I haven't yet met a girl gamer who can resist a pretty game. Gems, stuffed animals, colorful pictures, adorable and hilarious actions -- all of these demand attention from the fairer half of the population.
Tonight's game is called Gems of Virtue, a board game brought to you by P&G Games. If you've ever played Ticket to Ride, this game is pretty much exactly like it, with some extra rules to speed up gameplay. For those that haven't played it? Allow me to explain.
Every player selects a game piece color and is dealt a hand of five cards. The cards are all different colors relating to paths on the board. The paths go everywhere and nowhere, and the goal is to complete a line from one part of the board to another using the paths as bridges. In this case, they lead from one virtue to another. One player might need a line from Integrity to Mercy, another from Knowledge to Wisdom, and a third beginning at Devotion and ending at Respect. Each completed bridge and line earns points towards winning the game.
Gems of Virtue was given points on the Adorable Scale for using plastic gems as player pieces instead of normal counters. For plastic pieces, they come in very pretty colors such as purple, green, red, orange, yellow, and blue. The board itself is laid out in a circular pattern and is very colorful and pleasing to the eye.
All in all? It's a very pretty game. And I like that. I play pretty games. And I'm not the only girl gamer who does.
Wednesday, August 18, 2010
Tuesday, August 10, 2010
The best game title yet? Crokinole.
Ah, the end of Gencon has come and gone. What other kind of fascinating games did I see? Let me think...
There was another board game, called Crokinole, that stood out to me as interesting. Apparently it's not new, but has been around for years, dating to the 1860s. Crokinole played on a circular board with three rings around the circumference and a circle in the middle. These are the scoring rings. The one closest to the outside is one point, the second has five points, the middle ring is ten points, and anyone who makes it to the circle scores fifteen points. Each player has twelve disks to shoot and try to land in the circle in the middle of the board. But there's a few catches to this.
1) Each disk, minus the first one played, has to bounce of another player's disk. So each player constantly tries to flick their disk into the circle, and consequently bounce another's out of it.
2) There are eight pegs spaced evenly around the circle to make this a bit more difficult. Not only is the goal to hit another player's disk, but to make a very careful path around the pegs as well.
3) If a disk runs wild, doesn't hit another player's disk, or hits a peg and bounces back into another ring, it's counted as a failure, and taken out of play.
Kind of a tricky little game, but GREAT fun to play. I was a little wary of it at first, as the board is large and kind of expensive, but it's simple to learn and entertains 2-4 players for about thirty minutes. I would definitely recommend looking into getting this one.
There was another board game, called Crokinole, that stood out to me as interesting. Apparently it's not new, but has been around for years, dating to the 1860s. Crokinole played on a circular board with three rings around the circumference and a circle in the middle. These are the scoring rings. The one closest to the outside is one point, the second has five points, the middle ring is ten points, and anyone who makes it to the circle scores fifteen points. Each player has twelve disks to shoot and try to land in the circle in the middle of the board. But there's a few catches to this.
1) Each disk, minus the first one played, has to bounce of another player's disk. So each player constantly tries to flick their disk into the circle, and consequently bounce another's out of it.
2) There are eight pegs spaced evenly around the circle to make this a bit more difficult. Not only is the goal to hit another player's disk, but to make a very careful path around the pegs as well.
3) If a disk runs wild, doesn't hit another player's disk, or hits a peg and bounces back into another ring, it's counted as a failure, and taken out of play.
Kind of a tricky little game, but GREAT fun to play. I was a little wary of it at first, as the board is large and kind of expensive, but it's simple to learn and entertains 2-4 players for about thirty minutes. I would definitely recommend looking into getting this one.
Friday, August 6, 2010
In the Beginning
So I thought that the best place to begin a gamer girl blog was to start at the source of All Things Games during the summer: Gencon, run by Gen Con LLC. It's a four-day event, held in Indianapolis, Indiana, and thousands of board, card, RPG and LARP games are played during this time. New games, old games, weird games and just downright hilarious games entertain over 30,000 people from all over the world.
What better place to start?
This year at Gencon, TONS of new games were rolled out for demonstration. One of them is called "the Lords of Vegas", brought to you by Mayfair Games. Each person plays a Las Vegas hotel owner, and the goal is to be the boss of the biggest casinos by the end of the game. The casinos are built from the ground up from parking lots, but beware -- if one of your opponents has their eye on your casino, with a higher die roll, they might be able to take it over! Lady Luck favors the rich in this game of deals, gambling and suspicion.
"Lords of Vegas" is one of the better board games I've tried thus far. Anyone who enjoys what my family calls "screw your neighbor" games (the games where the best solution will completely mess up another player, like a mean game of Uno) will LOVE it. The mechanics for "Lords of Vegas" are much different than anything else I'm used to playing. For example, during the game, any one player can trade anything -- property, money, etc -- at any time. In the game I played, I decided I wanted a property that was next to a casino I already owned, so I could extend it and make the casino bigger. The bad news was that the property I wanted belonged to another player. But I held a property on the other side of the board, next to one of HIS casinos. And the cost to build on both properties was the same. So I made him a deal, swapped properties, threw it a little money, and it was done. I could now revamp my casino to my heart's content.
There are other new items, not only games, that showed up at Gencon this year. Anyone who's played Carcassonne (Rio Grande Games) will remember Meeples, the cute little figures that can be farmers, knights, robbers and monks. (For anybody who doesn't know about them, here's a link: http://www.meeplepeople.com/products.php?cat=44 ) This year, the most adorable thing I've found so far are stuffed Meeples in red, blue, green, black, purple, yellow, orange and pink. Find them here: http://www.meeplepeople.com/proddetail.php?prod=PlushAll8
So that is Gencon, part 1. Welcome to powderpuffgamer, we're glad you joined us! :)
What better place to start?
This year at Gencon, TONS of new games were rolled out for demonstration. One of them is called "the Lords of Vegas", brought to you by Mayfair Games. Each person plays a Las Vegas hotel owner, and the goal is to be the boss of the biggest casinos by the end of the game. The casinos are built from the ground up from parking lots, but beware -- if one of your opponents has their eye on your casino, with a higher die roll, they might be able to take it over! Lady Luck favors the rich in this game of deals, gambling and suspicion.
"Lords of Vegas" is one of the better board games I've tried thus far. Anyone who enjoys what my family calls "screw your neighbor" games (the games where the best solution will completely mess up another player, like a mean game of Uno) will LOVE it. The mechanics for "Lords of Vegas" are much different than anything else I'm used to playing. For example, during the game, any one player can trade anything -- property, money, etc -- at any time. In the game I played, I decided I wanted a property that was next to a casino I already owned, so I could extend it and make the casino bigger. The bad news was that the property I wanted belonged to another player. But I held a property on the other side of the board, next to one of HIS casinos. And the cost to build on both properties was the same. So I made him a deal, swapped properties, threw it a little money, and it was done. I could now revamp my casino to my heart's content.
There are other new items, not only games, that showed up at Gencon this year. Anyone who's played Carcassonne (Rio Grande Games) will remember Meeples, the cute little figures that can be farmers, knights, robbers and monks. (For anybody who doesn't know about them, here's a link: http://www.meeplepeople.com/products.php?cat=44 ) This year, the most adorable thing I've found so far are stuffed Meeples in red, blue, green, black, purple, yellow, orange and pink. Find them here: http://www.meeplepeople.com/proddetail.php?prod=PlushAll8
So that is Gencon, part 1. Welcome to powderpuffgamer, we're glad you joined us! :)
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