I Love To Play Games

Ward and I love to play games. No. not mind games. Board Games. We own somewhere around 70 or so and built cabinets into our Living Room when we were building our home to store them, unfortunately they never all fit there because by the time we moved in our collection had outgrown the cabinets. In our next home we plan on having a game closet (I picture the one like in the Royal Tenenbaums).

Anyways we are planning on taking a bunch of games to the beach with us in a few weeks so we made a long list and decided that it may be too long. So the other night we started playing a few games a night to see which ones we should bring along that made the list.

Here are a few quick reviews of those games.




Lord Of The Rings. I watched all the films a few times and love them. I tried to read the books but only made it through Book 1 of The Two Towers. So how does this game rate, not bad at all for those who have seen the movie a few dozen times. I think Ward had a little harder time because he read all of the books and got some things confused from the movie. I recommend it to those who have seen the movies and love trivia games (I Love Trivia Games even though I suck at them.)







The worse thing about this game is the silly name. It too is a Trivia Game with a twist. Think Outburst meets Trivial Pursuit with more clues, if that even makes sense. This game should be played with at least five players and goes really fast.





Another Trivia game, I told you I am really into these and I can't quite find one that I am really good at. Ward is definitely the Star Wars expert in this house but I somehow managed to win (could it have been Ward's hand picking of cards to read to me knowing I would guess them right and want to bring this game to the beach, probably not). Again this game isn't too bad. There is a mix of hard and easy questions but you never know which one you will get asked. I am waiting on the Harry Potter Trivial Pursuit, now that is a game I could win. Or lose.


This game has been recommended to us by several family members so we drove to Roanoke this weekend to get it so that we could bring it to the beach. We have only played two player games so far but we have not been disappointed. It is in the same vain I suppose as another family favorite, Settlers of Catan, but easier to catch on and explain to newcomers. I look forward to a four or five player game (five is the max limit on this game).

Ah, my new favorite game. I won three times in a row last night and Ward wanted to play over and over again until he beat me so finally I let him win, twice. Just to be nice.

-june

Backgammon VS Checkers

Tonight we were waiting for Ricky and Lucy to show up so Ward started playing internet Backgammon. I told him I had only played once when I was babysitting a four year old boy named Avery. He tried to teach me but I never got the hang of it. So Ward learned how to play in about fifteen minutes and decided to show me. We played 2 games and I won them both. Then he decided we should play checkers.

We love board games. We love Quelf, Balderdash, Settlers of Catan, Cranium, Catchphrase, and Risk just to name half a dozen. We usually like to play in larger groups but tonight it was just the two of us so we settled on two player games. So we played Checkers. The first game had to be thrown out because neither of us could move a piece. Then we played four games, I lost every one of them.

I don’t think I like Checkers very much.

So we went back to Backgammon and Ward won the next two games because I was still so flustered about Checkers. Finally, I regained my composure and won the fifth and final game.

I am now the Backgammon champ in our household (at least until tomorrow when Ward reads this post and demands a rematch).

The funny thing is that in the 1970’s a friend of my parents made a Backgammon/coffee table for them. When I was growing up it was always in our TV room or their bedroom. When my mom left and we sold my childhood home my dad was going to throw out the old Backgammon table but I asked if I could have it. He said he didn’t care.

Flash forward a few years. Ward and I are going to get married. He decided to take that table and refinish the entire thing and make me new Backgammon pieces. He also made me a homemade Mancala board for our Wedding gift. At the time I was the Mancala champ in our house and it was a very sweet gift complete with my future name engraved on the back. Anyways he refinished the backgammon table and we put a piece of glass on it. We continued to use it as our coffee table (despite the table looking like a piece of 1972 furniture).

Then in our last house I broke the glass top. So I put the pieces away (which means I lost them). When we moved here we kept the table and it is in our bedroom. But we have NEVER used it to play Backgammon because we had NEVER taken the fifteen minutes to learn how to play.

Now that I am the new Backgammon champ of our household I am going to refresh my search for those missing pieces and maybe start up some Backgammon championships complete with registration forms and application fees.

Oh, and I am NEVER playing Checkers again.

-june