206 – Play This, Not THAT – Dice & Apples – The Family Gamers Podcast
206 is the lowest positive integer (when written in English as “two hundred and six”) to employ all of the vowels once only. Pretty cool!
We’ve got some more games to upgrade with our Play This, Not That segment. But first…
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What We’ve Been Playing
We tried out Zorro Dice Game from Pull the Pin. Complete quests (by matching dice) to unlock special abilities and eventually beat the “boss”. Nick Martinelli will be giving a full review later.
The Pop Tarts Game from The OP – and we consider doing a special edition of “For Science” with Pop Tarts!
Pass the Pigs – simple dice rolling, except your dice are tiny molded pigs.
Adventure Mart – we talked about this last week in our interview with Rory O’Connor of HUB Games. A deck-building game with some engine-building.
Can’t Stop – a simple, mathy press-your-luck game. Might assist our “gameschooling” in the future? (And if you want, you can play it on Board Game Arena.)
Concluzio (our review)
Last Defense from Funko Games
BLANK from HUB Games (our review) – our kids make very swingy rules and Anitra makes rules that calm the swing or are simply fun.
Marvel Battleworld (Funko Games) – simple enough that our 9-year-old taught his non-reading younger brother to play.
Cupcake Academy (Blue Orange Games) – Andrew mentioned this when he saw it at NY Toy Fair. A cooperative, timed puzzle game based on the Towers of Hanoi. Probably better at 2 players than at 4. We’ll be back with more information soon.
Raising Money for Kids with Cancer
Andrew will be shaving his head on livestream. We’re matching the first $50 in donations!
Text “familygamersaa” to 44321, or go to thefamilygamers.com/buzzoff/. Our goal is to raise $250.
Play This Not That
Our goal is to take popular games and give you some options that are a little better.
Yahtzee
Yahtzee is a die rolling, set collection game, and also the original roll-and-write. It’s an abstract game and it has a lot of restrictions. Maybe you like those restrictions, maybe you don’t.
Die Rolling, Set Collection Games
What are other games that let you “reroll the dice to make a certain set”?
King of Tokyo – fight off giant monsters and take over Tokyo! There are cards with special powers you can “buy”, and health that you’ll track.
Dice Throne – we call this “Battle Yahtzee” – take your five dice, roll and re-roll to get specific combinations that will either damage your opponent or help yourself. (Read our Dice Throne review.)
Like the abstract nature of Yahtzee but want something a little friendlier and easier? Roll for It! allows you to set dice aside, but whenever any player completes a set, that set is removed from play and new card(s) come out. (Read our Roll for It! review.)
Roll and Write Games
But Yahtzee is also a roll-and-write! Try games like Qwixx, HexRoller, or Qwingo.
Apples to Apples
Apples to Apples and its cousin Cards Against Humanity are party games that require players to make a judgement call (a judge picks a winning combination each round). We have two favorite games that liven up this style.
Bring Your Own Book – just like the name says, you need to bring a book to play this game (nearly any book will work – we’ve tested this!) The judge reads out the card (ie “strange first words for a child”) and all players look in their chosen books for some phrase that works in that context.
Cluster Fight – what sets this apart from other “judging” games is that all the other players can make bets on which combination will win.
What if your favorite part is the silly word combinations?
Then we’d recommend Sparkle*Kitty from Breaking Games (play cards to empty your hand and pull cards off your tower) since a big part of the game play is saying the silly “spells” that you created.
If that is too silly, why not Medium from Greater Than Games? Two players choose a card from their hands, play them, and then try to say a word that connects them! Go to mediumthegame.com to find out more.
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