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

two roads scrabbled in the woods, and i scored 167…

just got the word ‘diverges’ over two triple words (e on a double letter, s was a blank) and scored 167 in online scrabble which is some 40 plus points more than my biggest word before… was a game my beautiful wife started with a 7 letter word so a nice comeback and i finished with 500 plus for i think the second time ever.

in other news just made some savoury muffins with which to make peace with slash encourage our complex landlady (as in she manages the complex, not she is… well, actually…) for Christmas… hoping we don’t get a Christmas clamp in return…

2.10am and probly about time for bed.

for the sake of the chores

so i have been married for about 14 months yesterday and i still completely highly recommend it if it is to the right person – it is not always easy – it is sometimes really hard – but it is incredible and the pros definitely outbeat-up-and-leave-bleeding-behind-the-shed the cons… and i love the beautiful Val – really feel privileged and lucky and amazed that i have someone like her in my life… yay.

the one thing that i have noticed and i was just wondering if it is an us phenomenon or whether other newly married couples have discovered this ‘gem’ is the bermuda triangleness of time that occurs once you get married [married people with kids don’t even bother posting responses cos my brain can’t even stretch this scenario to adding more people into the mix, especially little ones, with poo and stuff]

before we got married it felt like i had a lot of time – we saw each other a fair amount of time i think and i did a whole lot of stuff and had time for church and people and hockey and theatresports and silly computer games and and and…

and then we got married [and please don’t see this as a complaint – it’s not a complaint – more a general musing and a wondering if it’s just us or if others have noticed this as well] and for starters there were the dishes which i am convinced are procreating in our sink (at precisely the same time as aliens from another dimension are warping in and first beaming out all the teaspoons and then other clean things) and so we have a meal and we wash up (i love washing up most of the time so it’s really not a problem – i understand a lot of other people hate it) and then we turn our backs for 18 seconds and WHOOSH!! – full sink of dirty dishes, no clean teaspoons…

wash up seven times a day, make two cups of coffee and suddenly we have an overflowing sink of dirtiness – anyone nodding, smiling, sympathy crying?

and then there is the washing – tbV is a lot more diligent with the washing than i am altho i do try and take opportunities to fill the machine and throw in the powder and flip it on and take it out and hang it up on occasion – but you do a whole crapload of washing (three loads) after maybe a weekend away, and then you take two steps away and as you gasp in bemusement at the post 18 second WHOOSH!! that has just occured in the sink, your peripheral vision is starting to bleat out, “Mayday! Mayday!” and you’re like, “Don’t be silly, it’s mid-September” and pv is like, “no dude, seriously you got to see this” and you look around and BIG FILLED-UP-WITH-DIRTY-CLOTHES-WASHBASKET OVERFLOWING…

it’s a never ending cycle, and there are two of us now working at it – don’t get me started on cleaning the house (no, i mean really, don’t get me started on cleaning the house) and restocking toilet rolls and the bathroom and emptying the trash bags and buying electricity and shopping and and and…

then in terms of spending time with my wife, i absolutely love it and we spend quite a lot of time together, hanging, watching dvd’s, playing scrabble on- and off- line, and other games, talking, working together, etc etc but there just seems to be not enuff time to do all of it justice

like i could spend a week just playing games with my wife, or a week just chatting to her and dreaming out loud about the future and hearing where we are struggling and talking through family stuff and chatting what’s happening in the world or trafficking stuff or thesis stuff, i could spend a week watching dvd’s with her, i could spend a week listening to sermons and doing sodukos and laughing and a bunch of other stuff we like doing together (yes, yes, i’m talking about having settlers marathons) but there is just no time for it all so we sneak in a game of scrabble here and a few episodes of scrubs there and then we have to make a meal [left that off the list – love it, absolutely love cooking for her and with her and you do this whole marathon process and make a pretty amazing meal and it’s gone in ten minutes and the sink is crying out your name] and the dustbins need to go and there’s a meeting and oh wait she has a family and i have a family who kinda want to see us from time to time and she has friends and i have friends and we have mutual friends and just hanging with God needs our attention and there is still so much out there like mashie golf and skydiving and going away for a weekend and bigscreen movies and meals out and hip hop classes and the beach that needs our feet on it and robben island and the theatre and standup comedy and and and

is there any other new couple experiencing this bermuda triangle of time, because it certainly wasn’t around before we got married, but now it seems to… what? a full sink? but i didn’t… we didn’t… i’ve just… argh, gotta go… VAL, CLOTHES BASKET STAT!!!

the biggerest loser

So this last week we played Settlers (card/board game similar to but better than Risk for the uninitiated) 3 times and i didn’t win any of the games… two of them were extremely frustrating cos of the nature of the games where i was totally taken down by the dice throws or lack thereof and in fact during the one i went thru a run of 13 dice throws and only picked up once (which is just crazy)

But actually the main point is i lost… three times… unheard of for last year’s Settlers National Championships silver medal position placed person (ha, seriously though) and for someone as competitive as me (a lot!) it should have been tough and sucky and painful – and to some competitive extents it was – but actually it has been a great week… in hindsight and life lessons and character growing and so on… because i really have been trying to work on my losing, and do much better at it.

Some people are just natural…um not natural losers, that sounds bad, but natural good losers i guess – one of the guys we played with is a dude called James who stays pretty much the same whether he wins or loses, whereas we have pretty much a whole whine society who will tell you it was the dice throws and the board setup and the trading and blah blah blah (and i’ve previously been chairman of the society so the fingers are point right back at me no worries) and James just enjoys the game i think…

And that’s cool, and it’s what i’ve been wanting for a long long time. But i am very competitive. And i think there is a way to stay competitive but have the same level of enjoyment whether you win or lose. Especially if it’s my wife beating me (as she did at Scrabble and Thurn and Taxes – new game we played – today) because i seriously love her a lot and it brings me great joy when she wins. Now i just have to increase the joy when she wins against me.

So ja, working at becoming a bigger loser. And we got a game on tomorrow lunch so the opportunity is very definitely there.

[oh wow, just read previous blog and didn’t even remember that i’d written it – obviously a topical topic, Al.]