It is the Season of Party Games: "Munchkins", "The Pretender" and 'Pandemic: The Cure'.

Unexpectedly or rather totally unplanned on my part, I notice it has been a canny while since I last bogged, as this December seems to have been a most hectic affair, but in a good sense. I seem to have dropped out of the blogging habit (partly because I find one of my kids constantly in front of the family computer) but on the plus side too I have been "doing" plenty of "stuff," just not getting to report it. It does also seem to be the party game season. Two separate instances of old friends bringing their families together with mine caused much hilarity through 'Pretenders' and 'Munchkins' (see below, 'Pretenders' is a family favourite as one player has to guess what the others are miming before it's their turn to mime, so are you faking it or just bad at miming?):

'Munchkins' is the deadliest of games, addictive and unforgiving - a D&D spoof as it is a race to get to 10th Level through a combination of kicking in doors, killing monsters, looting treasure, stealing treasure off other players or cursing other players and basically getting lucky at other players expense. "You are dead to me!" is a frequently used phrase in our games as backstabbing and mischievous double dealings are 'normal behaviour' (dystopian or what). The game really assumes its best form when the players "go dirty" in a bare knuckled free for all, running away and dying (getting busted back to Level 1 with no possessions) is all par for the course (see below, a pile of 'door cards' and a pile of 'treasure cards' and a foursome of players adventuring around them):

The third of the trio of games is my personal favourite genre, that of collaborative problem solving, "Pandemic: The Cure" which a remodelling of the original Pandemic game using smart (intelligent rule driven: dice and cards) playing pieces to reduce the 'required pre-game reading' and rule memorisation. Instead of small car manual it is reduced to eight A4 sheets of large print rules and diagrams. Good job by the designers as the play flowed smoothly (see below, the game is in progress, we are three players trying to find the cure for four diseases, you can sense the game mechanics are finely mathematically balanced between winning and losing):

With the exception to "Pretender" which is a classic pick up and play in 30 seconds, the other two "Munchkins" and "Pandemic" had to be first played with a dry-run round (or two) to get the feel for the rules and a sense of what the strategies were. In fact richness in the "Munchkins" cards and interactions were revealed with more and more play. Being nasty (for "Munchkins") was a characteristic of play that had to be learned (counter intuitive in many ways to be so overtly nasty and in your face). We were not getting the rules wrong (the sequence of play was very simple) but combinations of cards "worked". "Pandemic" is a little more frustrating because after playing it four times I "think" I have the rules now .. and the designers did a good job making it simple .. something about how the dynamics pull together. It makes me think I should make better of You Tube instructional videos and the like, games like Chain of Command fro the Two Fat Lardies unashamedly use it wisely. The classic statistic from the 1970's/80's Avalon Hill/SPI period was that 55% of games never got played - those that did, I wonder how many were really played correctly? Are we any better off now in getting games played?