Friday Post - Candyland

 I win.  I got the 2004 version of Candyland.  And I didn't have to drive to someone's house and pay them a whole $5 for it.  (Seriously craigslisters.  Just because YOU paid $7 for it 10 years ago and then lost half the pieces.  It isn't worth even close to that much.  Not even if you package it with a game I don't want.) I paid no more than $1 for this and there was nothing missing whatsoever.

Why did I want this edition specifically?  Well, the earlier editions are hard to find.  For a start.  And the newer versions just bizarre.

 But as far as game-play goes, Candyland is the only preschool game that uses cards to advance the players along the board.  It means that there's no counting and the game is super easy to play.  Newer versions have a spinner instead, which is so difficult to use.

The art is terrible, and the player pieces are ugly, and boy do I hate this game, overall.  But the reason I hate it is because the first time I ever played it, I was 12.  And really, my daughter loves it for the make-believe aspect.  So I play it with her because it makes her happy.  And when we get tired of trying to make it to the castle, I make my gingerbread man talk to hers and we make up a little story together.

But I'm getting reaaaaally impatient to play strategy games with her.

Friday Post - Waddingtons "Dix"

Waddingtons "Un Monde Des Jeux - Dix"

I found this at the thrift store and picked it up because my mum used to have a copy.  We never played it properly when I was a kid because we didn't know the rules and nobody sat down and explained it to us.  We lost the box and everything, so my mum got rid of it.

I read the rules when I got it home and it's basically dominoes, but you add to 10.  It says 5+ on the box, which is probably accurate.  I let my daughter play with it a bit and she happily moved them around on the coffee table in arbitrary pairings.

I hope this comes in handy down the line.  I've been looking up other games by this company, but I can't find anything so far.

Friday Post - Chutes and Ladders

 Retroland has a pretty good post about this game.

This is a pre-2000's version.  Ebay says it's from 1999, which makes sense, I guess, looking at that boy with the burgundy vest.  That's a pretty dated style.

But, as you can see, it's totally PC by this point, at least.

It was really interesting to read the article on Retroland and discover that this has always been a game about morality. I've never had a copy in my house growing up, so I never played a version like this. They got a bit carried away here, too.  Just look at the arbitrary rewards.

On square 9 we have a boy who mows the lawn and gets to see sad animals at the circus.  That cat on 28 features a fair bit, sometimes dealing out punishment, sometimes rewarding with cuddles.  Higher up at 51, a girl sweeps the floor and gets movie tickets.  At 71, a boy returns a damsel's purse and she buys him ice cream.

It's all pretty ridiculous, and I can't imagine that there was ever a good edition of this crummy game.  The spinner is supposed to be easier than dice, but my daughter can throw dice now and can still barely play this game because counting to 100 is not very fun for her and the pictures are too distracting.  If the game wasn't so long and these weird stories weren't everywhere, maybe we'd get through more than half of it.  The best part is, none of these moral lessons make a dent on her anyway.  She's convinced of her own moral superiority and is quick to judge the kids on the board.  It's kind of hilarious.

Friday Post - Memory

This was another thrift store find.  It's pretty easy to find second hand copies of this game, but maybe not so easy to find copies with no missing pieces.  But this is such an easy game to make, and there is so much great free art on the internet already.

For instance, the Metropolitan Museum of Art has an online collection of art that is free to download and use for your art projects.  Input the search terms Fish Ginter N8 for the "Fish from American Waters" series of cigarette cards.  I've got to say, if you had the right resources to make playing cards, you could make a pretty adorable game of Go Fish.

Friday Post - Hi Ho! Cherry-O

I'm really trying to get my daughter into the boardgames ASAP.  We're pretty big board game nerds, except that my husband isn't into two player games as much.  I know it'll be a long time before the kids can join in on anything by Rio Grande, so I have to start working on them early.

This game is pretty great.  I don't mind playing it, either.  I mean, it's mind numbingly simple and boring, but it's hilariously cute to watch an excited 2 year old go through the motions of playing.  It took her two days to figure out that she has to spin the spinner fast, do what it tells her to do, and then wait for other people to take their turn before she can spin again.  Maybe, if we're lucky, she'll make enough progress that we can start learning to play chutes and ladders.

Our copy was second hand, so the art isn't as offensive as the modern version (the new version has different coloured trees with corresponding cherries, but really, who cares).  The game play is pretty simple; you spin the arrow and count cherries as you move them from your tree to the barrel.  Sometimes you have to move cherries back to the tree, though.  My daughter hates doing that and will often spin multiple times and even just point the arrow to the number she desires. 

After three days of playing the game, she now just moves the cherries wherever, changes the barrels around, tells us what we're allowed to do, and abandons the game to play with the pieces in an arbitrary fashion.  She's displayed a few times that she can play the game properly following the rules, so whatever.  She'll start playing properly again by the time she's three.