8 Year Old Holds His Own At Pub Games Night!
As the group gathered they kicked off with one of our most popular fillers,
Straw. Straw is an excellent card game that is simple, fast and has sufficient screwage to make it great fun. It is also a great way of helping children with their maths based skills.
With George joining us (Simon and Laura’s 8 year old son) the consensus was to go for a slightly simpler game next (although as will be seen later this really wasn’t necessary) and
Abandon Ship was selected. This is an amusing, but lightweight, race game about rats abandoning a sinking ship. Each player has 3 rats to look after. However the fun comes from the fact that the rats are shared and nobody knows who is looking after which rats. As the water level rises sadly the slowest rats get washed away. However the danger for the first rat on deck (the rats climb / race through 50 deck levels) is that it will get trampled by the passengers who are also trying to get off the ship; a close game that was won by George.
Next up at Simon’s suggestions was
Infinite City, a game that I would not immediately have picked to play with somebody as young as George but at another level doesn’t surprise me given experiences with other children from families who play lots of games.
Infinite City is a tile laying game where each tile represents one of a number of different types of buildings each of which has some text narrative at the bottom of the tile explaining its special powers when placed in the city. As you place a tile you also place a marker in your player colour and it is these markers that indicate ownership of building which at the game end give victory points. In addition to these points you also score one point for each marker that is connected to 3 or more of its own colour. This was a game George clearly understood and was more than comfortable reading and understanding the text as well as making appropriate decisions! Whilst George didn’t win he competed well at and needed little help and when dad offered help George generally responded with a reasoned and logical argument for his actions.
The final game was
The Dwarf King (reviewed
here) and is best summarised by Martin’s comment that he would pay good money not to play it again. This is because, I think, that in the final hand the previous scores where completely reversed and the looser at the end of round two became the winner. It may be fun but balanced it is not, particularly if you don’t play the recommended number of hands (put no. in here?) where some of the big swings may get evened out
More photo's of the evening can be seen
here.
Our next event at the
Crow and Gate (please note note NOT the Blue Anchor), Crowborough is in two weeks time on Sunday 3rd March starting at
7.00pm - £1 per head. More details can be seen on our Facebook Page
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