How To Pass Time In Hospital - Part 2

Games are used as a tool to distract and amuse the patient, by a 10 year old!

This is a follow up article to our first visit when Gwen had lots of work done on her left foot including three nice green pins inserted into her toes! On this occasion her right foot was the target of the surgeon’s knife!

On this occasion things went less to plan (as they are wont to do when spending time in hospital) and so even we couldn’t resist the siren call of the TV and succumbed to the delights of watching England play the first half of their world cup game against Scotland before she was taken off into the operating theatre. I watched the second half alone but the theatre sister kept Gwen appraised of the score whilst they were waiting for the “block” (local anaesthetic) to take effect on her leg.

Once I had recovered from the stress of England’s performance on the rugby pitch and Gwen had recovered from the sedation we felt up to playing a couple of games that were not too “taxing”. On this occasion we started with two games of Archaeology (possibly one of the smallest and lightest games we have). This is an interesting card game that deserves more use, although it is let down in my view by the somewhat bland artwork. True to form Gwen won the first game but I did manage to recover and win the second.

Match Report 14th March 2011

As expected we had a much smaller turn out with Ian heading down to the West Country, Crispin holidaying in Miami (if he can break himself away from the paper and his comfy chair he may even get a game with Tom Vasel and the other members of the Miami Boardgames Meetup Group) and shortly heading to the Bahamas for a long weekend and family wedding before returning to Miami to recover for a further 10 days – a tough life!

On this occasion we were joined by Malcolm and Daniella plus Ben back from a weekend sailing down to the Scilly Isles as part of his preparation for crewing on a race around the UK, starting in a few weeks. Apologies were also received from Pauline and Matt.

Dominion (Age 10+, 2-4 players, 30 min playing time)
Given the disturbing failure of our favourite game of the moment during our last meeting we were keen to overcome this trauma and so launched straight into another game of Dominion; on this occasion using the card configuration ‘Interaction’. This is in reality a euphemism for

Games for Christmas 2010

What to do with guests over Christmas / Some Christmas Gift Ideas 

If you are thinking computers games and Wii, DON’T; Monopoly, Trivial Pursuit, Scrabble etc NO; the miriade of commercial games based on popular films or TV shows STOP !

There is whole world of great games out there waiting for you, just not in the high street stores. They are less well known because they are rarely sold by high street retailers (with the exception of specialist games shops) and so are largely unknown to the UK public. If you want to buy any games mentioned below (prices will range from under £6 to £40) then there is a list of internet retailers on the right hand side of my blog titled Where to get the games.

As we approach the festive season our minds turn inevitably to the various ideas for presents and there are a number of lists out there of games that would work for Christmas (as just a couple of examples Mark Rivera's list is here and the BoardGameGeek recommendations here), so I thought I would approach this blog from a slightly different angle and look at what games you might want in the house for others to enjoy over the festive season.

Modern board and card games come in many forms but the best ones are not designed around hackneyed old games or some cult TV program / film of the moment, but rather stand out from the aforementioned games because frankly they are better. You know the saying ‘a pet is for life not just Christmas’ well so it should be with modern games. The games talked about in this blog post and my blog generally are great fun and hopefully you will be tempted to play them at other times of the year, not just over Christmas.

To those who say 'they don't like games' or have had bad experiences in the past with games I would make the following points concerning these games:

• You don’t need to be good at spelling, general knowledge, computers or anything else to play them and have fun. I guess maths and a little logic will help but we all need a lot more of these elements to survive in the modern world than you will find required in the games listed below. 
• There is not a dice in sight, the games are about how you deal with the situations and cards you are dealt not about trying to roll a 6 or indeed any other number.. 
• The games are more about building than destruction, meaning that direct conflict between players should not be something to worry about, particularly if everybody remembers that when playing games it is more important to enjoy the journey and have fun than win at the expense of ruining the journey for the other players. 
• There are games listed below that are in all probability unlike any games you have played to date.

This blog post is divided into three elements, so you can just go to the part that interests you:

1. Quick Games for Christmas Morning
2. Fun Games for Christmas Afternoon
3. After the presents – Boxing Day
4. Conclusion

Quick Games for Christmas Morning 
With people coming and going and a focus on food preparation you may need ways of amusing and distracting people for 20/30 minutes at a time. The following are some simple games that are quick to teach and will amuse both young and old: