Ridere, ludere, hoc est vivere.

Friday, August 21, 2015

Fourth annual-ish "What to pack for a vacation"

Each summer I'm in charge of deciding which boardgames to take on family summer vacation.  The last time I looked at this question was August last year.  This year we are going on our first cruise, so packing space is a premium (and perhaps table space as well). My first thought for games that are easy to pack are card games, and then I brainstormed a few other ideas.  I shopped the list around my family and dropped the ones they weren't interested in.  We settled on the following:
About half of these were on our list last year.  Diner and Coup: Reformation are new to us this year; the rest are old favorites.

It won't all be family games, though; I'll be packing some compact options for two-player games with my wife.  Those include (if I can fit them all in my bags)
  • Jaipur
  • Love Letter
  • Chrononauts
  • Roll Through the Ages: The Bronze Age
  • Belle of the Ball
  • Battle Line
  • Citadels
  • Pie Factory
  • The Builders: Middle Ages
  • Paradise Fallen
This will be a fun vacation.

[As it happens, for various reasons, I scheduled this post to publish the day of our return. - PDO]

2 comments:

  1. Never thought of Citadels as a 2 player game (surprised-look emoticon)?!

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  2. Yes, for players who are familiar with the game in its more conventional format of four to six players (or even seven or eight), it plays very well with two or three. Each player ends up drafting two roles per round rather than one. The dynamics become very interesting in terms of second-guessing each others' roles.

    In the two-player game, the king randomly discards one card face down, then chooses one to keep and passes the remaining six. Each player in turn then chooses a role and discards a role face down, so that each ends up with two and has (theoretically) a 50% chance of knowing each of his opponent's roles. It works especially well with couples who like trying to get inside each others' heads. I call my wife the "Psychic Assassin" because of her proclivity for guessing my role ...

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