Two player – Page 6 – Random Geek Child

Tic Tac Chec

Tic Tac Toe meets chess in Tic Tac Chec, a short and simple strategy game that can be used to teach new players how chess pieces move, or to shake things up a bit for more seasoned players. I’ve been playing chess for years, but adjusting to new mechanics is always a bit of a learning curve, and our first round was actually kind of embarrassing – we were both so busy setting ourselves up in chess terms, we forgot the Tic Tac Toe part. But I’m getting ahead of myself… again.

Each player has four pieces: a pawn, a knight, a bishop, and a rook, all of which move the same as they do in chess, except the pawn switches directions when it reaches the end of the board. Tracking that is a little tricky, so I’d advise having the pawn on the side of its space closest to where it’s going next, instead of centered. We figured that one out the hard way, too.

The board is a 4×4 grid, and the goal is to align all four of your pieces vertically, horizontally, or diagonally. The first step of this is having pieces on the board – on your turn, you may place any one of your pieces on any open space. Once you have three pieces on the board, you may begin to move and capture as you would in regular chess; captured pieces are returned to their players and “can immediately be played again on any open square.” It’s up for interpretation whether than means “they get to place it as soon as you hand it back to them” or just “there’s no cooldown before they can use a turn to put it back on the board,” so sort that out with your opponent before the game begins. It’s also up to you whether the “three pieces on the board before moving” rule applies to more than the beginning of the game. The rules on this one are pretty loosely defined, so there’s a lot of room to experiment and see which way is the most fun for you!

Eldritch Pairs

Pairs is a press-your-luck game as simple as its name. The deck is triangular – there’s one 1, two 2’s, three 3’s, and so forth, all the way through ten. At the beginning of each round, every player is dealt a card face-up. Whoever has the lowest number goes first! (If there’s a tie, those players draw again, and so on until it’s resolved.)

On your turn, you may either hit or fold. When you hit, you’re drawing the top card of the deck and placing it face-up in front of you, alongside any other cards you’ve collected this round. The goal is to not get a matching pair. If you do, you take points equivalent to the number on the card (keep the card in front of you as a reminder) and all other cards in play are discarded. It’s time to start a new round. Folding also ends the round, but because you chose to stop, you score the lowest value card in play… even if it’s your opponent’s!

As you may have guessed, points are a bad thing. The first person to reach the target score – which is 60 divided by the number of players, plus 1 – loses. There are no winners in this game, just one loser, but I imagine you could play it elimination style if you have patient friends.

What we have (and what I linked to) is the Shallow Ones deck, illustrated by John Kovalic. As always with John’s work, the art is fantastic and frequently hilarious! It’s hard to see in the picture, because the card is upside down, but what Cthulhu and… I think that’s the Formless Spawn? From Cthulhu In The House? (…how have I not blogged that yet?)… regardless, what they’re watching in card #7 is, in fact, the contents of card #9. And card #10 is definitely the Shoggoth going to an optometrist. Poor optometrist.

Time For A Penguin Rescue!

To nobody’s surprise, the game Adventures of Riley: Penguin Rescue is about rescuing penguins. The characters are all part of the same rescue team, so it’s a very friendly competition… it’s just a matter of who can collect all 5 colors of penguins first!

The penguins’ colors match the colors on the dice, and the spaces on the board. Movement is simple – follow the arrows to the nearest of each color you rolled. You get to choose which order to resolve them in, though, so use that to your advantage! There’s a bit less choice involved when you roll two of the same color, but you do get to roll again once you’re done! Some spaces are slides, which you can use to skip sections or slide back to Start in the middle of the board. If there’s a stranded penguin on the slide, you can take it with you! There are also Rescue Zones, which let you collect any one of their remaining penguins when you land there. If you’re lucky, you might be able to hit it twice in one turn! Just remember, you can only have one of each color penguin, which are also differentiated by size and numbers, so it’s pretty easy to tell!

