Gaming With Grandma - 8

My mum (Grandma to our kids) dropped by for her regular Saturday morning visit. Maddie (5 and a half years old) was keen to play some games so the three of us sat down together at the dining room table. Georgia (13 months old) was having a nap and my wife was out shopping.

I had wanted to get some games on the table that I hadn't played before. First up was Bitin' Off Hedz by Cheapass Games. This is a roll-and-move game where players are dinosaurs racing around an island and attempting to be the first to throw themselves into a volcano (hey, you know you're going to become extinct so you may as well end your life in style). At various places along the route you can pick up rocks that you can throw at the other players to knock them off the path and send them back to the start. I had some plastic dinosaurs as playing pieces and some pebbles to represent the rocks. If you land on another player you get to bite off their head. Much to Maddie's delight she was able to bite off Daddy's head at one point during the game. It was all a bit of mindless fun with Maddie going on to take the win, with Daddy (me) 2nd and Grandma 3rd.

Next up was Maddie's choice - GI Joe - Live The Adventure. In this roll-and-move game we take turns being GI Joe, moving around the board fighting the evil Cobra agents. Maddie has always done extremely well at this luck-based game. Her luck, however, must have been used up in the previous game as I was first to defeat 6 Cobra agents to claim my 6 medals and the win. Grandma came 2nd on 3 medals with Maddie 3rd on 1 medal.

The three of us then played another new game - Chairs. I'd picked this up in a recent trade with Friendless and was keen to try it. Chairs is a dexterity game of stacking...well...chairs! We decided to play 10 rounds, taking it in turns to place a chair and then, playing clockwise, each player would attempt to add a chair to the stack. If the stack fell on a player's turn then that player would score points equal to the number of fallen chairs. After 10 rounds the player with the lowest score would be the winner. The rounds went fairly quickly, with our stack rarely reaching over 6 chairs. I quite enjoyed this game. The final scores were Daddy 1st on 7, Maddie 2nd on 11 and Grandma 3rd on 16.

By this time my wife had returned from shopping and joined us for a second game of Chairs. Maddie decided to sit this one out so it was between Grandma, my wife, and I. We once again played 10 rounds. I again came 1st with 3, my wife 2nd on 9 and Grandma 3rd on 15. After the game, my wife showed Grandma and I how she could balance the entire set of chairs on only one chair touching the table. Here's an image of her feat.

We then all enjoyed a morning tea of Tasmanian wasabi cheese and crackers which Grandma had thoughtfully brought.