Games of Christmas 2012

Here it is!  The annual "Snippets and Wisps" recap of the games which were played over the long holiday vacation. (See 2009,  2010 and 2011)  


This year, it seemed as if there were fewer individual games played, but we certainly spent a lot of time playing them.

By now you realize that the world did not end with the supposed Mayan Apocalypse.  What you might not have realized is that this non-catastrophe was brought to you by the as-yet-unnamed group of superheroes consisting of Anastasia, Foil, Solo, Toymaker, Phoebe, Phoenix (no, not that one) and Icebird. Superworld  is the traditional game of the holiday season at the Will house.  We've been playing this Superhero Role Playing Game for over 20 years on or around New Year's Eve. This year's scenario took parts of two evenings, but involved every single character, forcing us each to face our weaknesses and work as a team to survive the trials and stop the Earth from losing its magnetic field.  Way cool!

Magic: the Gathering.  Though this is one of the favorites for many of us, we do not typically get to play many games of it over the break, because it does not involve enough of us.  That was true again this year for the times when a large group of us was around, but there were several times when fewer people were available, and then we Magic players played.  In fact, during the weekend before Christmas, Troy and I were able to play 13 games.  Then, Paul and I had about four duels, plus three 2-Headed-Giant games were played, and one Three-For-All.  I remember the Three-For-All best because I played overconfidently at the end and lost to Paul.  But it was a blast!


 Dominion. This is the boardgame I have been most interested in for the past year.  I wrote about it  before in this blog, but never owned it until this Christmas.  I'm very excited to own my own copy of the game, plus an expansion which my boys don't own!  I haven't played that expansion yet, but I'm sure I will soon.



The Great Dalmuti - Again, a New Year's Eve tradition. It's not fair, but then again, life is not fair. And we all play for fun.  We called Mike as we started to play, to wish him a Happy New Year and a big Huzzah! There were several people crowned Great Dalmuti, but I was not one of them, so I was always part of the crowd wishing the new Dalmuti Huzzah!





Skip-Bo is an old stand-by and must be played every New Year's Eve. We introduced the game to Amelia, and she even won when partnering with Marisa. Sherry, of course, won a game, too.  There is no better Skip-Bo player in the family.

Small World is a really fun game I encountered because of the new web series "Tabletop" on the Geek and Sundry YouTube channel.  I bought it immediately and played it soon after.  As we were looking for something to buy Adam which was not on his Christmas list, this was an easy choice.  He, of course, wanted to learn it, so we took the opportunity to teach a few people over the break.  What a fun, funny game!

Bazaar - This is a very old, very good game which involves just a little luck. The concept is simple to understand when you see the game. It's a logic game, with advantages to people who can think several moves ahead, and it is a fantastic way to teach children to reason, while also being a game adults will love.  I have three images for this game: the image on the right is the way our box looked, way back when we bought it from Discovery Toys.  Today, the box looks like the one on the left.  The game itself is pictured below.

The game involves two randomly-selected cards of "equations" (the two big cards in the center) which show, for example, that you can trade one blue gem for one white gem and one yellow gem.  Or, from the second card, you could instead trade that blue gem for a red, green and yellow gem.  The object is to trade your gems to get the smaller cards shown in the four piles near the big cards.  You get more points for harder cards, and more points yet for having very few gems left over when you trade for those cards.  I understand the newer versions of the game use plastic chips instead of glass gems, but the concept is the same.  This has been a favorite in our house for over twenty years.



The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess. Sherry and I were playing this for the fourth time when Leah came home for vacation.  Since Leah had never seen it, we started it again, and we are trying to finish it before she leaves for New York.  It's so imaginative, with unique mechanics and ideas which also work well with the franchise.



Nintendo Land is the game which came with the Wii U when I bought it.  I had only tried it for a few minutes before the vacation, but on recommendations from Adam and Lucas, we tried several of the multi-player games which really take advantage of the new controller to allow one player to play games against a team of other players.  It's innovative, and very fun to play as a group.  I am hoping -- of course -- for a new Zelda/Link game for the Wii U, and I did get the newest Mario game for the Wii U for Christmas.   But so far, this is the extent of the content I have for this system, and as a party game, it's a good buy.

 Here's a new group game which Sarah and Troy got for Christmas so a group of us tried.  The game pits the men against the women, in a very interesting game involving trivia and other party-game competitions.  The twist here is that the game comes with two boxes of cards -- one for the women to ask the men, and the opposite.  The question boxes are full of items which the asking sex typically knows more about, but which are stereotypically things the other sex would not know.  So, for example, the women ask the men about cosmetics, and the men ask the women about cars.  There are personalized questions, as well, which makes for a test of whether a wife can guess what a husband would say, for example.  It worked out pretty well when we played it.  It's not going to be a game we play all evening, but it was funny and we had a good time.

I have a feeling I have left out a game or two, but as I mentioned, we spent quite a bit of time playing Superworld this year, so the sheer number of games played was lower.  Still, as you can see, the Will House is a very game-filled house over the long Christmas-to-New-Year's-Eve break, and we enjoy those games quite a bit!