The sixth side of the die is the Wild side. If you roll this, or land on a Krill space on the board, you must immediately draw the Krill card and resolve its effects. Most commonly, these have you move forward or back a certain number of spaces, but they may also send you back to Start, end your movement for the turn, or have you un-rescue someone else’s penguin. (Unfortunate, but sometimes warmer ocean temperatures around the Antarctic Peninsula are endangering Uncle Max’s colony, and a penguin flees to safer ice. It’s for the best.) If you roll two Wild sides, though, you get to move anywhere on the board! Including a Rescue Zone, if you so desire.

Once you have all five of your penguins, you still have to make it back to Start. And honestly? We found this to be way harder than collecting all the birds. There were several rounds where both of us had achieved a full iceberg, but we kept passing over all the slides home. I suppose that’s when a double Wild would have been really useful, huh?

It’s a simple game, fun, and the cards are clearly aimed to be educational. The little penguin figures have also been kitten-approved as extremely entertaining! (No penguins or cats were harmed by this fascination, but she did bat them off the board several times. While sitting in the box. Because of course she did.)

Can You Pick Up Those Sticks?

Pick up Sticks is another classic, of the Jacks and Tiddlywinks variety. I actually have a combo set of all three, which is why they’re getting posted in such quick succession.

Setting up Pick up Sticks is really easy. You take all the sticks, save one, hold them upright in one hand (hand on the table) and then you just… let go. Whatever crisscrossing spread they’ve landed in is what you’ve got to work with!

The goal is to pick up the sticks (shocking, I know), one at a time and without jostling any of the other sticks in the process. The exception to this is the stick you set aside at the beginning, which you can use to help pick up the other sticks. When your efforts move any piece other than the one you’re trying to remove, your turn is over and the next player gets a go at it.

I suspect scoring varies by set, but for mine it’s color-coded: 10 points for yellow, 25 for red, 40 for blue and 50 for green. This can serve to even out the game, if all the easy pickings for the first player are yellow and red, or pretty much settle it from the get-go if they’re blue and green. Depends on the luck of the draw… or more accurately, the luck of the fall. Beyond that, it’s sort of like Operation, without the buzzing and with a lot more angles to go at it from.

Agent 299, Report!

Agent 299 is a great game I was introduced to at GameholeCon – it takes a little strategy, a little memory, and a little deck. Seriously, the whole game is 10 cards, 9 if you exclude the rules. It’s a pocket card game!

It’s also a game of the rarer sort, where you don’t look at your own cards. Cards are instead laid out face down, split evenly between the players, with the leftover card (in a 2- or 4-player game) face down in the middle. Who goes first is up to you to decide – we flipped a coaster – but whoever that is gets the rules card, which doubles as a First Player marker. Starting with them and working around the table, each player must perform an Interrogation. This can work one of two ways: firstly, by peeking at one face-down card in front of another player, and swapping one of their own cards (face-up or face-down) for any one of that player’s. Alternatively, in a 2- or 4-player game you may instead peek at the card in the middle and swap it with any card.

After all players have performed an Interrogation, the person with the First Player card must flip one of their cards face-up. Some of these have abilities that are usable once revealed, but only for so long as they’re in front of you… and again, face-up cards can be stolen! (Ok, swapped for, but if you’re getting a Blown Cover worth negative 3 points – and nothing else – for your super useful ability card… it’s not exactly an agreeable trade.)

The game ends when the active player can’t perform an Interrogation (everyone else’s cards are all face-up) or a Disclosure (all of their cards are face-up and they don’t have Secret Documents, which would let them skip this step), at which point scores are tallied from the cards you have in front of you. Check them all – most cards only score when face-up, but the Blackmail card gives you a 2-point bonus if you have it face-down at the end of the game. In the case of a tie, the winner is whoever has the Top Secret Documents card face-up… or, failing, that, the Secret Documents card face-up, or failing that, the Blackmail card, regardless of where its face is. It’s a very thorough hierarchy.

I like this game a lot, mostly for how portable it is – I’ve actually taken to keeping it in my phone case, in case the opportunity for a game arises. And don’t they always?

Check! …ers

I mean, it’s the same board. Though if you were really hoping for a post on chess, don’t worry! You can find that right here. (Why did it take me so long to write about checkers, especially when it’s the same board? I’m glad that you asked, imaginary other half of this conversation! I forgot that I knew how to play.)

