Don’t Pop that Belly!

There is a lovable game called Pop Belly. In Pop Belly you are feeding pigs until they burst (the stomach piece pops out). Pop Belly

You start by choosing a color. This color is the color of your feed chips and your pawn. Place your pawn on the barn door. It will stay there until somebody else pops a pig’s belly.

On your turn roll both the the numbered and colored dice. The numbered die shows how many pieces of food (feed chips) you will feed the pigs that turn. The color die shows what color blanket one of the pigs you are feeding is on. The other pig you feed is your choice. You may only feed two pigs each turn.

Points (movement) happens when the belly of any one pig pops. You must then count how many chips you put in the pig whose belly just popped and move that many spaces. The person who fed the pig last, causing it to pop, does not get to move. (“We were raising that pig for bacon! You overfed it, causing it to get sick!”) The first person to exit the barnyard wins.

I would play this with most people I know. It’s very simple and it’s super fun.

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Note to all intense gamers: This game is really weird in that play goes counter-clockwise instead of the usual clockwise.

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Munchkin is a Legend?

Munchkin, oh lovely Munchkin. And now I’ve got Munchkin Legends to add to my collection! Munchkin is a fun, competitive game where you kick open the door, fight a monster, loot the room and then stab your friend in the back. Doesn’t that sound charming?Munchkin_Legends_web

In Munchkin, you earn gear. This gear helps you in combat. Each piece of gear has a different bonus it gives you during combat. Combat is when you choose to look for trouble, and is occasionally when you kick down the door.

The difference between Munchkin and Munchkin Legends is mostly the gear and the monsters. Gear in Munchkin may be simply an object you might see every day, like the Eleven-Foot Pole, while Munchkin Legends may be more unusual, like Paul Bunyan’s Axe. The same goes for the monsters. What’s a Plutonium Dragon for oddness when Shiva the Destroyer is in town?

When you win a combat or play a Go Up A Level card, you go up a level. The first person to reach level ten wins.

I would play this with my parents and my convention friends.

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You’re Hired! ~the Bus Company

I tried this new game called Bus (part of our Pack O Game). In Bus, you have a color token, which is your Bus. When you land on a Bus Stop, you draw a Passenger Tile. You may choose between drawing a face-up Tile or a face-down Tile.Bus

These Tiles have point values and speed limits, as well as 2 Passengers. The passengers will be drawn in different colors. You must go to both Road Tiles with those colors to complete the Passenger Tile.

The speed limit tells you how many Road Tiles you are allowed to move per turn. The point value states how many points you get if you complete the Passenger Tile. The sum of the point value and the speed limit will always be 6.

The winner of the game is the person with the most points. If there is a tie, the winner is the person with the most Passenger Tiles. I only know this because we had a three-way tie.

I would play this with almost anybody.

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You don’t want to Cross these Hares!

I tried Cross Hares by 1A Games at Capricon in February. In Cross Hares, you are little rabbits who are setting out to be the first one to destroy the Factory. Because of the factories fumes, all of us rabbits have mutated to speak and walk on two legs.

Cross Hares

Certain rabbits have Deployment Specialties. This means when they earn a Specialty marker, they can turn it back in and Deploy a Trap, Bounty, Hazardous Plant, or the Zombny, depending on the character1. If you land on any of these things2, you must take the bad stuff.

As you go up the path to the factory, there are many things that may happen. If you roll a number (1-5), you move that many spaces. If you roll the question mark, though, you may roll the research die. The results from the research die are almost always good (no guarantees, though).

When you get to the factory, you must make a choice. You can attempt to defeat the factory as if it were a regular enemy, or you can randomly pick a super cool special ending. The catch to the special ending is it might be good, it might not.

I would play this with convention friends and my parents.  This game takes at least two hours, but it’s worth it.

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1 Some characters are not able to Deploy Specialties.

2 Some exceptions are made. For instance, if you are adjacent to or on Weepoint (a Hazardous Plant), the bad stuff triggers, not just if you are on top of it.

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Charlie and the Chocolate Factory is now a board game!

There is this game called Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. It is kind of like Candyland in the way you move. You draw a card and move the amount of spaces the card says. The cards also have poems from the movie.

