Gaming With Grandma - 82

Another Saturday morning gaming session with my mother (AKA Grandma) and 7-year-old elder daughter (AKA Maddie). 2.5-year-old younger daughter (AKA Georgia) played close by and occasionally hopped onto my lap to watch. My wife was at work.

Our first game of the morning, Old Maid, was chosen by Maddie. This traditional children's game is certainly not one of my favourites but I was prepared to put up with it because Maddie wanted to play it. One thing I noticed during the game was that Maddie always chose a card from the middle of my fanned out hand of cards. On the occasions I did have the Old Maid I always put her in the centre of my hand knowing that Maddie would always choose a card in the middle. It was quite amusing watching her face when she selected it. She tried to keep a poker face but would then quickly glance at me and see me grinning evilly at her. This then caused her to giggle. This happened a couple of times during the game. The interesting thing about the victory condition for this game is that there is no winner - only a loser. Even with all my evil tricks it ended up that I was the loser left with the Old Maid. Boo hoo!

Heh heh! She took the Old Maid - again!

Our second game of the morning was also chosen by Maddie. It was Go Fish. I feel the same about Go Fish as I do Old Maid. Our deck was actually a fish-themed deck with pictures which reminded me of the sort of sea creatures you would find living on the Great Barrier Reef which lies off the east coast of our state of Queensland. As for Go Fish, it couldn't have ended soon enough for me, but I did go on to win the game.

Is that Nemo on my number 2 card?

After that I requested a different game. Maddie looked through our dining room game cabinet and selected Hive. Now this is a game I enjoy. We decided to play three games. It would be me against Maddie (with a little help from Grandma). I was black in all the games.

Game 1 - I win while Maddie has only two surrounding my Queen.

Game 2 - I win again but Maddie was only one behind me.

Game 3 - I win for the third time. I think Maddie was getting a bit tired by this time 'cause I won convincingly.

Maddie chose The aMAZEing Labyrinth for our next game. This is an old family favourite that we all enjoy playing. We gave Maddie a handicap of allowing her to look at her top two cards while the adults only looked at our top card. I think this was a good handicap because it turned out to be a very close game. I won with 8, Maddie and Grandma came 2nd with 7 each.

The ever-shifting maze of The aMAZEing Labyrinth.

After that Maddie chose another game - Blokus Duo. This is the 2-player version of the well-known Blokus. The object is to try to place as many of your tiles on the board while at the same time preventing your opponent from doing the same. I won with 71 and Maddie had 60.

Unfortunately I forgot to take a photo of how the game looked at the end. Here's a photo of the box.

Maddie then decided to take a break from playing games so that left Grandma and I to look for a two-player game for us to play. Grandma suggested Battle Line. This is a great little card game. We decided to play two games.

Game 1 - I win with a 'breakthrough' (three adjacent flags). 3 to 0 vs Grandma.

Game 2 - I win with an 'envelopment' (five flags in total). 5 to 3 vs Grandma.

At that point we had about 40 minutes before Grandma had to leave. I looked through the game cabinet and spotted Cartagena. This is a game we both enjoy playing as a two-player game. We've played this many times and I always remind Grandma not to let her pirates fall behind as it's then too hard for them to catch up. I was green and she was yellow. I ended up winning with all six of my pirates in the boat while Grandma was only able to get two of hers on board.

Grandma's two yellow pirates look nervously at the six scary green pirates who are about to row off leaving the four remaining yellow pirates to their fate. Arrrr!!!