How To Play Checkers, a strategy-free overview: each player starts with three rows of four pieces, all on the same color of space. Taking turns, players move their checkers to one of the forwardly diagonals of the same color; if there’s another piece in the way, you’re stuck, unless it’s your opponent’s and the next space down the line is empty. In that case, your checker can pole-vault themselves over the enemy, gloat and send them to checker jail – that’s how you capture pieces! If you’re really lucky, the space you landed in yields the opportunity to do that again, and you don’t even have to wait for your next turn. Just chain reaction your way down the line! Once a checker reaches the opponent’s back row, it becomes “crowned,” (flipped over to display ridges or wearing another checker as a hat, depending on your set) which means it can now move backwards, too… still only one space at a time, like a pawn that got promoted to branch manager instead of queen.

The game is over when you’ve captured all of your opponent’s pieces, when one of you gives up and surrenders, or, occasionally, when the traffic is so backed up that none of your checkers have anywhere they can legally move.

Tiddlywinks, Go!

Who’s that- Wait, no, sorry, Tiddlywinks may sound like a Pokémon, but it’s actually another classic game! Where Jacks requires speed and coordination, Tiddlywinks is more focused on aim. And physics, if you want to be technical about it.

As you can see in the picture above, the play mat looks sort of like an archery target if archery targets were smaller, thinner, and laid flat on a horizontal surface. You may also notice that players are seated on corners, not sides, and that we each have a little felt rectangle over our arrows – these are the launchpads from which the “winks” are fired.

Winks are the small, color-coded disks you see scattered across the play area. You turn starts by placing one of these on the felt pad. Then, using a larger disk of the same material and thickness, players press down on the edge of their wink, launching it forward. Once players have alternated their way through all their winks, points are determined by the values of the rings they landed in. The cup in the center is a valid target, and if you manage to get a wink in there it’s 50 points! It’s a challenging angle, though, with a significant potential for overshooting – a lesson we learned the hard way.

There’s definitely a learning curve to the amount of force you use and the angle it’s applied; whether you approach that with physics equations or trial-and-error, it’s a neat new skill to learn! Besides that, the game is quite simple, making it perfect for a lazy afternoon of uncomplicated fun.

C’mon, it’s Harvest Time!

…just ignore the part where I’m posting this in April. In the Midwest. Because hey, the board game Harvest Time is pan-seasonal! It’s also from the same company as Max, The Secret Door, Eyes of the Jungle, and Caves & Claws, which seems to always be good for some simple, cooperative fun.

In this particular game, players are trying to harvest their vegetables before winter comes. There are four gardens – if you have more than four players have some team up on the same gardens, or if you have gardens to spare, a particularly ambitious player might tend multiples.

In standard gameplay, you start with your garden prepopulated – four types of vegetables, with three of each – and roll to harvest. The green dot on the die means you should harvest peas, the red dot means you should harvest tomatoes, etc. with the black dot denoting good soil – pick any vegetable you want! – and the white dot indicating that winter is on its way. If you roll white, choose one of the six winter pieces to place over the fall scene in the middle of the board. Your objective is for everyone’s gardens to be harvested before the winter scene is complete!

There are a few special rules to help with that. First off, you can help other people with their gardens! Whenever your roll would allow you to harvest, you can choose to harvest that color vegetable from a neighbor’s crop (and give it to them; you’re helpers, not thieves). This is especially practical when you’ve finished harvesting your own of that color, and your neighbor has not. If there’s none of that color left in any garden, reroll the die.

The other rules are even ~~cooler~~ warmer: as soon as your garden is completely harvested, you get to remove one winter piece from the board. Furthermore, when you roll white now, you get to remove another winter piece! If you’re thinking “but seasons don’t work like that!” …you probably don’t live in the Midwest.

