Tabletop Tuesday - Utter Nonsense

It was a cold and snowy Saturday night when my regular game night group met up for a night of trying out some new games. One became an instant favorite, the other one not so much. This is the story of the latter.



Utter Nonsense is an ok game... it's just not for me. Or for the other three people sitting around that glass covered table. We played the “Naughty” version. Basically, the players are each dealt seven cards with very topical statements. This is my first problem with this game. A year from now many of those cards will seem so irrelevant or totally nonsensical. I like an evergreen element in a game. I want to be able to pick up a game five years later and play it.

One player acts as the judge. He or she plays a card that describes an accent that all of the players need to read one of their cards in. Then the judge picks one player as the winner. This was problem number two. Having one judge leads to picking a winner based on factors not necessarily based on gameplay. Artificially choosing a winner to keep the game going, or to appease a complaining player or whatever. Perhaps if all the players vote on which one was best the results would be fairer.

I think that perhaps my group is too old for this game and that a younger crowd might like it a little better. Actually, I could see this being pretty entertaining to watch if it were improv comics playing the game. I’ll say this my pirate impression is dead on. But my Donald Trump was a bad impression of bad impressions of Donald Trump. I was a little uncomfortable with some of the subject matter, especially in mixed company. I know that there is an entire generation of card games that pride themselves in outrageous language. But for me, it just didn't work.

The game has easy rules, and you can start playing as soon as you sit down at the table. I could see how people could really like this game. Perhaps in addition to us being too old (late 30s early 40s ... not that old), we were also to sober to really get the most out of the game.

Note: I was given a copy of Utter Nonsense to facilitate this review but all opinions are my own.

Tabletop Tuesday - COBRA PAW

If there is one thing you need to know about my kids is my son loves cats and my daughter is so competitive she will cut you. So it was a natural fit when I brought home the game Cobra Paw.

Cobra Paw which if you just looked at the packaging you would assume it is some ninja cat themed mahjong game. In actuality, it is a speed and skill based matching game. A set of domino-like markers are spread out in the middle of the table, then dice are rolled. The dice have the same symbols that are on the dominoes when you see the same pattern come up you reach out with your paw and drag the corresponding tile into your pile. This goes on until all of the tiles have been claimed. But before this happens the games gets sneaky and cutthroat, players can steal tiles from each other's piles. All legal. Yes, there will be fights. Still all legal.

The game is very easy to pick up and like with a lot of matching games, older kids will overmatch their younger siblings. Which may frustrate them. Another nice feature is you can play the game one-on-one (very useful when you have a younger sibling pouting in the other room about the game being unfair).

Cobra Paw looks great and can be enjoyed by people of all ages.


NOTE - I bought my copy of Cobra Paw and was not influenced by anyone for this review.

TableTop Tuesday - Zendo

I was so excited when my copy of Zendo arrived in the mail. I tore into the box and saw the array of multi colored pyramids, rectangular prisms, and what can be best described as pie slices, there were beads and blocks, and of course two instruction manuals. This was going to be way more complicated than I imagined.

I had lunch with my board game people, and I was telling them about the game. Someone suggested I watch a youtube video about how to play. So before I went out for game night I watched a few Zendo tutorials and I got the basic gist of it, but when they started going into complexities (book 2 stuff) I was just lost. But like most games from Looney Labs it makes more sense when you actually play it. So that's what we did, and it totally made sense. And was awesomely fun, and that was the opinion of people who earlier that day were throwing axes.

One player is the moderator (or teacher) and he/she draws a card that has a secret instruction for making a structure. They build the simple structure and a second structure that does not follow the secret rules. They mark the correct structure with a white bead and a black bead for the decoy. The players (students) one by one build a structure.they can ask the teacher if their structure is correct or they can ask all the players to take a poll. Everyone votes on whether the structure follows the rule. And all those who vote correctly get a guessing cube. The structure gets marked either way, and if the player has a guessing cube they can guess what the secret is. If the guess is wrong the moderator builds another structure using the secret rule. This goes on until one of the players figures out the secret rule.

Some of them are tricky some are pretty simple but its really fun. And yes I know that description of the game sounds insane. But it's way better experience than read about. Trust me.

The original rules to the game were published in 2001 by Kory Heath , who also wrote the game Werewolf. Looney Labs released a boxed set in 2003, but those are out of print. This latest version, removes the religious terminology from the previous editions. But that doesn't affect game play in anyway.

Another thing that is great about this game is that there is virtually no setup. The “setup” is part of the game. It is really fun and I will be including it in our game night rotation for sure. This is definitely an early in the evening game, while everyone’s facilities are all there because you do need to concentrate and think logically.

