Looking for a new game to buy: Dixit

There are two kinds of game-playing people in the world to my reckoning:

[1] Those who were brought up on what are now old school games like Monopoly, Risk, Cluedo, Scrabble and an assortment of simple card playing games like Uno [with the ‘fast card’ rule else essentially you are taking turns to put down cards in a row, please people], and

[2] Those who have played Settlers or Catan or any game that has been created since then and influenced by that type and style of game from Seven Wonders and Dominion to Puerto Rico, Stone Age and more…

The old school games [which there is nothing wrong with] generally have one focus and mode of play and you try do that better than everyone else and you win [and most of them have a certain degree of luck to them where it comes down to dice rolls or right cards etc]

The new school games generally are multi-layered – one reason why i believe Settlers was such a hit [as well as Carcassonne and others like it] was that determining how the board looks is a part of the game and so every game is different. Then there are usually a few [or a lot once you hit Cities and Knights] different paths you can take towards securing victory. I prefer the new school games generally because there are more options and often a certain amount of space for strategy.

Then there is my dad who is in his own group and just doesn’t like games at all, although he will gladly sit in the next room shouting out [and getting them right!] Trivial Pursuit answers while the rest of us are playing…

And then there is Dixit. There are so many great games these days that it is no longer about trying to find a good game to get but more trying to find out which good game to get [kind of like Series – there is really no reason these days to force yourself to watch a bad tv series cos there is so much quality on offer] and Dixit for me feels like a great addition [or start] to the family games pile.

For this main reason – apart from my dad i think it will work for pretty much anyone who has some inclination towards games.

So what is it? Well i describe it as a cross  between Pictionary and Balderdash. Each person is dealt six cards with various scenes/pictures on them – the person  whose turn it is chooses one card and without showing people gives a word or phrase or song lyric  or sound effect that describes their card. Everyone else chooses a card that they feel best represents that [you get points for people choosing your card so you want to make people guess yours] and then they get shuffled up and put down on the table and without being allowed to vote for your own card, each person votes and tries to guess the card of the person who is on. That person also has to place a vote on one they obviously know is wrong.

What makes this tricky is that if everyone votes for yours you get no points. If no-one votes for yours you get no points. You need a combination of people voting for yours and not voting for yous – so you can’t be too obvious or too obscure. When the votes are revealed people score points and everyone gets dealt one new card and the next person takes over as the lead person. So simple and yet so much fun.

It is set up for 4 to 6 people but if you have more you can divide into teams and so i would say it would comfortably work for 12 or even 18 people.

What’s cool about it is you can play it at a simple level and everyone will feel included or you can play it with tons of strategy so doesn’t really leave people out. We took it to another level by adding the rule that each round a different player adds the rule of clue. So for one round you had to give a song lyric as your clue, for the next you could only use sound effects and the following round was facial expressions so you can just imagine how silly and fun it got.

Really worth investing some money into. Because different people play and the cards will come out in different orders i imagine this will remain fresh for years to come and there are expansions you can buy for new and exciting themed packs of cards. We are still on the basic game but looking forward to picking up an expansion some day.

Get it, play it and let me know what you think…

What game would you recommend?

the games we play: part intro

my family and friends have always played a lot of games [except for my dad, he hates games with a passion, his favourite is sitting in the lounge reading his newspaper while the rest of the family plays trivial pursuit and shouting out all the answers, but that’s about the closest he gets]

but my mom and my sisters love games, and the large majority of friends in my and now our friend ship circles are games players to a certain extent – it is a great way to relax and vibe and hopefully chill together around a table with a bunch of mates…

growing up there was monopoly [only to be pulled out at sleepovers really cos tended to be an all nighter] and risk [which i played a crazy amount – we adapted a two player game and my friend ferdi and i played best of ten matches with one or two games almost daily at one point] and cluedo [‘clue’ to the americanese] and scrabble which were all good and fine and well and all…

but then we discovered Rage which is a special card deck game for up to ten players where you bid on how many tricks you are going to get and then try and get them… and life changed forever [especially at our church student house called ‘Highbury’ where we would play through the night on occasion, because after all, what is the difference between 1.15am and 1.45am?]

and then a good mate of mine introduced me to Settlers of Catan [or more accurately, the german version, called ‘Die Siedler von Catan’] and i had to trust his translations of all the german cards and wonder why he kept beating me, but then later we discovered the english version and it became a firm favourite.

what made it better was the expansion pack known as ‘cities and knights’ which added a whole lot of new dimensions to an already great game and the record for playing that stands at something crazy like seven and a half hours [largely due to one of the players – you know who you are deane – playing reeeeeeally slowly] and once we’d played that we rarely went back [except to introduce someone new to ‘settlers’]

after that came ‘carcassonne’ which i call ‘kucky sahn’ and which my friend coe [who hates it] calls ‘shaka khan’ which was a settlerish type game [in that the game board is not constant but created differently each game which is a huge part of the attraction] but one that took 45 minutes to an hour as opposed to 2 to 3 hours…

all that to say there are a LOT of games out there and a bunch of them are REALLY a lot of good fun – we have discovered a small bunch more and i will give some reviews of the newer ones we play so that if any of you are looking for a new game to try, you might find something here… and i would love to hear what your favourite games to play with a group of friends are…

the latest we have been playing, or are just about to, include Seven Wonders, Jambo, Flash Point [played for the first time last night] and Forbidden Island [yet to play, still in packaging] – reviews to follow…

for The Settlers of Catan click here

for the determinedly board [game recommendation – Carcassonne]

i gather a lot of people out there will have known settlers of catan but i imagine a lot fewer of you will have heard of this gem – Carcassonne – or as we like to refer to it “Kucky Sahn”

