Lots of Gaming

No ... this stack of games isn't mine, but it would describe my gaming the last few days.

First up, The World Cup Card Game: The boys are back in town (but not the ones that "been hangin' down at Dino's"), so we've been playing more World Cup action. On Wednesday afternoon my Ghana beat Patrick's Paraguay in the final. Friday afternoon I made an illegal card play to push Patrick's Cameroon over Andrew's Brazil. (In best FIFA tradition, I didn't notice the foul at the time, and we won't be reviewing it.) Finally, Friday night, we taught Teresa to play, and her USA defeated my Mexico in the finals. I'm glad that we're still enjoying the game even though the 2010 World Cup is over. We still want to show the game to Dennis, but I'm afraid that it may go onto the shelf for good in another week. I am looking at the World Cup board game from the same publisher, as it would allow us to play any world cup from 1930 to 2006. The only sticking point is the time requirement -- it appears to be a two- or three-hour game.

While the boys were travelling last week, they remembered how much fun we had playing Naval Battles (published by Phalanx Games) during our trip to Washington, DC last summer. So, Patrick and I played two games on Friday. In the first, my Japanese fleet staged a major comeback to defeat his US fleet. In the second, his German fleet wiped out my British fleet without working up much of a sweat. It's a really fun, fast-paced game, and I'm glad that we pulled it out.

Finally, since my tennis elbow is still acting up, we couldn't play Wii last night. So we played five quick games of EcoFluxx before heading to bed. As is always the case with Looney Labs games, they're best played late at night, since the fun is in the playing, not the strategizing. Patrick and I each won two, with Andrew winning one. We laughed a lot and didn't want to quit. But it was 11 PM, and we all needed to get to bed. In total, we played nine games yesterday.