This is easily one of the top two or three games I have played this year. It is available now, go get it. No seriously go get a copy.

The structure with the white bead is correct. The one with the black bead is incorrect. Leave a comment with your hypothesis of what the secret rule is. First one to figure it out will win a surprise prize. 

DISCLOSURE: Looney Labs gave me a copy of Zendo to facilitate this review, but all opinions are my own.

Tabletop Tuesday - Holiday Guide

With the holidays coming up, you may be at wits end what to get for one of your kids, a niece or nephew, holiday grab bag, nerdy friend or what not. So your pal Niel is here to help you. These are some of the games that I reviewed this year as part of my Table Top Tuesday series. They are all fun (for kids and adults). I haven’t been compensated for this list, it’s just a suggestion. So enjoy some non-screen time with those you love ... or slightly like this holiday season.

Great for little kids

Simon’s Cat: A really fun sequential matching game with adorably humorous cats.

Great for Bigger Kids

Snappy Dressers: A matching game featuring hipster sloths, deer and other well dressed animals.
Build or Boom: A race to build complex structures before your opponent can. And then blow up their structure.
Happy Salmon: A race to get rid of all your cards, not for the timid.

Great for Teens and Adults

Expedition the Roleplaying card Game: A great roleplaying game that you can play without reading hundreds and hundreds of pages of players guides.
Hanabi: A cooperative game where all the players work together to put on the grandest firework display.
Math Fluxx: The latest version of the FLUXX franchise. The card game with both no rules ... and a million rules.

Tabletop Tuesday - Happy Salmon

POUND IT! POUND IT! HAPPY SALMON! HAPPY SALMON! HAPPY SALMON!

To the uninitiated, that sounds really really untoward. But for those of us who have been lucky enough to play Happy Salmon from NorthStar Games games, it brings a smile to your face. A word of warning, this is not a quiet game or a game for the overly shy. It is a game that rewards excitement and punishes timidness.

Each player is given a stack of cards the cards have four commands, Pound It, High 5, Reverse and Happy Salmon. The goal is to get rid of all of your cards first. You give a read set go and you try to match another player who is trying to get rid of the same card, and you have to act out the card do discard it. So pound it is a simple fist bump, high five is super self-explanatory and reverse means you need to physically move where you are standing around the table. Sitting is really not recommended. And lastly the games namesake the happy salmon. Players clasp each other’s arm and then make flap their hand like a fish tail. All the players are shouting all at once so it’s very chaotic and super loud. Which is pretty fun.

Would I recommend playing this in a hotel late at night? Do you want to meet your neighbors, then maybe? But it is perfect to play in a common area of a hotel. Fun for kids … and adults. A great game to play at camp with scouts or even as an activity with scouts at one of their meetings. When I would have by Tiger scouts (1st graders) play it they loved the action and no one really cared who actually won the game.

One of the more fun games that I have played all year.

NOTE: I was given a copy of Happy Salmon by NorthStar Games for use in facilitating this review, but as always all opinions are my own.

Tabletop Tuesday - Simon’s Cat

As I walked along the gaming aisle it caught my eye. A bright pink box with an adorable cartoon cat. It was on clearance, it was from Steve Jackson Games the makers of Munchkin, and my son is obsessed with cats, so why not.

This fast-paced card game for 3 to 6 players features art taken directly from animator and illustrator Simon Tofield's YouTube series, Simon's Cat. which has hundreds of millions of views. This game is easy to learn and fun to play. Each player is dealt an equal portion of the cards, whoever has the pink #3 car puts that card down first and the action starts from there. The next player needs to match either the color or number. If you can’t, you pick up the “mess” and put in in front of you. You keep going until all the players have used all of their cards. Whoever has the most messes in front of them gets a blame card featuring Simon, if there is a tie, multiple people get Simon cards. The first player to get blamed three times loses. And I guess everyone else wins.

But honestly, everyone wins, because of the great artwork and the quick gameplay. You can get through a round in about 5 minutes, and a full game in about 20, so it’s perfect for a quick game before homework, or waiting in the airport, or anywhere you have a flat surface really. While the art is fun on all other cards, from fuzzy kittens, and scared chihuahuas, but the funniest cards are pink #11 and #12. If you don’t get a good laugh after seeing those cards you have no soul.

What is really nice is that you can play this game multiple times and it is still fun each time.

Note: I was not compensated in any way for this review

Tabletop Tuesday: Expedition - the role-playing card game

The worst part of playing old school role playing games is that the Dungeon Masters don't really get to join in on the fun. That and they have to have nearly encyclopedic knowledge of hundreds of pages of books. That was never really my problem since I never DMd but I imagine it sucked for the guys in our group who did. The people at Fabricate IO saw it as a problem and attempted to solve it with Expedition: The Roleplaying Card Game. Half role playing game, half card game, half video game and all fun. I was never very good at math. 

