Gaming With Grandma - 41

Another Saturday morning gaming with my mother (AKA Grandma) and my daughter (AKA Maddie).

Our first game was chosen by Maddie - Burg Appenzell. In this game your mice run through the castle looking for matching cheese tiles. If you have two of your mice on matching cheese tiles you receive that cheese. First player to find 4 different cheeses wins the game. Grandma won with 4, I came 2nd with 2 and Maddie came 3rd with 1.

On a side note I was surprised to see that Burg Appenzell's name has been changed to Chateau Roquefort on the BGG database due to that being the title of the Rio Grande English language printing of the game.

Our second game of the morning was For Sale. This is one of our favourite short games. In the first part of the game each player bids on property cards and then in the second part of the game they try to sell their properties for the highest cheque values. Maddie came 1st with $80,000, I came 2nd with $72,000, and Grandma came 3rd with $66,000.

Our final game of the morning was Razzia! This is the German version which I recently got in a combined order from Germany with some other Brisbane gamers. I had the English rules translation and the components are language-independent so we were good to go. We decided to only play one round.

This a Reiner Knizia designed game. I've heard it's similar to his other games Ra (which I've played only once) and The Simpsons Slam Dunk Card Game AKA It's Mine (which I've played 3 times). I can definitely see the similarity in attempting to gain (and deny your opponents) certain cards which are worth certain points individually, in combinations or in quantity. There are a lot of things going on which you have to be aware of in this game and I believe there is also a bit of an initial learning curve in understanding the value of the cards and when to call auctions.

The scores after round 1 were Maddie 26, me 19 and Grandma 4. I think Maddie was a little bored with this game (she's only 6 after all) but Grandma and I both commented that we had just started to see some strategies and that this is one game that would definitely benefit from repeated plays to unlock its gaming goodness.