Games

[Winston Legthigh]

Who out there likes to play board games, cards, dice, etc?

What are your favorites?

 

In the past few years, I discovered a whole new world of board games out there, mostly German: Power Grid, Puerto Rico, Agricola.

 

Power Grid has become a family favorite: The board is a map (Germany on one side, US on the other) - you take turns, managing your cash by bidding on power plants, buying raw resources, and then paying for connections to new cities. Anyone else heard of this one?

 

There's a local bar that hosts a Euchre night, which I want to participate in, but can't get my wife into it (and euchre sucks without a good partner).

Cribbage?

Backgammon?

 

I've been into board games as far back as I can remember, from Chutes and Ladders to Axis and Allies.

[bleedorange]

I love board games, card games, etc. However, we don't play them as much anymore because I usually win and my wife can't stand losing. Most of the games we play now are with our daughter. She loves Go Fish and Old Maid and Candy Land, etc.

 

I've always loved Spades and Hearts and play that with my family every time we get together. We also throw in random other party games (Apples to Apples, Battle of the Sexes, Imaginiff), but steer clear of anything involving trivia or strategy, because I usually win those every time too.

 

There is a great Cribbage app out there for your phone. I usually play that when I want to kill some time. Finding a Cribbage opponent is even harder than finding a good Spades or Euchre partner.

[Winston Legthigh]

There is a great Cribbage app out there for your phone. I usually play that when I want to kill some time. Finding a Cribbage opponent is even harder than finding a good Spades or Euchre partner.

 

What's the name/developer of it?

 

I've been looking for a good cribbage game on my phone. The one I have - the computer player isn't great, but the interface is nice.

I have yet to find a good euchre ap, or hearts ap.

[bleedorange]

This is the one I use:

 

http://www.cribbagepro.net/

 

It could be the same one you're talking about, but I find it adequate enough on the Advanced level.

[Lammycat]

Backgammon is awesome, but Acey-Deucey is better.

 

Dominoes

Spades

Trivial Pursuit

Trivial Pursuit Slam

Scrabble

Gin

Rummy

...and any game that I can work in undressing as an added rule to get my fiance half-/non-clad by the end of the game is great.

[KevinG]

huge fan of dominos, I play a bastardized version of Mexican Train called Chicken-Foot.

 

Also love me some Uno and Yatzee with my son.

[anthony]

My friends and I played a ton of spades. Great game.

[Winston Legthigh]

Is Spades a regional thing?

 

I know I've heard of Euchre as a Great Lakes area game.

 

Never played Acey-Deucey, but looked up the description. The single thing I love most about backgammon - the double die, is removed...

[bleedorange]

It might be. I know that I had never heard of Euchre until I dated a girl from Michigan.

[ih8music]

Uno. my (6 & 8 yr old) kids are obsessed with it. They actually created a "mystery card" where it allows you to swap your hand with another player. Pretty awesome addition; the ultimate f-you to someone about to go out.

[Winston Legthigh]

Uno. my (6 & 8 yr old) kids are obsessed with it. They actually created a "mystery card" where it allows you to swap your hand with another player. Pretty awesome addition; the ultimate f-you to someone about to go out.

 

There's a Uno-on-steroids version (that I think is in the Uno rulebook - I'm certain we didn't invent it) that if you can play a card - go for it, out of turn. You have to be quick, but when our family played it - it was a blast. Play resumes on the person to the right or left of the last person who played. It's controlled chaos.

 

We have another family game, "Oh Hell", hard to describe - it's a trick-taking game, with bids.

 

Heavy Swearing during cards is required. My wife, who comes from a family that's free of blue-language, blushed like crazy the first time both of my parents were calling each other cocksucker-motherfuckers during gameplay. In fact, the word "cocksucker" is used as a verb during cardplay, as in "you totally cocksuckered me by playing that card!"

[theashtraysays]

Euchre is a big deal in Indiana as well. Fun game, quick and not too complicated.

 

Our current favorite card game is 31 which is also a quick / fun / easy game.

 

 

 

(null)

[bleedorange]

There's a Uno-on-steroids version (that I think is in the Uno rulebook - I'm certain we didn't invent it) that if you can play a card - go for it, out of turn. You have to be quick, but when our family played it - it was a blast. Play resumes on the person to the right or left of the last person who played. It's controlled chaos.

 

We have another family game, "Oh Hell", hard to describe - it's a trick-taking game, with bids.

 

Heavy Swearing during cards is required. My wife, who comes from a family that's free of blue-language, blushed like crazy the first time both of my parents were calling each other cocksucker-motherfuckers during gameplay. In fact, the word "cocksucker" is used as a verb during cardplay, as in "you totally cocksuckered me by playing that card!"

