Board Game Night with Sis

I'm in GA visiting my sister and her family. Usually when we visit, it is for a special occasion and there is a strict timetable; in fact, we were here a few weeks' ago for my niece's Sweet 16 weekend. However, I wanted us to have a visit where we could just sit around, eat, and play games. So here we are!

My sister K and her husband AJ are big on Scrabble, but they don't play much else. They don't even keep a deck of cards in the house! When we showed up this weekend, I was surprised to find that they bought another game -- Catchphrase. The quickest way to describe Catchphrase is that it is similar to Taboo but with fewer restrictions on what you can say or do to get your team to guess the word. The game goes so quickly that we were able to play three times in a row. I have to admit that I was getting a little bored by the third game, though. Party games are fun to me as a warm-up, but I find that most people like to play them way more than I do. Still, I was glad to see my sister branching out.

ABM's choice of game for the evening was Landlord!. Gameplay took an hour, which was longer than I expected. The first game we played with our neighbors only took half that time. The extended gameplay in this case probably had something to do with K and AJ's playing style. My sister and her husband are rather analytical players, so they had extensive questions every time ABM and I laid down a card. They've never played a hobby game, either, so some of the game mechanics were unusual to them. K kept shaking her head and saying, "Who comes up with a game like this?" Overall, though, I believe they enjoyed Landlord!. They certainly got into the theme, being property owners themselves.

We still have one more game night, and I think we will either play Pounce or Word Thief. That is, unless AJ wants to play Landlord! again. I won last night, but he came in a close second. He would have beaten me if he had listened to DJ, who was coaching him. I think that AJ may want a rematch :-).