In Expedition an app serves as a de-facto DM and the players pass around the phone or tablet, so the burden of being the storyteller/rules explained doesn't just fall on one person. When I was in charge of the app, and there is some dialogue, everyone, inn keepers, city guards, princesses, and sell swords all sound like extras from Monty Python and the Holy Grail.Trust me my voices don't get in the way of the fun. 

At a recent game night I downloaded the app on my phone. Spread out the cards, read the one page of instructions and we started out on the Intro Adventure. This adventure, gets your feet wet and explains the game mechanics. One near feature is the game changes depending on the number of players and by the choices you make. So also half choose your own adventure. There is even an option to play a single player version. The rules are easy to follow and very intuitive. By the second time through you have got it down.

One of the decks of cards it comes with is adventurer cards. This stack has "pre-rolled" stack of cards has characters of different classes and abilities. And for the first time in all the years I have played role playing games, I played as a primarily magic user.  Would I be able to role play without a sword or an axe? "The Bumbling Mage". I ended up with some offensive abilities, most of which harmed a specific target. Some which harmed the target and all my allies. And healing spells which I kept failing my rolls on. I am an expert dice roller, so it must have been the included d20s fault all those 2s and 3s kept showing up. So I reached into a dice bag and found a clear blue with glitter inside d20 and started really being effective. 

There are several adventures on the app and there is the ability to play ones created by other users or create your own. 

In about an hour our humble party of adventurers, a mage, a ranger and a musician managed to defeat giant rats, crooked city guardsmen, and some whiskey soaked spiders. Super easy to set up and super easy to play. 

Is this the game to satisfy the super hardcorest D&D player? Probably not. Is it a game that anyone who can read and role a die can play and have a good amount of fun with? Yes.

NOTE: I was given a copy of Expedition by the creators to facilitate this review. But all the opinions expressed here are totally my own.

Tabletop Tuesday - Hanabi

I never go camping without at least one card/board game in my backpack. Nothing melts away the hours like sitting around a lantern with good friends enjoying some light hearted fun together. The Danish have a word for this Hygge.

On a recent trip my friends and I played a little bit of Math Flux and I was finally able to try out Hanabi. I had picked up a copy on clearance at a store a few months back. I just never got a chance to try out the 2013 Spiel des Jahres (German for GAME OF THE YEAR) award winner. Luckily some of my friends had already played it so it was easy to get started.


In the game you and the other players work together to build an epic firework display. Sounds easy enough. But unlike most other card based games you don't get to see your own cards. Honestly it is almost impossible at first not to peek at your own cards. Its what we have been trained to do. You get dealt cards, you look at them. I guess unless a magician specifically tells you not to. But without the mystery its just team solitaire.

As you go around the table, starting with the most flamboyantly dressed player, you have three options. Play a card. Give a hint. Or discard a card. Asa team you work together giving clues based on the number of the card or the color. And when you run out of cards, or you have played three cards that are out of sequence the game is over and you count up your points. Your team gets ranked by your final score. Playing with a few very experienced gamers, really helped keep our score near the top. We finished our second game with, missing out on a perfect score by one card.

PRO TIP - Never discard a 5

I tried to explain the game to my kids and they were not getting the idea of a total cooperative game. They wanted to know who you were trying to beat, and the idea that you are trying to beat the game was just not clicking. But I'm guessing a few slow rounds with them and they will be totally on board. 

It was really fun to play, would have been easier with better light. But for the few hours we played no one picked up their phones, we were all in the moment and our soundtrack was the crackling of a nearby camp fire. 

Tabletop Tuesday- Build or Boom

We could hear the snow being whipped around tapping on our windows and skylight. The wind howled like a wolf. Looking outside the snow was piling up faster than it could be shoveled. Well, at least faster than I could shovel it. There was no use to shovel at this point anyway, as meteorologists forecasted for several more hours of heavy snow. 

With homework and studying done, and not wanting the kids to be little vegetables in front of the TV or iPad for what would turn out to be a four day weekend, we needed a plan. I had an ace up my sleeve. I brought the kids to the dining room table and took out a copy of Proto.Toys new game Build or Boom. From the get go the kids were very much on board. 

