12 Games of Christmas

This Christmas was the first Yuletide under our roof where it felt like actual activities substantially outweighed behavior-management. Stanley and (Little) Joe continue to have their moments of course, but their evolution from meeple-scattering tots to brow-furrowing AP merchants has taken a giant step forward.

As well as the savage violence of the allegedly infant-friendly The Hobbit we've managed to get several other games on the table. During the Morrison Christmas (23rd) Stanley, my mum and I played Love Letter. My mum displayed an impressive range of table manipulation, and though as much of it was directed at a 6-year-old to be fair she did enough to win. It's always the quiet ones, isn't it?

On Christmas Day Stanley and I played Lords of Waterdeep for the first time. And while some of the subtler tactics (or screwage) were beyond him, he clicked into the quest-fulfilling immediately and whilst I stagnated at the start, shot off along the score track. I never recovered:

Stanley 104

Sam 99

Then whilst Stan was off playing his drum kit Joe and I played a round of Galaxy Trucker. Joe beat me (though I did help him build his ship, so, y'know) and then we set about building the ideal third-round ship together:

only thing is should there be lasers pointing sideways on those horizontal sevens?

On the 27th Sally's family arrived en masse and what brother-in-law Matt and I have christened "The Chatothon" commenced. As relative light-weights in that department we managed to sneak in a couple of games of Biblios. Despite having never played it before Matt wiped the floor with me, chalking up what I think is a maximum win at 15-3 in his favour. Obviously I wasn't going to let that stand, and beat him in the return 9-5.

And several times Joe has requested Sumeria. We're playing it more or less correctly; on everyone's turn they add a trader to the land of Sumer, boosting that particular region; which means it moves to the left (or "up") in that row of region cards you see beneath the board. So throughout these regions are jostling for position. At certain stages of the game the top three regions reward those with a presence in them with some goods. And at the end of the game players score the amount of goods they have (any particular colour is squared, so 3 blue goods tiles gets you 9 points whereas 1 goods cube of green, blue and yellow would only get you three points)

Joe and I have played together; we've played with Stanley, and we've played with Stanley and Sally. I've won all these games, but losing doesn't affect Joe - he just announces that he won anyway. 

It's good fun - and as with Waterdeep, Stan has cottoned on to it - when all four of us played last night, the scores were:

Sam 32

Stan 22

Joe 1

Sally 1

We've also played Old MacDonald Lotto, Plop Trumps (don't ask) and a number of games of Pitch Car, which Joe has a bit of a knack for, beating me and Stan. Occasionally I think 'Oh I'll start taking this seriously' and promptly flick my car off the track...