is about the components and the unboxing of Diamonds!  Diamonds is the first game in Stronghold Games’ pocket line.  This means that it is a smaller game with less components that some of the larger Euro-style games that they’ve released recently (i.e. Panamax or Kanban: Automotive Revolution).  Now, just because it has less components doesn’t mean that this game suffers from lack-luster pieces, as a matter of fact, they are quite amazing!

To start with, this is a card game.  That being said, it makes sense that the cards are the main part of the game.  Stronghold could have put in any deck of cards and it would have worked pretty well, instead they made an absolutely gorgeous deck of 60 cards.  These are linen-finished cards with great heft and fantastic art.  I can’t stress enough how beautiful these cards are.  They have an Art Deco feel to them and they are finished in a metallic ink that shimmers and adds to the overall beauty of the cards.  There are four suits, spades, clubs, hearts and, of course, diamonds.  Each of the four suits has fifteen cards numbered one through fifteen.  There are no face cards or trumps in this game and I think that adds to the simplistic beauty in the gameplay.

While the cards are the main part of the game, Stronghold took it a step further and gave us an awesomely tactile component in plastic diamond components.  There are two different types of diamond components in the game.  The first are the smaller, clear diamonds that are worth one (or two) points.  The second are the larger, red diamonds that are worth five (or ten) points.  These diamonds are how you keep score throughout the game and are what you use to take your suit actions.  The simple tactile feeling of these crystals makes the game so much more than just a card game!  They give a both a visual and physical feel that really adds to the fun of Diamonds.

Lastly, there are six player screens and six player aid cards that are included in the game.  Before playing the game I thought the screens were overkill, but after playing I see that they add to the fun of not necessarily knowing what your opponents have in their vaults.  They are a simple bun fun addition to the game.  I am a huge fan of adding player aids into the game, so I think the addition of the six suit-action card aids was a perfect component to print with the game.

All in all, the components to this simple and beautiful trick-taking game are perfect.  Stronghold Games could have gone cheap and flimsy but instead really bumped up their game and made this game a wonderful addition to my game library.  Thanks for taking the time to read this post.  Next up will be an unboxing of Imperial Settlers by Ignacy Trzewiczek and Portal Games which should be in my hands in a couple of days!  Until next time, game on!