Build or Boom, is a building game where two players race against each other to build increasingly more complicated structures. And whomever finishes there building first can slam on a dynamite shaped plunger which blows up their opponent’s structure. I separated the game pieces into two identical piles and placed the first card on the holder and my kids went at it. At first it was difficult to place the pieces, a combination of adrenaline, anticipation and very smooth plastic makes it tough for anyone other than nerves of steel. But after a few moments everyone got the hang of it. My eight year old daughter, a whiz at building things, easily completed her structure and before she was able to blow up her 6 year old brother’s building he blew hers up. Was he finished? No. Did and argument ensue. Yes. Did a timeout happen? Yes.

So after I shoveled our stairs and walk way and the kids played in the snow for a while, we tried Build or Boom round two. This time it was a bit more civilized. The kids went through a lot of the stack of cards, some were very tricky and I couldn't even get them to stay in place. Throughout the weekend the kids would play a bunch more times, and there isn't a better sound than hearing some silence, followed by the sound of plastic pieces hitting a table and joyous giggles and coming from the other room.

The game is beautifully designed from the packaging to the play pieces themselves. It is for kids 4 and up, but I don’t think that a four year old would be able to build some of the structures that are on the cards. But I am sure they would like the BOOM portion of the game. 

Build or Boom is available from Proto.Toys’ website and costs $29.95. If the 30 cards it comes with are not enough there is now a 25 card expansion set also available. 

NOTE: Proto.Toys supplied us with a copy of the game to facilitate the review but all opinions are my own.

Tabeltop Tuesday - Cathedral

In an effort to alleviate screen time, my kids and I are playing tabletop games. Some are full games with boards some are simple card games. All are fun!

Cathedral
Mattel
Ages 10+
Players 2

I have always been into so-called “high fantasy”. Probably never more than my obsession with Game of Thrones. I'm pretty sure that the obsession didn't start when I watched Sean Bean execute a Night’s Watch deserter, I can trace it back to two amazing games I had as a child. One was called Crossbows and Catapults and the other one was called Cathedral.

The version of Cathedral I played was the molded plastic version that Mattel produced in the mid to late 1980s. There is a set of red buildings and gray buildings, the kinds you would find in your typical medieval stronghold. And a large white cathedral. After you place the cathedral on the playing surface, the players take turns placing their pieces. The object is to get all of your pieces on the grid, while stopping your opponent from doing the same thing.

You can win by luck, but tried and true strategies are almost unbeatable.

While searching for something in my mothers basement, I found my old Cathedral set. It had been decades since I had played it. All but one piece was in the box, which was an easy fix as I just had to pull the corresponding piece from the other side. At the time my kids were too young to play, so I tried it out with some of my Game of Thrones friends. Some games took minutes others stretched out close to an hour as we plotted and planned each move trying to anticipate moves in the future.

As my kids got older and I thought they would understand the basic concept of the game I introduced it to them. My daughter is very strategic when she plays while my son just goes at it with reckless abandon. Even though they have not been able to beat me they both really enjoy it and like the overall look of the game. To be fair the game is for ages 10 and up, and my kids are 9&7, but they have a head start.

It's also equally enjoyable to watch my kids play with a “toy” that I enjoyed when I was little. Cathedral is not only fun, it's not only a thinker it is a timeless classic.

Disclosure: The maker of this game did not compensate me for this review. It was a gift from my mother when I was 11 years old.

Tabletop Tuesday - Snappy Dressers

In an effort to alleviate screen time, my kids and I are playing tabletop games. Some are full games with boards some are simple card games. All are fun!

Snappy Dressers
Mattel
Ages 7+
Players 1-10







I picked up a new card game from the store the other day called Snappy Dressers. The game appears to be a matching game with hipster animals decked out in their trendiest and funkiest outfits. But it's way more.

There are 10 different games that you can play with the uniquely dressed Foxes, Sloths, Zebras, Giraffes, Pandas, and Owls. We played the basic version of the game where all the animals are trying to get into a very cool party, and to get in you need to match one item from your card to one on the “host” card. Play continues until your stack of cards is gone.

Each card matches every other card in one unique way. Players can match by animal, clothing color, and party gifts. Within a few rounds you will find yourself screaming “Blue scarf! Blue scarf! Blue Scarf” as you try to beat your friends and family.

Like any card game around our house it can get pretty competitive. Kids and adults trying to win. As I mentioned earlier there are 10 different ways to play including a solo game, in Party of 1 you start with a random card and then have to make a 3x3 grid with a match in every direction. As fast as you can. You can either time yourself or if you have a friend with a deck go head to head. It took me 2:06, it was not super easy.

I really liked this game, the art is neat and somewhat sophisticated in a very ironic way. Unlike a lot of card games we have tried my kids have been very enthusiastic about playing Snappy Dressers over and over again. A great game that you can throw in your backpack and is ready to play anywhere with a flat surface.

Disclosure: The maker of this game did not supply a copy of this game nor did they compensate me for this review.