 

Oh man, my family played Oh Hell all the time. That was greatness.

 

We played this version: (from Wikipedia)

 

In the Oh Hell variation (aka the You Bid variation), the first hand is played with one card dealt to each player. On each succeeding deal one more card is dealt out to each player, until there aren't enough cards for another round. After this, the number of cards per player decreases by one every round. The game is complete when the last round (with one card per player) has been played. For example, a four-player match of Oh Hell consists of twenty-three deals, from hand size 1 up to 12 (forty-eight cards dealt and one turned face up for trump; 13 cards cannot be dealt, as there would be no card remaining to declare trump) and back down to 1. Three-player and double-deck variants go up to a maximum hand size of 15 cards. In one common variant, exactly thirteen hands are played—the final hand, in which each player is dealt 13 cards, is played without a trump suit (or by cutting the deck to determine trump). One variation is to make the maximum number of rounds on the way up no greater than 7, 8, or 9 rounds (thus, even with four players, the players could opt to have the pattern of cards be 1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8-7-6-5-4-3-2-1, as playing 12 or 13 rounds up and then down again might be too lengthy for some). A sub-variation for a small number of players (three or four) uses a step in the jump, such as three players opting for the pattern to be 1-3-5-7-9-11-13-15-13-11-9-7-5-3-1. Another variation consists of the pattern 12-11-10-9-8-7-6-5-4-3-2-1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8-9-10-11-12, though this version takes longer to play: in a 4-player game, starting from "1" deals a total of 144 tricks, while starting from "12" yields 155 tricks. This also assumes using the entire 52-card deck, not an abbreviated game.

[bleedorange]

We also played this a lot, too:

 

Shanghai rum

[gogo]

We played something similar to Oh Hell, we called it Hellbridge. Never with that many hands, though! Hellbridge was 10 cards per player, tops, down to the hand where everyone got dealt a single card.

 

In Ireland they play something called 25, it's a bridge-style card game, but I could never pick up the rules to that one.

[Queen Amaranthine]

I love board games, card games, etc. However, we don't play them as much anymore because I usually win and my wife can't stand losing.

 

Ha, that is familiar in my house too--if my strategic-thinking husband would let me win once in awhile, maybe we'd play more board games. It's the flip side with video games, though--apparently my fingers are faster than my brain. We had fun playing a virtual pool 8-ball game until I mastered it rapidly and won every game, then, so much for that one!

 

My favorite board game is Trivial Pursuit. I have a Trivial Pursuit book edition that I haven't played yet--kind of need the right audience to join me in that one. Pictionary and Uno are faves too. Best game app on my ipod touch is Firefly Hero--very addictive.

 

My daughter likes Candyland. My son likes an insect bingo we have. There's a game on the Nickjr website called Wubbzy's Underwater Adventure that is silly but a lot of fun, even for grown kids like me. I love to play it and watch my kids play. You accumulate tons of points so you can finish the game rather than get snuffed out, so my young kids get lots of hand-eye coordination practice and don't get frustrated with it.

[lamradio]

If anyone is into Civil War games, the game that I work on got picked up by matrix games:

 

http://www.matrixgames.com/news/960/Scourge.of.War:.Gettysburg.and.Expansions.Now.Available!

[OOO]

I'm a Settlers of Catan man myself. I recently tried out Carcassonne and that was cool too. But settlers, man. Settlers.

[froggie]

i still cant get enough of of Uno!

[Fritz]

Uno. my (6 & 8 yr old) kids are obsessed with it. They actually created a "mystery card" where it allows you to swap your hand with another player. Pretty awesome addition; the ultimate f-you to someone about to go out.

 

Man, I laughed so hard at this. That's a great idea!

[froggie]

Man, I laughed so hard at this. That's a great idea!

 

[ih8music]

Man, I laughed so hard at this. That's a great idea!

 

It really is. Makes for a very interesting game. They just took one of the regular wild cards and put a big "M" in the middle of it. Then, when you play it you have to say who you're playing it against, pick the new color before looking at their cards, and then exchange hands. And of course, if you're switching with someone with only one card you have to say "Uno" as soon as you take possession of the hand. I forget to do that easily 50% of the time.

[PopTodd]

Personally, I love Scrabble.

 

But my 11-y.o. loves Sorry and Monopoly, so I play a lot of that.

Chess, too. I am a horrible chess player, so he beats me a lot. Legit.

[Lammycat]

We played Egyptian Rat Fuck a lot when I lived in New Hampshire with young hippie freaks. Great game.

[OOO]

We played Egyptian Rat Fuck a lot when I lived in New Hampshire with young hippie freaks. Great game.

 

I think The Man toned this down by the time I started playing it because it went by Egyptian Rat Screw in my day.