Buying this game was a huge disappointment.  Of course it was one of those games advertised on tv.  When I saw the commercial I was set on buying it.  The commercial showed a family gathered around the tv having a blast.  So I immediately went out to but the game. As soon as I got home with it I gathered the family and we started to play.  One player draws a picture on this board and the picture shows up on the tv.  The other player on the team must guess what is being drawn.  However, no picture is displayed on the handheld drawing pad, the picture just shows up on the computer screen.  The first time I played the picture I was drawing was completely distorted on the tv. Also you can’t even tell where you are connected your lines or anything.  You try to judge it based on what is being displayed on the tv but then you look down at your blank drawing pad and have no idea where the picture you drew starts or ends. This game was a total let down.  The artist just gets so frustrated and it is no fun.  The only laugh you get from the game is the inability of the drawer to construct a depictable drawing or the utter frustration of the artist.

 This is a picture from the commercial that convinced me:

I just realized that I failed to blog about the board games I am absolutely obsessed with.  If you open the closet doors in our toy room at home (name was from childhood but it has stuck ever since) the closet is full with board games and 75% of them are Cranium games.  You name it we own it all within the age parameters.  I am even a registered member on the Cranium website and receive newsletters once a month.  Please don’t judge me.  If you have not experienced these games you might think I am crazy but they are addicting.  You may not become addicted like me but you would have to admit they do make for a good time. When I saw my roommate unpack a cranium calendar I knew getting along would be easy. 

Why are these games so addicting you ask?  Try thinking of a game which allows you to make models out of clay, act out silent clues, hymn tunes, unscramble  puzzles,  do true or false questions, and play with plastic frogs all in one game.  This is what cranium does.  Each game has it’s own twist to the original game and are adapted to the intended audiences.  Every time new game is created I am notified through email and I usually immediately go out and buy it so my friends and family can enjoy the fun.  I give kudos to the creators of cranium because they are by far my favorite games ever played.  This may be due to the fact that I am a very active person and can not sit still for the life of me.  These games barely give you time to sit down. 

They even have a game for the Wii and of course I have it.  It is balls of fun to play with my family. 

If you do not get embarrassed easily this game is perfect for you.  First off you have to wear the goofiest looking head band shown below.  To make matters worse you are not allowed to see the name of the celebrity on your head so when everyone burst out laughing you can’t join in the fun.  It is your job to ask yes or no questions and determine the identity of the celebrity.

 

This game reminds me of my mother’s annual Christmas party.  After about two hours into the night and who knows how many cocktails a group of the girls gather around the dining room table. The men of the house would not be caught dead playing Celebrity Head.  My mother breaks out the board games and Celebrity Head is always a huge hit.  Although the game only comes with four head pieces they felt that more should join in the fun so the fortunate players without the headbands scotch taped the card to their head.  Watching the game go on is hysterical because here they are at a sophisticated Christmas party, all dressed up for the Holidays with cards taped to their heads or worse off the head wear with two big red hands.  You would be surprised at how long it takes some of them to guess the celebrity. 

The actual board just serves the purpose of the spinner to determine how many questions are allowed on the players turn.  I find the most difficult part of the game to be coming up with the questions.  You want questions that will eliminate large amounts of celebrities but thinking of these questions is easier said than done. 

Here is the link to my podcast done on a real live game/competition with my friends.  

Team 1: Bosses                                                                                    

 

 

 

 

 

 

                                                                                              Team 2: Beezos

 

http://klm08495.podbean.com/2008/10/13/scavenger-hunt/

Battleship is ranked very high on my most frustrating game list.  I am the kind of person who needs to know everything and when something is hidden from me I tend to get annoyed.  The hardest thing is finding that first ship.  One you find the first one it gets easier. 

I have noticed some strategies that people use in this game.  The first is clumping the ships close together.  This has its advantages and disadvantages. It is an advantage because they are less likely to guess where the ships are because of the compactness. But, once your opponent gets one of the ships they have a high chance of getting all of the surrounding ones as well.  The other strategy is to spread them as far away apart as can be, on the borders.  This I find works well but the borders are guessed quite frequently as locations for ships so watch out.  I like to just randomly toss them on the board, no strategies for me. 

I find battleship kind of a boring game though.  If you think about it all you really do is guess a letter and a number until you finally find a ship and then you just continue to guess a letter and a number.  I am into more interactive games.  When have you ever seen someone laugh during a game of battleship?  The only time I have is when whole tray gets knocked over and all the little pins go all over.   I guess this game could be balls of fun for the serious and strategic type of players.   But laughing is a sign that I am having fun so most likely battleship would not be my first pick. 

Connect Four is such a sweet and simple game.  If a game were to take more than 6 minutes I would be very surprised.  It is perfect for all ages and especially it is a great game to play if the age difference between to two players is very large.  The object of the game is to get four of your tokens in a row (horizontally), a column (vertically) or connected diagonally.  As the age of the players increases the harder it becomes to actually have a winner in the game.  Just as in tic tac toe sometimes no one wins because the X’s or O’s were placed in just the right spots to block their opponent.  In connect four it is harder to block because there are many more spaces available but at the same time it is harder to get four in a row as well.  A tie is so frustrating though so a rematch is always necessary.

