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Managing Contention in Family Board Games

Now being a “little” on the competitive side myself, I can actually relate to this story I found in a Utah paper today. There seems to be an abundance of poor sports in my state lately.

Incident One

A Salt Lake City woman is accused of throwing shot glasses at her husband and attempting to stab him with a cane after the two argued over a card game earlier this week. The 58-year-old woman was playing cards with her husband, daughter and her daughter’s friend … The woman pelted her husband and daughter with shot glasses. The daughter and the daughter’s friend left the house, and the woman then began hitting her husband in the head with a cane, charges state. The cane broke and the woman pointed it at her husband and threatened to stab him, according to the charges. She then found a baseball bat and began striking her husband with it. The man had to seek medical treatment for his injuries, charges state.

Incident Two

An Orem man whose luck ran out in a game of Uno was arrested Aug. 15 on suspicion of aggravated assault after he allegedly hit a woman and threatened her husband with a large kitchen knife. The 58-year-old man, who had been drinking, was playing cards in his home with his 47-year-old nephew and the nephew’s wife, 64, when he became agitated over the game, police said. He hit his nephew’s wife on the back of the head and when the couple later tried to leave, he waved a large kitchen knife at his nephew, Orem police said.

Now there must be something about being 58 years old that brings out severe aggression in card games. I have to admit to having thrown a few tantrums a time or two in some of our family board game sessions. But I can honestly say I’ve never attempted (or threatened) to stab someone over it. The worst I’ve done is throw a monopoly board at my husband, and get into a yelling match in front of his friend.

Here are some tips for managing contention when playing games (especially with family members):

1. Don’t play past midnight
2. Avoid games where there is the chance to “gang up” on one player
3. When you can feel yourself getting heated … just walk away
4. Try not to laugh when someone else is having bad luck
5. When people are having a bad game, allow them to vent about it
6. Don’t gave false sympathy to the loser, just move on to the next game
7. When all else fails, just go to bed and the next day you will remember it being a fun game night

Remember that families that play together stay together (as long as they can avoid the fighting). Hopefully you can find some fun board games for families that won’t incite this type of rage in your household

Review: Farkle

This summer at my wife’s family reunion, her sister brought a game I’d never heard of (which is an unusual thing). The game consists of six regular six-sided dice and a cup to put them in and role them. Not very exciting for your $10, but I was willing to give it a shot. Farkle is a game in the “push your luck” category. I haven’t played many games in this category, but my current favorite is Can’t Stop

Flow of Play

The game simply consists of rolling the dice to accumulate points, which I’ll explain in a second. However, you DON’T want to role a Farkle, which is essentially a role where no points are available. The fun comes in pushing your luck as far as you can because if you role a Farkle, you lose all the points you’ve earned on that turn and play passes to the next person.

You start out your turn rolling all six dice. However, as you score points, the dice you score with are taken out of play leaving you with less dice, and therefore lower odds of scoring, on your next turn. If you happen to successfully role and score with ALL your dice, you get to role again with all six.

Scoring is as follows:

• Any 5 by itself scores 50 points
• Any 1 by itself scores 100 points
• Any 3-of-a-kind scores the number of the role times 100. For example, rolling 3 threes scores 300 points.
• For each role of the same number above a 3-of-a-kind scores that number times 100. For example, if you rolled 5 threes, you would score 300 for the initial three-of-a-kind, plus 300 for each additional three.
• A straight of 1 through 6 scores 1,500 points
• Three pairs in one role scores 750 points

The first person to reach 5,000 points wins.

Fun Factor

The funnest things about this game is playing it with a lively group of people. The tension and excitement can really be fun if people are into it. There is some skill involved in understanding your odds for each role. For example, the odds of being able to score are in your favor if rolling 3 dice or more. However, don’t expect to have much control over how you do. This is not a game to get upset over if you lose.

Play on Facebook

I recently discovered that you can play Farkle on Facebook. You start out playing solo trying to get your best score over the course of 10 turns. Once you play enough you “earn” the priviledge to play real-time against other players. I’ve actually had a lot more fun playing online than I did playing in person. You can see the scores of your friends and try to beat them. There’s an odd sense of pride when you get the highest score. You can see the high scores for the current week, month, and all-time. I’d recommend checking out Farkle on Facebook more than playing in real life.

Summary

In all honesty, I wasn’t very enamored with this game. Can’t Stop is a push-your-luck game with more substance and skill in decision making. However, given the simplicity and compactness of Farkle, it’s a great mobile game that could be great to take with you. In fact, if you get rid of the cup, which is unnesccesary anyway, you could fit the six dice in your pocket or purse. In fact, if you know the rules of the game, you don’t even need to buy the game. Just scrounge up 6 dice from existing games or buy six dice from a local game store for $0.50 each. There’s really no need to pay $10 or more.

