Friends Trivia Game

Another week, another Friends game. This one (obviously) is a trivia game. It has a fun, tricksy little way of keeping score, but really it would be just as much fun (or maybe more so) without that. And it would certainly be more fun without the Charades option, which we ditched halfway through. 

I won (no surprise there, since I practically have every episode memorized). What was a surprise was that I didn’t know all the answers! Only most of them. 

I think the best iteration of this game would be for travel (just asking and answering the questions, no scorekeeping or Charades). It would be a great way to pass the time on a long car trip. 

The One With All The Cards

I wasn’t sure we were going to enjoy this game. It’s an off-brand, Friends-themed Cards Against Humanity, which is kind of like naughty Mad Libs, which is fine for a group of (naughty) adults to play, but not great with a middle-school child. (We once had a Harry Potter-themed Cards Against Humanity deck, and we only ever tried playing it one time. It was a bad combo: it ruined both the sweet goodness of the magical theme at the same time as it ruined the terrible hilarity of a terrible game for terrible people.)

But we are all Friends fans, and after six months or so of Game Nights we are getting to the point where we are scraping the bottom of the game cabinet, so we gave this one a try. Before we started I was sure we would end up deciding to get rid of it, but I was wrong. We all enjoyed it. We didn’t have much time to play today (I think we only played three rounds) but we all would have been happy to keep going if we’d had the time. 

Dabble

I was a little leery of playing this game (I think I only played it once before, about thirteen years ago, and it did not end well that time) but it turned out to be fun. It's kind of a cross between Boggle and Scrabble. (Why do so many of my favorite games involve words or spelling??) Everyone gets 20 random letter tiles, and the aim is to use them all to make 5 words that you place on a special display rack. You've got to have one two-letter word, one three-letter word, one four . . . you get the idea. 

We didn't play with all the details in the rules (counting points, etc). We just started with a trial run (not using a timer, which meant it ended up going on for too long), then three timed rounds (stopping a round at five minutes is a much better system)--and we each won one! Although before the end, we discovered that Finn had cheated when he won. (There are a few blank tiles that can be used as any letter, and we thought he had drawn one of these, when in reality he had just turned a lettered tile back-to-front so that it looked blank and fit with the word he wanted to make.) But really--not that I want to encourage my son to be a cheater--I think that made the game more memorable. And it was quite a (slyly) clever idea!

I would not mind Dabbling on a semi-regular basis.

SORRY!

It was a lovely day today: sunny, balmy, just a light breeze. I didn't get to spend much of it outdoors, but then we had the great idea of doing Game Night on the patio!

SORRY! is a game that I played as a kid, but that was a while ago; I had to refresh my memory on the rules. Plus, this version has Fire power and Ice freeze, which didn't exist in the 70s. At first glance, gameplay seemed too complicated; this game is quite similar to Trouble, just not as simple. But in the end, I'm pretty sure the extra complexity made it more fun. Everyone enjoyed this one! It's a bit cutthroat at times, but everyone was a good sport. 

Cranium Cadoo

This game is very similar to the original Cranium game (in terms of sculpting with clay, acting out words, drawing pictures, etc) but it's geared more towards kids (which is good for Finn--he really liked this game--but not as good for Sam, who thought it was too easy). It also can be played more quickly. Even though we missed our usual 5pm start time by quite a lot this evening, we still finished playing by 6pm. 

I don't think this game would be much fun to play in an all-adult group, but it's a great game for an adult or two to play with school-aged kids. It's definitely a keeper! I really love these Cranium games, and luckily Sam didn't hate this one like he hated the original version. 

Fact or Crap

Fact or Crap is a trivia card game that is very similar to the Science or Fiction segment on the Skeptics’ Guide to the Universe podcast. Only on the podcast. you're given three (or four) science news items or facts, one of which is fake, and you are challenged to sniff out the fake; in this card game, while each card does have three statements on it, you're just given one fact (or crap) for each turn. (Unless it's a Rush Hour card! In which case you're required to correctly guess for all three items on the card.)

The biggest difference between Fact or Crap and Sci or Fic is that this card game gives no explanations. In this card game, you may learn that kanshi is not the Korean version of haiku, but you would not learn that kanshi, a term which means "Han poetry," is actually a Japanese term for Chinese poetry written by Japanese poets, the earliest collection of which was compiled in the year 751. Or, you may learn that England's Stonehenge predates the Colosseum in Rome, but you would not learn that their difference in age is several thousand years. And you may learn that caterpillars have more muscles than humans, but you would not learn that caterpillars have approximately 3,400 more muscles than humans.

But! It's much easier to play many rounds of Fact or Crap. And you can google the explanations later!

Risk: Halo Wars

This is a looooong game. Like, way worse than Monopoly, even. I mean, just the setup takes forever--Game Night was practically over before we had all the pieces in position. (I'm sure the fact that we are Risk noobs did not help.) Plus, we never found a good (read: fast or efficient) system to count up the number of troops we could deploy at the beginning of each turn, which slowed down gameplay. We ended up leaving the board out on our kitchen table and continued play over four days. (Or was it five??)

Unfortunately, Finn loved this game. I have a feeling I will be forced to play it again in the future.