Games and work.

We played quite a few different games over the holidays, some new to us and some that weren't.  We were given a couple of games from Christmas, both of which we already knew.  One was Qwordie, which we were given by friends who we also gave it to (by agreement) and the other was Mexican Train.

The Qwordie tin.

We played a few games of Qwordie on Christmas day.  As the name suggests it's a mixture of a quiz and word game.  You collect letter tiles and the first person to spell a correct answer to each question (there are always multiple answers) adds them to their stack.  The winner is the one whose stack reaches the winning line, which you can just about see in the photo; there are three different options for different length games.

The girls were also given Hive by Uncle S & Aunty P, which is a two player tile game.  M has had a go with A and with me.  The aim is to surround your oponents' bee with tiles (which are hexagonal).  There are various minibeasts on the tiles which can move in different ways.  It's was pretty quick game to start with, but more recent games have got a bit longer as we've got the hang of the strategy.  It's quite chess-like in some ways, with pieces that move in different ways having to capture a piece that can only move one space.

Hive, mid-game.

M beat me!

For New Year we went to friends' with whom we play lots of games and unsurprisingly played lots!  They been given even more than we had for Christmas to add to their already sizeable collection, so there were a lot to choose from!  We played:

Betrayal at House on the Hill

This one starts of co-operatively, but after an unspecified time (it depends on a dice roll after particular cards are drawn) the haunting is triggered and one person then becomes a monster or is possessed in some way and then the rest of the players work together to beat them.  It's rather complicated and takes some deciphering particularly during the second part of the game, but good fun.

221B Baker Street.

As you can see, this is quite 'Cluedo-y', but with the added twist that you are given a clue (either straightforward or a bit cryptic) in some or all of the different places you can visit.  You then have to work out the murderer, the weapon and the motive and return to 221B Baker Street to announce it in order to win.  K really liked this one and wanted to play again, although there were so many other games we didn't manage.

Pandemic

A co-operative game, where you have to try to contain, cure and if possible eradicate (although that parts not necessary to win) four different diseases.  There were similarities with Forbidden Island, but I think this is better.  The players take on different roles (e.g. quarantine expert, scientist, medic) who have different abilities which gives good variation.  We played it twice and succeeded in finding all four cures (and therefore winning) once and lost once.  Of all the games we played, this is probably the one I would buy.

Another game that was new to us (and like Pandemic was new to our friends, who'd been given them both for Christmas) was Coup, or Coop as M insists on called it!  It consists of a very small deck of cards with three each of five different characters and a large pile of tokens.  Each player gets two cards, which they don't show the others and your actions are determined by the characters, although you can lie about who you have.  Which cards you have, how successfully you lie, challenge lies, accumulate tokens and use them to get rid of opponents determines how well you do.

We also played various other games, which various friends including Mexican Train, Sequence and the ever popular Penny Game (see the end of that post) and also Qwirkle and Uno.

In other news, M seems to have settled back into school pretty quickly.  She's really putting effort into the work, and certainly at home is doing far more than the minimum expected.  She's very keen on learning French with Memrise, which is encouraged at school and did extremely well in the French test at the end of last term.  She's also doing more than just the homework that is set on Hegarty Maths (I don't know if it is available for home edders, but M seems to like it although the frustration of having to get 100% right has been a problem at times).

K and I have been talking about aims and targets for between now and when M breaks up in the summer and have hopefully come up with realistic ones for maths (on Khan Academy) and her Catherine Mooney English course.