Well, part of my delinquency in posting here on the old blog was due to going away on vacation with my extended family for a whole week.  Overall, the week was relaxing and peaceful, even if I did catch a cold.  One of the best parts of it all, of course, was the 42 plays of 14 different games I manged to get in during the week!

Now, my parents and the other "older" adults who went on this trip usually get together every week to play traditional southern card games like Canasta and Rook.  The other younger couple along with us are also big party game fans, and my wife Gwen is a borderline eurogamer, so I was hoping that we could get in a pretty good mix of games during the week.  So anyway, I thought I'd break down the games I played and talk a little bit about how they all went over with the group.

The big hit for my wife and me the whole week was definitely 10 Days in the USA.  I played it 13 times, four with the "group" and 9 more between just Gwen and myself.  I had always kinda poo-pooed this game when I had heard people talk about it, then finally picked it up because I was looking for other games my wife would like.  And boy, did she ever like it!  It's quick and light enough that we were able to play it with people from age 8 to age 66 during the week.  Sure, I admit that luck definitely plays a big part in determining the winner, but there is also some real strategy and skill involved in how you manipulate your "hand".  Of course, there's also the educational value as well, but to me it's just gravy on an already very engaging and entertaining game.

One evening, Gwen and I joined in with the Rook action as well, playing 5 games in a row.  The first was a "normal" 4-player game, while the other ones all involved 6-players (two 3-person teams).  I have always liked Rook, both because of it's simplicity and ubiquity here in the South as well as how versatile and entertaining it is.  We play the "proper" way, where the Rook card is considered a trump of value 10.5 (it takes the ten and lower but is beaten by the 11-14 of trumps).  As we repeated several time that night, "If you don't take it, you can't make it," which illustrates the importance of winning the bid and getting to "rebuild" your hand using the kitty, as well as the importance of setting trumps.  Having 6 players is definitely more luck-based than 4, but both ways were still a lot of fun!

One of the "stand-by" games for Gwen and me is still The Settlers of Catan.  We use Nicholas Borko's 2-player variant most of the time, and this week we also tried out the Fishermen of Catan expansion in 3 of our 5 games.  In short, Gwen barely ended up being the overall "Lord of Catan" this week, beating me 3 games to 2.  As always, we were pleased with the variant we use, and the Fishermen proved to be a really cool little addition to the game that added a few extra options without interfering with what makes the game so much fun. 

There were two other big hits with the whole crowd throughout the week, Wits & Wagers and Cranium Hoopla.  Gwen is no big fan of Hoopla, however, so that puts a bit of a downer on it for me.  And while it is a heck of a lot of fun and very exciting, I just don't know how you can ever win with a group of any significant size.  We tried starting with only tree cards each and having the draw pile, then we tried with just having 3 cards each.  But with 8 or so people, that's still 24 cards that you have to get in 15 minutes!  I don't see how it can happen. 

On the other hand, W&W is just sure-fire fun for pretty much any group.  We defintely had a blast, win or lose, trying both to figure out the answer to some really interesting questions as well as deciding who made the best guess.  And then there's the whole betting/push-your-luck aspect, which brings a whole other level of fun and tension into the game.  It's definitely a lot of fun and a must-own party game for anyone looking for one out there.               

I had moderate success with introducing Ca$h 'n Gun$ and Diamant to the group.  They thought both games were fun, but they just didn't capture their interest like Hoopla and W&W. David & Goliath and For Sale went a little better, but neither really excited anyone enough to ask for it again during the week.  Gwen and I also joined in on one game of Canasta, which we both enjoy but that I could not see playing regularly on a weekly basis.

Rounding out the other games Gwen and I played alone were Hive, The Pillars of the Earth, and Ricochet Robots.  Gwen hates Hive, but I had brought it "just in case" and inflicted here with one game that didn't change her opinion of it at all.  Pillars is a game that I am overall a little disappointed in, but that I think works really well with two players.  I managed to pull out a victory over Gwen in that game, which makes me 3-0 in our head-to-head battles.

Ricochet Robots was a bit of a different story.  I started off really strong, going up 5-0 in the first half of the game.  Then Gwen started plucking off chips one after another.  What she had been doing was that when I would find a route for the chip up for grabs in the earlier rounds, she would use the time to figure out a route to one of the chips we hadn't pulled yet.  The game came down to the last chip, which was one of these that she already had figured out, so she took the win.  I can't figure out if what she did is really smart or if it is a kind of cheating, but either way she kicked my butt.

The only other game that I introduced during the week was Vegas Showdown.  While it wasn't the "gamer-est" game that I brought, it was certainly the heaviest one that I planned to expose the "crowd" to.  When I finally got up the courage to pull it out, there were four of us at the table: Gwen, my Dad, Me, and one other "older" adult who had been playing several of my "new" games throughout the week.  Almost as soon as I pulled out the pieces and started explaining the game, however, I could just see this lady throw up a "wall".  I guess it just looked too complicated, so she shut off her brain and started up the mantra "I don't know what I'm doing" which lasted until she finally pulled out of the game on turn 3 or so.  

Gwen had not played before (and of course my Dad hadn't either), but they both seemed to have a pretty good grasp of how things worked.  In the end, I pulled out a win, but Dad and Gwen were pretty close on my tail, and when I asked them they both said that they liked the game, even if they didn't quite get their mind around all of the tile-placement rules (like the silly "diamonds" and all). 

Overall, I think I made some pretty good choices about which games to take on our vacation.  I had taken a handful of other games with me that we didn't get to (mainly to play just with Gwen), but I definitely think that I had a successful game-playing week.  In fact, it pushed my up to 71 total games played during the month of September - my highest total since I've been tracking on BGG!

Anybody else have any particular games that work well on family vacations?