in the slightest bit similiar to settlers in that the board is different every time (thus each game is vastly different unlike a risk, cluedo or monopoly which have a relative sameness to them) and in fact the gameplay is creating the board…

basically your turn consists of taking a square board piece out of the bag and placing it on the table adjacent to another piece already down and then adding one of your men to either a road, a city, a monastery or farm piece – this carries on and whenever one of the above elements are completed you get your guy back and score differing points (1 pt for each road section, 2 for each city piece, 9 points for a completed monastery which is 9 cards big etc) and at the end of the game you score points for all the completed cities the land your farmers are on are touching…

again, one of those games you have to see and play to really get it but the bonus over settlers is that a good game will take between 45 min and an hour and 15 so a lot shorter if you don’t have the time for a whole evening game – and also the expansion packs (we have 5 or 6) are great additions to the game and you can mix and match them (the beautiful val big dream to play a game with all of them together one day) to create pretty much whole new games (cos strategy and tactics change with every addition)

you really should check out this game – again, a little pricey if you buy in south africa (knowing people overseas or who are travelling this way soon often helps a lot) but the price gets erased quickly by the hours and hours of fun that ensue… great way to spend an evening (2 games involving different expansions) with us to 6 people…

marriage to the right person – highly recommendable

so in exactly one week’s time i will have been married to the beautiful Val for exactly one year – and what a year it’s been!

as i say often to people – ‘marriage is highly recommended… to the right person!’ and the ‘to the right person’ bit is the key – not cos i believe in any kind of God-brings-this-person-and-that-person-together necessarily or that i believe that there is only one ‘the one’ as opposed to a number of ‘the potential ones who could be the one’ but because i have experienced or witnessed both

i have some friends who have hurt or are hurting a lot because they dated or got engaged to or even married the person who ended up not being a good match for them – and i have some friends (and myself) who by the grace of God managed to somehow end up with someone who is a the-one match for them (cos history knows i tried my best to work it otherwise on occasion, or so it would seem looking back)

having been married for one week less than a year i can declare with absolute abandon and complete integrity that marriage works – it is incredible – it is a journey and an adventure and an absolute trip… but not without adding ‘to the right person’

because it is also a tough path at times (inevitably you are going to end up hurting – or being hurt by – or disappointing or miscommunicating with the one you love and having a moment or an argument or even – gasp! – a fight – and that completely sucks, cos this is the person you love most in the world and you hate hurting or being hurt by them – the pain is deeper because the bond is so strong)

it is a journey requiring effort and sacrifice and surrender – which we as selfish and prideful human beings really struggle to embrace, especially having grown up in a world constantly screaming the mantra ‘this is all about me’ – and the trick in marriage is really embracing the effort and the sacrifice and surrender and continuing to try and get it right in lifting the other person up above yourself (the beauty is that if she is doing the same thing then we continue to be as lifted up as if we were focusing on ourselves, but with the added benefit of relationship)

it is a path of discovery (new person in my life, new habits, new quirks, new likes and dislikes) – of hey we both find this extremely funny and wow we’re pretty good working alongside each other in the kitchen (which both our families would question in pre-marriage times) and hey she really digs it when i do this and i am so glad that she has chosen to do that chore so i don’t have to and i can do this which she absolutely hated to have to do

it is a choice – day in day out – every single day i have to wake up and choose again – choose the beautiful val over the not so beautiful brett (especially on my bad, lazy, selfish, overcompetitive, procrastinationary, grumpy, i’m right days) – choose to live out those five pages of wedding day vows – promises i make again every day, every day

so whether it’s coffee in bed (one of the highlights of my day – being able to make it for my wife and greet her with a morning kiss) or flapjacks made with packet waffle mix (better than the packet flapjack mix strangely) or scrubs/I.T. crowd/ or Summer Heights High or Eddie Izzard/Michael Mcintyre/Bill Bailey or p.d.a. facebook statuses (within reason) or tag teaming together in a counselling situation or lying together at night solving all the mysteries of the world (or at least our day) or laughing together (a lot! one of the highlights and if you can’t laugh with your person then i seriously think they are probably not a ‘the one’) and private jokes and scrabble or kucky san or trying to lose gracefully at settlers or her asking me random (to me but thoroughly interested and trying to figure out how the world works to her) questions about things i can’t possibly know and woolworths prawn cocktail chips and Terry Pratchett passages and mielies and marshmallow steri stumpies (for her) and purple and that elusive couch (and wedding photos) and dream league cricket and watching her get passionate about justice and not letting us not help people in need and getting to really know her better and totally speak what she is thinking or really meaning and and and

thank you tbV for almost a year of incredible journey – it grows daily – i love you very much and am looking to an even kicker asser year ahead – you really do complete me (you and God)

note to single people: enjoy, thrive, live to the full, desire your ‘the one’ but don’t let it consume you – make the most of the time and freedom you have as a single person and be content in every area of your life (while continuing to keep your eyes open and to ask God and to want that person if you do)

note to dating people: enjoy, thrive, live to the full, don’t live as married people yet cos you’re not and save the stuff for marriage for the person you marry (which may not end up being the person you are dating now so don’t waste it on them now cos it seriously will be a waste if they turn out not to be that person), enjoy each other but keep it uncomplicated and grow in relationship to see if this is your one and part peacefully if not

note to married people: enjoy, thrive, live to the full, husbands, love your wives, uplift each other, keep private stuff private, never diss your spouse (even in jest) in front of others, especially not just for a cheap laugh, if you’re struggling ask for help, choose every morning to serve and lift up and that-person-first and kill selfishness and pride whenever it rears its head, run to say sorry when you have been wrong, don’t ever go to bed angry or fighting, don’t give up, don’t feed temptation, love each other, let’s fight together for marriage – it works, it’s incredible, it costs, it’s worth it!