Start Them Young

I think I mentioned before that we have recently been having the loft insulated, this meant all the stuff in the loft had to be brought down and we have lots of it! Alice had mostly games and books stacked in her room and was interested in trying her hand at a few of them and as we have played a few games with them already (Take It Easy and Gallop Royal) with simplified rules we were happy to give it a go.

When Cath and myself were regulars at MannorCon and MidCon we used to take Looping Louie for the Friday or Saturday night late sessions. Nothing like seeing grown ups play kids games! So it was strangely right that we should play this game first. I remember it as lots of fun and yes the kids loved it, it's been in the loft all the time we have lived here, (13 years) and really we should have pulled it down before but you forget these things. Joseph at going on 5 is a natural at this, he picks a player (usually Daddy) and wipes them out first then moves onto the next player. Yes he can judge how to bounce the plane onto your chickens without you being able to respond. When he is interested he wins 60+ % of the games!!!

Alice had spied the horse game so wanted to have a go. Now First Past The Post is one of those games that many gamers would pass over as 1. it's Waddington's and 2. it's so obviously targeted at kids and as such it's got to be all chance right? No wrong, lots of bluffing and edging your bets can give this game a real replay value. Back in the day when I had a regular 4-5 player sessions we used to pull this out as a nice finisher or a filler between longer games. Best of three or five never seemed to take over an hour at best and the need to change style of play made it more interesting. It was also nice to play something in English that was fun as at that time most of the games were in German with photocopy rules in English. Alice who just turned 7 just over a week ago really got the idea, though she seemed to need you to know what horse she was backing ! She won the first game whilst Joseph took great delight in stuffing Daddy at every opportunity. Joseph really did not get this game as shown in the second game were he constantly sent the white horse backwards much to his sisters annoyance until he was forced to play his own horse card which was the white horse. So intent on stuffing big sister that he did so to himself. Well we had plenty of fun which is what it's all about.

To finish up we played Ker-Plunk, a game I had bought Cath as a joke 8+ years ago along with Twister. It was rather strange breaking the wrap off it after all these years of sitting unplayed. This was the winner of the night as both kids really enjoyed it and Joseph still thinks he won as he had the most marbles whilst Alice and me shared the same amount so I guess you could say we all won.

When it came to putting everything back in the loft we choose games that we think we can play with the kids with a few tweaks and other games that we can play two player. I am also hopeful that whilst we can't get the old gang back together again we may get a few other gaming friends to try Euro's and get some more gaming done. No we will not be able to go back to the full day long sessions of yesteryear but a few hours of games and nibbles can't be bad really can it?