ScottVee Gaming

I ran through a few more games of Warzone.  It's amazing how different the maps can feel -- this is most apparent in the Community maps.  There, I looked for non-standard levels, not based on real-world maps.  I found one where the regions were organized into two big asterisk shapes.  This one just kept going around and around, because there were 5 or 6 computer players and almost every space can be hit from 2 or 3 other spaces.  So , I completed three pentagons at most, reaching my max armies per round, but within a round or two, some other color would grab one of my spaces.  Check out the total chaos in the population map at the end. # Back on that map of Italy where the start-up message says, "You need to catch the enemy commaner before they reach their reinforcements in the north": it turns out that's exactly what you have to do.  Don't waste moves trying to capture all of Sardinia for extra armies.  Go directly to where you can attack acros...

This was such a wacky, random find.  I don't know what made me install it and run it, since I don't like slot machines or old-style pixellated graphics at all.  The basic idea is: you rented a new apartment and it's pretty much empty except for a mysterious slot machine.  You get a notice from your landlord that you need some amount of coins in just 5 spins.  So you start spinning the reels to try and get enough money.  When you do come up with the money, the landlord raises your rent, and sometimes a mysterious group ("the local aid network") emails you trying to help you out.  These messages include obscure notes about the game itself, and also red herrings like "you can pet the dog."  Which does nothing, as far as I could tell.  Another message said "these three things refer to previous games the developer has created," but I could not recognize any of those tiny icons. In between spins, you get a chance to add new symbols to the reels, and ...

This was another card game that had been sitting around for a few weeks.  The setup is simple: each player is dealt 9 cards, then each player makes a 3x3 grid of face-down cards and flips any two of them face up after that.  Between the players is the draw pile and discard pile.  The point is to get the lowest score at the end.  That's it.  The cards range from 0 to 10, with a few multicolored -5 cards thrown in. The card dynamics of this game are really interesting.  You can draw a card from the draw pile or the top discard.  Then either replace one of your cards (face up or face down) with the new card (face up), or if you pulled from the draw pile you can choose to discard the card and peek at one of your face down cards instead.  So there is a bit of a memory game going on. There are black "action cards" which let you peek at any card from any player, or swap any two of your cards, or swap any card of yours with an opponent card of your choice...

We wanted to spend some time outside under our gazebo, so I grabbed some small games we had not tried before.  The first was Skip Bo Junior.  It looked like a goofy kids game, and those can be a lot of fun.  We have never played Skip Bo (Senior), so we knew nothing about this version. The Junior version is just a matter of making sequential stacks of 1 to 10 and trying to get rid of your cards.  The art is a bunch of funny and cheerful bugs numbered 1 to 10 with a ? (wild card).  You start with a stack of 10 cards face down -- this is your stockpile.  Flip the top card face up.  At first you have to picture three face-up cards next to your stockpile and four playable spots in the middle of the table where you build stacks. The game play was smooth and easy to learn, and a lot of actual fun.  More fun then I expected from looking at the box and thinking, "Oh, another game where you stack cards from one to whatever." Each round, you are dealt three ...

We brought Cat Lady back over from my place and it was more fun that we had remembered.  Sure, there are a bunch of different scoring options to keep in mind: feeding the cats, the catnip, the costumes, who has the most different types of toys and such. The overall flow of taking a row or column of 3 cards, and then having the cat token say which row or column is not available all went very smoothly.  The Spray Bottle card lets you move thte cat token to another row or column when you really want those cards that are blocked. I put together a handy little score sheet to help wrap up those final numbers. You can download the PDF here. Since all the food and lost cat cards end up on the discard pile as you trade them for food tokens and Stray Cats, you have to shuffle well or you will get a grid of just food.  Sometimes there are too many cats and not enough food, other times no cats show up for the first five or six turns. I suppose you could really study the available car...

Here is a game we got a few weeks back at the thrift shop in Ramona.  Blokus gives you a big grid and each player gets a bag of tetris-shaped pieces.  You take turns putting pieces on the board, starting in the corner squares and only connecting to your existing pieces at the corners.  At first it felt like a simple game where you get as much territory as you can and block the other player in.  But a solid line of your pieces won't stop to other player if there's a corner they can expand on.  So it gets really interesting. With two players, I can't see any way we would not both get all our pieces down.  But there are a few rule variants on the little instruction sheet.  One said for one player to play blue and red and the other to play green and yellow, and we played them in alphabetical order.  That gave a much better feel for the game, and one by one the players got stuck.  When the last player is unable to move, everyone gets minus one poi...