My holiday gaming session (so far)

While almost everyone who we’re going to see on our holiday travels are folks who don’t play board games, I knew that I’d get one good chance to game when an old buddy brought his son to see us.

As I’ve written before, I packed a tiny game library of four Pack O Game games. And that was enough for us to get a couple hours of gaming in.

We got in two games of Hue, a game of SHH, a game of DIG and three or four games of GEM. The consensus was that HUE was fun, SHH was okay (good word game but no one felt like playing a word game) and DIG was really interesting.

And they both really liked GEM. GEM was the big winner by far.

To be fair to DIG, it was the last game that I taught so that might have lessened its impact. And I do think that more plays of DIG would have made them like it more. But GEM was a hit from the first play. Replays were demanded and it’s the longest game of the four (still pretty short) My gaming buddy said that the others were fun, small games but GEM felt like a ‘full’ game.

In fact, while my friend’s son has played a lot of board games, this may have been his first auction game. If it really was, it was a good introduction to auctions. (For Sale would have been better but GEM was still good) I forwarded them the black-and-white demo so they could make a copy but I bet they will be ordering their own copy before long.

This is far from the first time I’ve taken games from the Pack O Game series out. They’ve seen plenty of play at home and at conventions. However, this is the first time they’ve had to stand on their own as the entire game library and they did well.

Minimalist game packing

December is proving to be a busy month, full of traveling. More than that, I’m not going to be around any gamers during the weeks I’ll be away from home and luggage space is particularly tight.

So I am going super light as far as games are concerned. 

In addition to a deck of cards, which is pretty a default for me, I’m taking a tiny, hard plastic case that is just big enough to fit four games from the Pack O Games line. Yeah, I’m going that small.

And I’ll admit that I also am only taking four so it won’t be as expensive if something happens and I have to replace them :D

So, here’s what I’ve packed:

HUE: It’s not my favorite of the games in the series nor one of the best but it is _the_ most accessible. Teach it and play it in ten minutes while still having interesting choices.

GEM: On the other hand, I do think GEM is one of the best games. It manages to pack a solid auction game in a tiny package. By having both the money and auctioned gems tight, the game is definitely tense and one bad choice can sink you.

SHH: I’m not big into either word games or cooperative games but I think SHH, which is both, is a game that will really click for non-gamers. The fact that it is the prettiest game in the series also makes it an easy sell.

DIG: Slot number four was a tough call. I almost went with BUS since I think it is a very clever and ambitious pick-up-and-deliver game. However, DIG is cuter (non-gamers, remember) and easier to teach. And still a good pick-up-and-deliver game.

In other words, when I knew I would have to go super minimal, I chose games that I knew would work.