If you’d prefer to play the extended version, it’s really easy to set up: just make planting a part of gameplay! The fall scene is actually its own set of tiles that cover the spring scene on the board (Why do we skip summer? Who knows!) so gameplay is the same, you just roll for what to plant and dread fall’s approach instead of winter’s. Or rather, before winter’s, because once you’ve finished planting – or fall has finished your planting for you, whichever comes first – you roll straight into the harvesting part of the game! I personally find this version much more fun because the better you do in the first half, the harder the next part is. And on the flip side, a really dismal planting season means you’ll probably be able to bring it all in before the frost! It’s a “glass is always full” situation, really.

Let’s Go On A Brain Quest!

Alright, that’s a rhetorical “let’s,” because this game is definitely designed for people younger than me. But people younger than me exist, so for those of you who are and/or live with such individuals, let me tell you about the Brain Quest board game!

Brain Quest is an educational game aimed at first through sixth graders. Players are seated by age so that the oldest player is on the youngest player’s left, the second oldest is on the oldest’s left, etc. To start the game, the youngest player rolls the die while the player on their left grabs a card from the tray and announces the subject. (The subject of the card is at the top, and cards are folded to have the questions facing outwards while the answers are hidden inside.) Questions are labeled 1-6, but which you answer isn’t determined by your roll. Instead, you must choose a number equal to or greater than your current grade level.

As you might expect, your Reader then reads you the question you chose and you answer it. If you’re right, you get to advance your piece on the board, as many spaces as you rolled on the die plus the difference between the question grade level and your own. (So if you’re a second grader, you rolled a five and correctly answered a fourth grade question, you’ll move seven spaces.) Anyone who’s beyond sixth grade can only answer sixth grade questions, and takes either a -1 on their rolls (if they’re still in junior high) or a -2 if they’re older. Note that even if you get a negative roll, you do not have to move backwards.

I had wondered at first why you’d bother rolling before learning the subject and choosing your question, but having played with fabricated ages for a blog-worthy grasp of the mechanics, I realized that how much the dice weren’t helping encouraged me to go for higher level questions, since I kept rolling ones. Similarly, as answering incorrectly means you don’t move at all, the subject can affect how ambitiously you challenge yourself. The Brain Quest subjects are your usual core classes, English, Math, Science, and Social Studies, plus Grab Bag, which is a random mix of other material. (From the card pictured below, I got stuck with “Mick Jagger is the lead singer in what rock group?” Which I believe is the only question we missed, because while I’ve aged out of the academics, I evidently know nothing about rock. Or Rolling Stones. Whoops.)

There are a few interesting spots on the board as well, accentuating the school theme with a track (move along the track that matches your grade level, and don’t worry! They’re all the same number of spaces), a game of foursquare (go through the spaces in numerical order, just like actual foursquare) and a mud puddle, because recess just be like that sometimes. If you end a movement in the mud, lose one turn. The first person to reach Finish wins!

Monkeys? In a Barrel???

I’ve previously blogged a story by the name Barrel of Monkeys, but not the actual game… which struck me as an oversight, so guess what I’m talking about this week?

Barrel of Monkeys isn’t as old as Jacks, but it’s definitely another classic. Your container is – surprise – a barrel, and the contents are a set of monkeys*, each with arms curling in opposite directions. To play the game, you hold one monkey by its upper arm (Pick a side. Congratulations, that is now the upper side) and hook another monkey’s arm through the first one’s lower. Continue to make a chain in this fashion until something drops! It’s not at all complicated, but for young ones it practices fine motors skills, and even older players may find their arms protesting the static hold. That, and if you have cats they will definitely contribute their own Challenge Mode. If you don’t have cats – or they’re not interested – you can make it harder yourself by combining multiple sets!

While the amount of monkeys in a set varies, the official scoring for multiplayer is has each monkey worth a certain amount of points. When you stop (either because someone fell or because you ran out of monkeys), you score however many monkeys are still on your chain, and the first player to reach the victory condition (points equivalent to completing the full chain) wins. Though as kids, we always just went for “whoever can make the full chain first.” It’s your choice by which rules you play! The objective for single-player is more along the latter lines, as you time yourself making the whole chain and try to be progressively faster.

*Monkeys are not required to play this game. You may alternatively utilize a Barrel of Pterodactyls!

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