So, with the caveat that my “gaming group”, more often than not, is my kids and therefore we’re not up for a 6 hour rules-intensive cardboard-based cutthroat brawl, here are some that I like:
- Tiny Epic Galaxies: Blast Off : this is a fun little dice-based game with cute imagery. You need to get control of planets to gain points (21) and you have some resource-wrangling opportunities to get to, and then claim the planets before your pesky competitors get them. This also has the advantage that you can play it solo.
- Star Realms : a deck-builder from a couple of old-school M:tG Hall of Famers. It’s really a two-player game, but it’s got passable options for 1 to 4 players. Each player had a basic starting deck and a common randomised trade row is populated from a shuffled deck. Your need to knock your opponents life down to zero by purchasing spacecraft and bases from there trade row to augment your combat ability, whilst avoiding your opponents similar attempts. There are four card types that allow you to level-up your trading, health regeneration, combat or enemy-annoyance factor. I love this game, but recommend the Frontiers version as it’s a little better balanced.
- Hey, That’s My Fish! : a fast, surprisingly cutthroat and, to be fair, rather physically finicky game but it’s a lot of fun! It’s a hexagonal-tile based game with up to four teams of penguins competing to harvest fish from a rapidly dwindling ice floe, where each penguin leaves a trail of melted-ice destruction in their wake! This one can lead to fisticuffs if someone manages to bisect the ice, leaving an opponent stranded and fishless!
- Wreckland Run : this is definitely outside your preferences, it’s solo-only. That said you asked for people’s favourite board games, and this is one of mine currently 🙂 It’s a Mad-Max-esque campaign theme in which you pick a vehicle and driver (giving you a set of core abilities) and attempt to fight your way through a series of vehicular brawls by judicious dice placement. And luck. Despite the fact that the initial rule book was an unmitigated disaster, I’ve really enjoyed playing this one and I’m currently battling Chapter 4 after not too many attempts at the previous chapters!
My daughter loves to cut cucumbers (Persian/English ones with limited seeds and a pretty solid core) into little serving vessels.
She gets a 5cm/2inch diameter cuke, chops it into 4cm/1.5inch cylinders, uses a melon baller to scoop out most of the middle - making a kind of cucumber-based cup, then she fills it up with whatever she’s fashioned out of available ingredients.
She’s done guacamole, egg salad, some kind of bizarre ham and soy sauce and carrot thing, a Philadelphia-cream-cheese-based mix, leftover fried-rice. Basically, whatever you can ram into a cucumber goes!
If you want a fun way to plate different taste sensations it’s an attractive presentation option! It also serves to “revitalise” leftovers, providing an alternative serving platform to keep finicky-eaters engaged. It also also means you don’t need a knife/fork and maybe not even another plate apart from the serving one, so saves you some washing up 🙂
En Guete!