A Night of Short and Fun

Last Friday’s gaming session I had the opportunity to play three of the games on my list of to do’s for 2014. So that’s off to a good start! We were with four, which broadened the range of games we could play.

The kind of hand that will get you into trouble

First up was Love Letters. The theme may be a bit pedestrian (conquer the heart of the princess) but there is a lot of play in a game with only 16 cards. It’s all driven by the interaction between the cards, each with its own special effect. This also means that luck, but also deduction plays an important role (who hold which card?). With almost all of us in a position to win, this was a close fought and exciting start.

Next was Concept which I had picked up in Essen. At first sight this is a classic party game (guess a famous person/movie/object) but there’s more to it. The aim of the game is to describe an object through a number of basic concepts plus, colour, form, or whatever makes it stand out. Your opponents need to guess what it is, with points to the first correct answer. We also set a time limit of 2 minutes. It turned out that the quest for Jack Bauer (of 24 fame) got stuck on the name of the actor who plays him (Kiefer Sutherland) because I couldn’t get them to shift to the character. On the other hand ‘dinosaur’ was guessed in a wink. 

I think this one will reappear at some point because there is fun in developing a common set of shortcuts to more complicated concepts (ie a language). There are also good opportunities to integrate this idea in other games (where players are alien races).

My neighbour taking the flak

Finally Mag Blast, a lighthearted card game in which space race have to ground each other to dust. Game play and mechanisms remind me mostly of Enemy in Sight or (Modern) Naval War. For example, you need gun turrets in the right colour to play a blast card. There is a luck factor (hiding in an asteroid belt during most of the game helps) but its primarily good fun with limited complexity. I could get people to play this again.

Anyway, a good thing to play a few shorter games in an evening once in a while.

PS I also played a bit of Lego Creationary with the family last week, so that´s a good number of games by any means.