The goal of the game is to be the first player to the Glass Elevator space on the board. On the way to the Glass Elevator, there are golden ticket spaces. You cannot win if you do not have 5 golden tickets by the time you reach the elevator.

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory

If you hit the point when you are about to advance to the final section leading to the elevator, you have to move in the Round Chamber until you have 5 tickets.

I would play this game with most people because of its sheer simplicity.

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Trivial Pursuit for Kids (All on DVD)

I recently tried Trivial Pursuit for Kids. First of all, you must have a DVD player. You insert the DVD into the player and chose a chapter. Then you choose which color you want and place your mini wagon wheel on the huge 2D wagon wheel.

The DVD’s animated people will ask you questions. Some questions are literally just questions. The first person to shout out the correct answer gets a specific color of wagon wedge. The other questions are challenges. For challenges, you move your mini wagon wheel to the correct answer on the huge wagon wheel.

The wagon wedges are specific ways of scoring. The person who has the most different colors of wagon wedges at the end of the game wins.

I would recommend playing this with someone in a similar age range as yourself.

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Evolution Just Evolved!

I first tried Evolution in November at a convention with Mom. I loved it. While Mom went to the art show and the dealer’s hall, I stayed and kept playing over and over again.

Recently, Evolution’s first expansion* came out. In the original, you have species cards with little cubes that say what the population and body size of that species are.

Each turn you play trait cards on your species. For instance, you could have a Horned species, which means that if a Carnivore tries to attack you it must lose one population. You have a maximum of three traits on each species. So, for instance, you could have a Climbing Horned Carnivore. After you play traits, you feed from the watering hole or food bank.

In the expansion, you can have flying species and several new traits. They also introduce event cards. So now you could have a Horned Avian (flying) species with Quills.

Evolution with Flight Expansion

In addition to the watering hole, there is also the cliff. Avian (flying) species can take from both the cliff and the watering hole when feeding, but land species can only take from the watering hole. The expansion also adds length to the game because of the additional cards.

I would play this game with my convention friends and my parents.

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* Our copy was purchased through Kickstarter.

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Who’s going to win DiXit?

“Cassandra and I first played DiXit a couple years ago when we went to a gaming store for International Tabletop day. Silly me… I thought we could stay for an hour or so after lunch and then head home. It was closer to three hours later when we left, having played a variation or two of Fluxx, DiXit, and an assortment of other games. The game quickly made it onto our game shelf, but somehow sat unplayed until recently….“ (Mom)

DiXit is an interesting way of describing pictures. On your turn, you play one card from your hand and give it a quick description. For instance, in the  picture shown at the bottom of the page, the clue was “Light.” After you make your description and play your card face down, everybody  else plays the card from their hand that they think best fits the description. You then shuffle all of the cards together and play them all face up.

Next comes the voting. Everybody takes their voting tiles and chooses the one with the number of the space where they think your card is. The numbers of the spaces are written on the side of the score board.

DiXitFinally, we score.* You reveal which card was yours. The scoring is quite possibly the trickiest part of the game. If everyone found your card, than you don’t get any points. If nobody guessed your card, you still don’t get any points. You want some people to figure out which one was yours, but not all, or you will not gain any points for that round. The first person to reach 30 points wins.

I would play this game with my immediate family and convention friends.

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* Well, everyone else does. If you look really closely at the picture, there are 3 little painted rabbits. I was the blue, way back on the 4.

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Fly

I tried a new game today called Fly. My mother bought it in a Kickstarter called Pack O Game. Fly is a very simple game that anyone can learn.

FlyYou use the table tiles to make a 9 by 3 picnic table grid. In the top left corner, you stand the box up next to the grid. Next, place the sky card so that it stands on top of the box. On the table tiles there are little flies. You raise the fly swatter card to a minimum height of the top of the sky card. When you drop the flyswatter, every fly you cover completely you remove to your score pile.  Scoring is based on collecting multiple flies with the same symbols or color.

I enjoyed this game because it is a simple game and does not require logic. The best part is the fact that you could have trouble reading and it doesn’t matter! The only part you need to read is the instructions. I would play this game with my family or my friends.

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