Back to our regular Friday spot from now on! Today we played games requiring quick eyes (and quick hands).

First up was Space Faces (Spear’s, 1970s/1980s), Debbie’s favourite game from childhood. In a bizarre oversight, the gospel Board Game Geek have neglected to create a page for Space Faces. Here is an image instead:

There are 120 different aliens to find. Each alien has a unique colour combination for its face, eyes, nose and mouth. There are five colours (yellow, red, green, purple and blue) but a shaker is used to have only four colours in play at a time. After a good shake (possible design flaw – the shaker is rather ear-piercing) the first player to find the alien wins a counter. The first to five counters is the winner. The children found the aliens with yellow faces were easiest to find, as there is more contrast with the other colours. Some of the younger children decided this was a “hard game to play”. I think they found it hard to retain four pieces of information at the same time, while also knowing they were in a race against other children. I must work on some strategies to help them.

Next up was Dobble (Asmodee, 2009), a pattern recognition game. There are 55 round cards, with eight symbols per card. Any two cards have only one symbol in common. Players race to find the symbol shown on two cards. There are various mini-games which can be played. I urge you to read the leaflet explaining how Dobble was invented as it touches on some interesting maths, as well as showing the persistence required to turn an idea into a game people can buy.

We then brought back a favourite from last year, Rubik’s Race (Rubik’s, 1982). Each player has a 5×5 grid, with one tile missing. The 24 tiles consist of four tiles each of six colours (white, yellow. orange, red, green, blue i.e. the same as a Rubik’s Cube). A scrambler is shaken which reveals a 3×3 pattern. Players race to make the 3×3 centre of their grid match this 3×3 pattern. The space made by the missing tile is used to move the other tiles into the correct position. There was a developmental ‘gap’ between the Year 5 children who moved the missing tile around with fluency and speed, and the Year 3 children who took a little longer to understand how to play. There was good resilience shown by all the children.

Today we held our second session for paying customers in Newport.

We played two variations on Draughts. First up was Losing Draughts, quite a subversive game where you win by being the first person to lose all your pieces. This game requires a rule: if you can capture a piece, you must capture it. This is still a game of strategy, as you need to push your piece right in front of your opponent’s piece, thereby forcing them to capture you (and hopefully then go on to capture a second of your pieces in the same go). The second variation was Double-Back Draughts. This returns to the normal rules of Draughts, but with a different objective: the winner is the first player to make a king and return it to their own baseline. More than one king can be made, but you just need to return one to your baseline. We enjoyed showing people that a well-known game like Draughts can have interesting variations.

Then we moved on to King’s Court (Golden, 1989), subtitled ‘The Original Game of Supercheckers’. Checkers of course is the American name for Draughts. The central area (a 4×4 square) is the Centre Court. Players must keep at least one piece in the Centre Court at all times, and failure to do so means losing the game. In a variation on Draughts, players can jump over their own pieces (which stay on the board). If you jump over the other player’s piece you capture it. Multiple captures are allowed, and players can turn corners and change direction in the same move.

Today we welcomed a special guest, Jack from Age UK. We hope that Jack will be able to spread the word about how enjoyable these games are. Debbie showed Jack some games from last week – Picaria and Acquisitions – plus a little treasure from Korea – Four Field Kono – which has a unique capturing rule.

Next week: Mancala, a redistribution game from Africa.

 

 

Today we had our first paying customers, at our Board Games Club for Adults in Newport.

We played Picaria, a 3 in a row game on a board devised by Native American Indians. We then developed the 3 in a row theme by playing 3D Noughts and Crosses, with each player using all their pieces to make as many 3 in a rows as they could.

Then we switched to playing Solitaire in pairs, in a collaborative way. One team got down to only 4 marbles; another team got down to 5 marbles. Anna did work out the winning strategy last year but has forgotten it!

The final game was Acquisitions, one of many games you can play on a chessboard. Capturing counters is the same as in Draughts, but players can reverse direction and go around corners, making multiple captures if possible. The player with the most counters at the end is the winner.

Looking forward to Week 2 on 28 September 2018.

First After-School Games Club of 2018-19. We started with Stay Alive (Milton Bradley, 1976), Anna’s favourite game from childhood (it took Debbie a while to find it online, based on Anna’s description of a game where “marbles fall through holes”). Stay Alive is subtitled “the ultimate survival game”. Players pull slides to open and close holes, dropping other player’s marbles down an open hole and out of the game. The winner is the last player with a marble on the board. The children were really engaged trying to work out what effect pulling a slide would have. We ended up playing it three times.

The second game today was Push (Spears, 1977). This is another game about trying to work out the effect of moving a row. This is two-player game but we played in pairs. One side has the yellow balls, and the other side has the black balls. The winner is the first to make a 3×3 square of their colour. Players push the balls a row at a time, and they keep pushing rows as long as the ball that comes out is their colour; if not, the other player takes a turn. The teams were evenly matched, and as we were running out of time, we changed the objective to making a 2×3 rectangle instead.

I completely forgot to tell the children about next week’s game: Space Faces, Debbie’s favourite.

On Friday 14 September 2018 we held a pilot event at Newport Methodist Church Hall. We invited some friends. We played Picaria and Nine Men’s Morris (both 3 in a row games), followed by Acquisitions (a capture game played on a chessboard). This pilot event helped us find our way around the venue, as well as having a first go at teaching adults how to play some of the abstract strategy games we love. We are now ready for our first paying customers on Friday 21 September 2018.