When I looked at Farkle on Amazon, I found many different sets available; travel sets, “classic” sets, pocket sets, etc. The base set retails on Amazon for $9.27.

Give Farkle a try on Facebook before you buy. If you like Farkle, it could be a nice edition to your family game collection.

Ligretto – A face-paced card game that plays up to 12 people

The Purple Pawn blog recently posted about a game I’ve seen before but didn’t know anything about called Ligretto. It sounds like a party card game that is fast-paced and fun. The unique thing about this game is that you can play it with up to 12 players. Other than Mafia (a.k.a. Werewolf), I don’t know of any other games that can play so many.

I definitely want to give this one a try. We’ve had a number of get-togethers lately where we wanted to be able to accommodate a large number of people in our game playing. It’s hard to find games that can play more than 5 or 6 players. There is one catch with Ligretto; you have to buy three packs of the game to get up to 12 players since each set alows 4 players each. There’s a blue, red, and green set and as far as I can tell there’s no major difference between the three.

Jodi actually knows how to play a similar party card game that can use generic rook or playing cards. I’m not sure how many players it can accommodate, but I’ll try to get her to write about it and teach everyone how to play.

First Looks: Family Talk

I just learned about a game called Family Talk, published by Around the Table games. It’s an extremely simple concept and really can only loosely be classified as a game. The game consists of cards attached to a ring (really more like a carabiner). Each card has a question written on it and then the whole family can discuss it.

Here are some example questions:

• “If your house caught on fire, how would you escape and where would you meet once outside?”
• “What was dinnertime like when you were young?”
• “What is one thing about each of your family members that makes you proud?”
• “What makes you feel the most welcomed when you come home?”

While the concept as a game might seem a little bland, I actually love the general concept of having a set of questions to spark a conversation. My wife and I own a book called The Book of Questions which is essentially the same concept, but the questions aren’t necessarily focused on the family. Instead they often are outlandish questions that are entertaining in and of themselves. For example, “For a person you loved deeply, would you be willing to move to a distant country knowing there would be little chance of seeing your friends and family again?” We love to pull out this book while traveling or on vacation and start discussing them. It’s a great way to get to know someone better and we always have an enjoyable time.

The great thing about the Family Talk game is that it gets your kids to talk. I’ve heard that with teenage kids, there’s often a feeling that the parents have nothing in common with them. This could be a great way to start up conversations that are non-threatening and could help to open up the lines of communication.

This could also be a great game for road trips since it requires no board or pieces. It can be played virtually anywhere.

Around the Table Games actually has several versions of this game; for friends, camping, teens, and grandparents. They also have a second edition of the core Family Talk game.

Family Talk retails for $9.99 and is available at Amazon.com or the publishers website. The other games in the line can be found at the publishers website.

Family game night popularity increases; Games improve kids’ math skills

Here’s an interesting article published by the Pittsburgh Post Gazette on Sunday. It highlights the ability of board games to bring families together. At the end of the article, there’s a snippet that mentions a study conducted by a Carnegie-Mellon professor that shows that board games can improve math skills. Certain number skills increase as much as 40%. Just one more reason to get your family board games on.

Board game sales up 10%

From time to time we like to update our readers as to the state of the board game industry in general. Recently Market Watch reported that U.S. board game sales are up 10% in the first six months of 2009. The data was collected from the NPD research group.

This helps to confirm that board games sales tend to thrive during a down economy. The value you get out of a board game, particularly in terms of hours of entertainment, far outshine most other entertainment products. Board games are a great way for the family to get together for quality, interactive entertainment on a tight budget.

I expect that board game sales will continue to grow over the next 5 years quite dramatically. The new breed of Euro-games have yet to really penetrate the mass market. When they do, growth rates should spurt.

Read the original Market Watch article

Color Scheme: Great idea, bad execution?

Board Game News recently posted a review of the game Color Scheme published by Educational Insights. When I read this review I LOVED the idea of this game. It’s like Connect Four where you try to match several colors in a row. The unique twist of this game is that the color tiles are translucent and you can play multiple colors in one spot so that the COLOR CHANGES! What a great concept and a great way to teach kids about color basics.

I was sad then to read this review and learn that the game play and game construction were lacking. Most people don’t really realize or appreciate all the play testing that often goes on before a game is released to insure the rules work well and create an enjoyable gaming experience. It sounds like our friends at Educational Insights didn’t do enough game testing. Hopefully they’ll learn their lesson and republish this great idea down the road with the needed improvements.

Color Scheme retails for $34.99, but can be purchased new at Amazon for $23.45

Have any of our readers played this game? What did you think?

I LOVE CRANIUM

I finally found a game that my sisters will play with me.  Enter CRANIUM!  YAY!  We’ve played the original Cranium and Turbo Cranium and both are fabulous board games for families that allow 8 or more players. Now I just have to convince them to start on some euro-games.  That will be a tougher sell

Posted via email from Jodi’s posterous

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