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.

How SHH surprised me

I have to admit that I went into SHH with very low expectations. It is part of Pack O Game, a series of micro games that I have been very impressed by. However, it is a cooperative game and a word game, both genres that I am relatively indifferent to. There are games in both categories that I love, like Pandemic, Hanabi, Scrabble or Buy Word. But I don't go out of my way for them.

However, the second series of Pack O Game is coming out and I want to be a completist and play all of the first set. So when we had an out-of-state visitor who really loves cooperative games, I figured that it was the perfect opportunity to play SHH.

(Spoiler: it was very good!)

Like every game in the series, SHH is made up of 30 cards that are at third the width of the normal playing cards. So you end up with the tidy little box the size of a pack of gum. Twenty six of the cards show the letters of the alphabet while the other four are pass cards.

I have to pause a note that these are the prettiest cards in the entire series. Each one, in addition to showing the letter, has a bright and colorful photograph of something that starts with that letter. They really are nice looking.

Gameplay is very simple. The object of the game is to make words, one letter at a time, scoring points for every letter you successfully

use in a word. But, during the entire game, no one is allowed to say anything.

You set aside the vowel cards. They are double-sided and you place the side that has plus one facedown. Then, you do you out all twenty-one consonants to the players. And everyone gets one pass card. Now you are ready to play.

On your turn, you can do one of three things. Add a letter from your hand or one of the vowels. Flip your pass card over and skip your turn. Score the current word and start a new word.

Score a word, you put your thumb up, since you aren't allowed to talk. If everyone else puts their thumb up too, you score the word. The reason why someone would give a thumb down is if they think it isn't a real word. That's when you get the dictionary. If the word is scored, all of the consonants are put to one side has points. The vowels are put back in their row and, if the word was at least five letters long, you flip them over so they are worth a point.

The game ends when either you run out of consonants, hopefully scoring the last word at the same time, or if a word can't be scored because it isn't. A real word.. You get one point for every constant successfully used and one point for every vowel they got flipped. Thus, the highest score you can possibly get is twenty six points.

As I already spoiled, I was surprised at how good SHH was. It doesn't take any time at all to play, particularly if you mess up and can't spell a word early. However, there is a lot of tension in the game. 

The silence is keyed to the game. If you could just talk, there wouldn't be a game. But since you have to be silent, there is a lot of desperation in the game and it is really exciting when you successfully make a word.

And SHH has a very tight economy of letters. There is only one of each letter in the game and you will only use each consonant once. That makes for a brutally tight game.

Don't get me wrong. I knew from just reading the words that SHH would work as a game, as long as people didn't cheat about words being real. What I didn't expect was how much excitement and fun the game will turn out to be.

Pack O Game continues to surprise me and prove to be one of the best purchases I've made in the last couple years. The last game I have to play from the original series is GEM and I have high expectations for that.

https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/164158/shh

A visitor gives us a chance for some micro games

We are having a couple of out-of-town friends visit us, actually overlapping. And, while most of the time will be spent seeing sites and having quality toddler time, a little bit of gaming is going to creep in.

On the second night of Greg's visit, our toddler obligingly fell asleep early so we were able to get in a decent selection of micro games.

SHH, part of the Pack O Game series, is a silent cooperative game where you build words one letter at a time. You can only use each vowel once per word and each consonant once per game. 

I have to admit had low expectations for the game. And I really wanted to get it played because I want to play all the games in the first series of Pack O Games before the second one comes out. But, while I do have some I really like, cooperative games and word games really aren't a big focus for me. But we ended up having a lot of fun with it. There was a lot of tension in it and we played it a second time, where we totally bombed.

I then pulled out HUE, a tile-laying game that is my usual game to introduce people to Pack O Games. It is very fast and simple but the simple twist of getting all your hand at the start of the game and your last card being which colors you score makes it very solid. As usual, it went very well.

We ended with my homemade copy of Cunning Folk, which is like Coup for two to four players with just nine cards. Lots of lying and bluffing. Don't get me wrong, it is not as good as Coup. But the fact that it plays down to two and still gives me that feeling makes it a keeper. We got in two games of that and called it a night.