Gaming With Grandma - 31

Another Saturday morning gaming session with three generations of my family; my Mum (Grandma), my 6 year old daughter Maddie, and myself. Today was Maddie's choice of games.

For our first game Maddie chose Nobody But Us Chickens. This is a fast-paced, trick-taking card game where players earn points by capturing chickens with their predators (foxes and rats) or protecting chickens with their guard dog. We always enjoy this game. Grandma came 1st with 31 points, I came 2nd with 30 points and Maddie came 3rd with 11 points.

After that Maddie chose Pass the Pigs. This is basically a push-your-luck game where you throw two pigs and score according to the positions in which they land. First person to 100 points wins. Grandma had the lucky throws today coming 1st on 100 points, Maddie 2nd on 46 and myself 3rd on 23.

Grandma wins in style with a double razorback!

Next up Maddie chose The Simpsons Slam Dunk game. In this game the dealer keeps turning over cards until one of the other players slams the slam dunk board and shouts out "Slam dunk!" thus taking all the face-up cards. The trick is to wait for enough good cards to be revealed and make the slam before the other players. As there were only three of us that meant you were only ever trying to beat one other player each round. Winner is the first person to win two hands. We chose to play only the one hand. Grandma came 1st on 32 points, I came second on 31 points and Maddie came 3rd on 24 points.

Following that game Maddie decided to play Pick Picknic. This is another family favourite and one we've played several times since it arrived as a present at Xmas 2005. It has a very similar theme to Nobody But Us Chickens but in this game players are vying for corn in 6 poultry yards. Points are scored by playing fowl to eat the corn or foxes to eat the fowl. It's another game where you try to outguess your opponents. I came 1st with 56 points, Maddie came 2nd on 54 points and Grandma came 3rd on 52 points. It was a very close game.

Maddie then wanted to play a couple of card games from the Kidz Cardz tin I'd bought her for a previous birthday. First up was Go Fish which Grandma won. We then played Old Maid and Grandma was left with the old maid card.

Our final game of the day was Loco! which I suggested. Loco! is a quick and simple game by Reiner Knizia. There are five different coloured chips, with six cards, zero through five, in each of the colours. The cards are dealt out, and then players take turns playing a card and taking any available chip. When one colour has all six cards played on it, then the game is over, and players use the last card played in each category to value their chips. The highest total value wins.

We played three games of Loco!

Game 1: Maddie 1st on 16, myself 2nd on 12 and Grandma 3rd on 8.
Game 2: Maddie 1st on 26, Grandma 2nd on 9 and myself 3rd on 6.
Game 3: Grandma 1st on 37, myself 2nd on 34 and Maddie 3rd on 29.

I was very impressed with the way Maddie played. We ended up calling her 'Loco Queen' due to the amount of times she frustrated the plans of Grandma and myself by slapping down a Loco! card on a colour in which we had both invested heavily.