            My younger sister and I used to player up to 20 once in a while, but it would take forever because usually it would do back and forth between winners each round.  We always placed that you have to win by two if we both had 19 wins.  One day we made it all the way up to 27-25 because we just kept alternating who won.  I’m certain that this still only lasted just under an hour.

            Connect Four is a game where experience is not necessary and you are bound to win a round if you play multiple times. The best thing about Connect Four is the way you get to dump the tokens out of the playing board.  They all come crashing down and kids usually love that.

Have you ever heard yourself saying a phrase that makes sense to the people around you but you yourself have no idea as to what you are saying.  This is the whole concept behind mad gab.  Most of the time the answer is clearly expressed but the player does not know what he/she is really talking about.  For example:  A card would read Lost And Jealous and my repeating the phrase out loud and emphasizing different parts of the phrase the player should come up with Los Angeles.  Mad gab using only real words on the cards to get you to guess the phrase.  The object of the game is to get as many phrases correct as possible before the time runs out. The game usually goes as follows: everyone repeatedly says the phrase on the card and when someone finally puts two and two together the player yells it out. There is a pass option in the game if the team is completely stumped on a question.  There are two levels of difficulty as well.  There is no board for the game, the score is just kept track of on a pad of paper.  This game is a team game so it involved many players which is always a good thing.  One of my favorites is “Up racked hick gulch oak”:  See if you can guess the answer.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Answer: a practical joke

I don’t care what anyone says the hardest roll in yahtzee is the large straight.  You either get a large straight by the luck of the dice or you don’t get it at all.  If you have a sequence of three or four numbers you might as well just throw all five dice again.  Based on my experiences you have a better shot because when you want to get a large straight it feels like it is impossible.  Of course throughout the game someone will just throw the five die and what do you know they get a large straight.  Do they need the large straight, normally not.  I will usually get yahtzee before I get a large straight. 

            Looking past my hatred towards large straights let’s discuss yahtzee.  I usually go for the bonus up top.  The extra thirty five points is almost enough to make up for the zero I end up taking in the large straight column.  That is my personal strategy.

            Let me share with you one fond memory I have of yahtzee.  I was doing great, already had the bonus up top, had yahtzee on the bottom, and only had four of a kind left.  I take my last roll and get snake eyes (a pair of ones) and miscellaneous other numbers.  I reroll and get two more ones.  I decided why not just roll the last die and laugh if it was a one.  Sure enough I earned the lowest possible score for four of a kind.  A grand total of 5.  The weak score of 5 for four of a kind didn’t really hinder my performance to that great of an extent and I went on to win the game. 

What always gets me about UNO is that I always forget to say “Uno” when I have UNO so then I never end up actually getting UNO because I have to draw an extra card.  UNO is a great game though because we are taught how to play from a very young age.  It teaches children numbers and colors, two very basic concepts put together to form a pretty sweet game.  My favorite part of the game is when you have one card left and it’s a wild draw four card.  The other players try to frantically change the color and reverse but they are out of luck because the card you are holding has all the power in order to win the game.

When I got home from college last year I worked at an after school program run through the YMCA.  From the first day of working there I noticed the little clicks that developed even at the young ages of 6-10 year olds.  There were those “jocks’ who went outside and played kickball everyday.  There were the intellectuals who would stay in and finish their homework and then play chess or with legos.  There were the girly girls who just wanted to play Barbie’s and house after school.  And then there was this group of five or six kids who would play UNO.  Everyday at the same cafeteria table they would start an UNO game and wouldn’t stop playing until their parents came to pick them up several hours later.  The group was unique in that it was a mix of age groups.  I would always find myself wandering over to their table to check out the game.  The table was always filled with laughs and cards flying in the air.  The best part of their game was that if you didn’t have a card to put on the pile you had to pick up until you could play a card.  Due to the source of their UNO cards being from an after school program the colors were far from evenly distributed and therefore sometimes I would look over and they would have over twenty cards in their hands at a time.  They were still content however just playing to pass the time and have fun.

 

Now catch phrase usually turns into a literal reenactment of the name. The electronic device ends up being thrown across the room to the other team or straight up in the air when the buzzer goes off.  Catch phrase does have a board game version but the electronic version is 10 times better.  It sets the pace of the game on high speed. Only two teams are allowed for this game but the teams can be of as many people as you like.  A word appears on the screen and the holder of the device must give clues to their teammates in order to guess the word or phrase.  Once the correct answer is guessed the device is passed to the opposing team and play goes back and forth until time runs out.  The team holding the device last loses and a point is rewarded to the other team. 

            Catch phrase is a great game to play to pass the time or when there is a short amount of down time.  No setup is required.  The softball team here at Fisher absolutely loves Catch phrase.  Whether we are on the field, by the pool, or in our rooms, it is always a good time.  My favorite memory was when we were waiting for our plane to bring us to Arizona for spring break.  We immediately became the center of attention in the airport playing a rowdy yet controlled game of Catch phrase on the floor by our gate.  If was as if we had an audience, watching us laugh and joke with each others bad clues.  Catch phrase has different categories that you can choose such as entertainment, sports, food and drink, and more.  These categories allow the words or phrases to be tailored to these themes. 

    If your abs don’t hurt after you have finished playing, you most defintely are not playing the right way.