Fraser McHarg: Two weeks at the beach, part of the way through

We are slightly over halfway through our two week beach holiday.  The weather has not been as beach-friendly as previous years, which means more time for books and games.
Present for the entire time have been Melissa, Daughter the Elder (nine and a half), Daughter the Younger (heading towards five) and myself.  We have had two visitors who each stayed for two nights to help make use of the 4+ player Agricola cards.  Our first visitor was Tom Lehman as part of his Australian holiday and the second was our friend Vincent who came down for a weekend.

My current count is six books, four children’s books and seventy-three plays of twenty-one games.

Amongst the games played have been:

Cluedo - 2 plays - We now play this with Daughter the Younger as well.  She has no cards of her own, but she gets to move and announce suspicions like everyone else.  She even gets to see the card(s) as appropriate.  This makes her involved in the game and the rest of get to play without finding an alternative activity for her.
Frank’s Zoo - 1 play - We should play this at home, for some reason it only gets played at the beach.  We no longer handicap ourselves a card or two when playing with Daughter the Elder, but are still only playing the very basic scoring, i.e. not counting hedgehogs and lions as special.

Geister Treppe - 3 plays - aka Spooky Stairs.  Still a favourite with Daughter the Younger, we introduced Tom to the joys of magnet-head meeples.

Agricola - 7 plays - 2 x 2p, 2 x 3p and 3 x 4p - This includes one play (so far) with the prototypes for the Z deck.  Daughter the Elder was involved with all the four player plays and is now playing with E deck cards (which are the only ones pasted up in our set at the moment).  I think she is still focussing too much on food, but she is improving.  Tom got to play two, three and four player games.  With Vince we introduced some I-deck cards into the mix which he and Melissa could read and I had to refer to Melissa’s translation notes to write up some quick and dirty manual paste ups for my cards.  Since at home we normally only play two or three player we have been using many of the 4+ cards for the first time.  We have found food to be particularly tight in three-player games.

Dora the Explorer - My First UNO - 9 plays - Daughter the Younger is heavily into Dora the Explorer and enjoys this.  She was a little hazy on the rules and playing the first day, but is completely au fait with it now.  The wild card is Boots the Monkey (not Yahoo Boots!) and when she plays one she leans down to put her ear over the card and then announces “Boots says Red”.  Another quote from her: “You shuffle and I will deal.  Then, you go first”.

Mystery Rummy: Jack the Ripper - 14 plays - Mostly two player with Daughter the Elder, but some three player with Melissa as well.  Daughter the Elder requests this a lot and is very good at it.  If you, like I, struggled with the rules and gave up, get someone to teach you and then all will be revealed.

Puerto Rico - 2 plays - This time last year, Daughter the Elder insisted that we teach her how to play Puerto Rico and she won her third game.  We haven’t actually played it with her since, but she demanded that we bring it down and play it with her.  In our first play she demolished us 52-36-31 with her construction hut, hospice, university strategy.  She didn’t win the second game, but it was only a four point spread from first to last.

Winds of Plunder - 1 play - Vince brought this down with him.  Melissa and I really liked it, to quote one of the more suitable for publication comments from Melissa’s game journal “Fraser is treacherous scum”.  The only problem with this game is that from our regular Friday night crowd Jane would love it, but the rest probably wouldn’t so it probably wouldn’t see a lot of plays at home.

We also played and enjoyed a few of Tom’s prototypes and hope they see publication soon.  Daughter the Elder played To Court the King with Tom three times, once with the expansion.  She won all three times!

You can tell that Daughter the Younger is a budding little gamer, here are some other quotes from her over the last week:
Q: “Do you want to play a game?”
A: :Dora, Uno or Puerto Rico”

After seeing a man with a similar build and hair colour to Tom - “Look Mum, a game designer”

Q: “Did you like that game?”
A: “No, because I hate losing”

Kid’s books:
Charlie and Lola books by Lauren Child are on high rotation.  I am absolutely too small for school, My wobbly tooth must not ever never fall out and I am not sleepy and I will not go to bed.

Other books:
A Noble Radiance by Donna Leon
Tales of Ten Worlds by Arthur C. Clarke
Death Du Jour by Kathy Reichs
The Princess Diaries To the Nines by Meg Cabot
The Spy in Question by Tim Sebastian
Ice Station Zebra by Alistair MacLean
The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson

© 2008 Fraser McHarg

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<laugh> This column is rife with great quotes. “Boots says Red” I gotta get me a Boots the Monkey card so I can say that too… Posted by Scott Tepper on Jan 22, 2008 at 07:21 AM | #

Hmmmm...what, exactly, is the stereotypical build and hair color of a game designer? Posted by Jeff Allers on Jan 22, 2008 at 09:00 AM | #

Back from the beach now :-( Scott - You can get four Boots the Monkey cards in Dora The Explorer - My First Uno, go grab yourself a copy now! Jeff - Ah now, nothing was said about stereotypical, just somebody who looked like Tom. Posted by Fraser McHarg on Jan 24, 2008 at 02:19 AM | #

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