Gaming With Grandma - 56

Another Saturday morning gaming session with my mother (AKA Grandma) and my elder daughter Maddie (aged 6). As it was the day before Easter Sunday, Grandma came bearing chocolates made in the country of her birth, Switzerland. Grandma and I had a cup of tea and a chat and then it was time for my younger daughter Georgia (aged 2) to have a nap. Grandma, Maddie and I then congregated at the dining room table for some games.

Our first game of the morning was Loot. I bought this early last year based on the fact that it's a Knizia-designed game and had a pirate theme. It also had decent ratings on BoardGameGeek and it appeared to be a good filler game which would be ideal for playing with the family.

In this game players are competing to gain the most gold. Gold is gained by capturing merchant ships. The deck comprises merchant ships of varying worth, pirate ships of varying attack strengths, 4 pirate captains aligned with the four colours of the pirate fleets and an Admiral card which can protect a merchant ship.

On your turn you have a choice of one action. This action can be to play a merchant ship, pick a card from the draw deck, play a pirate ship to attack a merchant ship, play a pirate ship or pirate captain to support the attack of a pirate ship you already have in play or play an Admiral card to protect your own merchant ship.

We played with three players. The game can take from 2-5 individual players or up to 8 playing in partnership. I found the game OK with three players. I'd like to play it again, and with perhaps an extra person or two, to explore it a bit more. Strangely enough, Grandma ended up getting all 4 pirate captains and the Admiral. Grandma should have won but she failed to play her Admiral on her 8 gold merchant ship and only realised this later. Final scores were me on 38, Maddie on 33 and Grandma on 29.

Next up was Burg Appenzell. This is a game I imported direct from Germany last year when I shared in a combined postage order with some other local gamers. This is a fun game with cute components and lovely artwork. Players are mice trying to find cheese within Castle Appenzell. The box actually becomes part of the game and holds the dungeon pits into which the mice may fall. Each player has a certain number of action points each turn which they may spend either moving, sliding the spaces on the board, removing the rooftops, or adding further mice to the towers. The final results were me 4, Grandma 2 and Maddie 1.

Our final game of the morning was an old favourite - For Sale. This is a fun, fast game of bidding on property and then trying to sell the property for the most money. Final scores were Grandma with $72k and Maddie and I both $65K.