We got game! Yes, we do! We got game! How 'bout you?

For the second year in a row, we've hosted a geeked out Game Night for New Year's Eve. I apologize if I forgot to invite you directly, and next year I'll improve on that too. Maybe you can just assume that we're hosting and you can come. If you ask what you can bring, I'll say something to eat during game play because I won't be serving dinner, just heavy pupus. I will, however, make mochiko chicken. And if you like, you can bring something to drink, but we'll have punch, sodas, and beer. Each time we host one of these things, I discover something new to add.

The first year, I desperately wanted to play a spooky game called Arkham's Horror, based on the stories of H.P. Lovecraft. If you don't recognize Lovecraft's name, you'll recognize all his characters because just about all the scary bump in the night stories out there have their roots in Lovecraft's universe. That was a totally geeked out 5 hour game at least. Not a great choice. Lesson learned. Lost players and interest pretty quickly, and being the host of the festivities didn't afford me the luxury of playing it.

This year we selected games that take a shorter time to play. We had 3 zones of play. There were the console games area and a board game table in the downstairs living room. Upstairs, we had refreshments and a nice place to chat or play in that living room.

I had envisioned that the kids would play games in one room, the adults in another, and the teens in yet another area. But I think the way it went was a lot more organic and worked out fine.

Next year, I think I want to play Puerto Rico and Ticket to Ride with expansion pack. Both are great games but we didn't even open the boxes.

I participated in the game Portrayal (which works best with adult only players) and Mexican Train. We also played Camp which is probably the best game for different age players. It is a trivia game with 4 levels of play:  preschool, school age, teen age, and adult. One of our teen aged contestants was so well versed in the outdoor/wildlife trivia, we voted her to be an adult player.

To improve for next year:

• Short tables for the living rooms. Aside from the dining table, which got overrun with snacks, we need to put coffee tables or ottomans with boards on them to make a good playing surface.
• Short games work better than long games, so use the games  30 min - 1 hour in length.
• Hide the muggle games (i.e. Monopoly, Scrabble, Life - sorry Maggie, Taboo, etc.) Muggle games have their place, but the Euro games are so much more interesting and challenging.  
• Have an area for card games. We didn't really address those and we've got great non-muggle card games. 
• Make a sign that points out the beverages are being stored on the back deck. Make a sign for the recycle bin. Get punch cup hangers. Remember champagne flutes.
• Somehow remove the curse from the dice rolling tower which repeatedly rolled ones for me. It was so bad, other players wouldn't even let me touch their dice for fear that my low rolling cooties would get on them.
• More mochiko chicken. 'Nuf said. 

I'd like to make a plug for game nights no matter what. When my eldest was in preschool, he had a pretty bad stutter. It was gone by kindergarten, but took lots of work and parental retraining... a post for another day.  One of the things that the speech therapist suggested was that we start playing board games. While I'm sure my mind went numb from repeated playing of CandyLand, the board games forced us to slow down, teach good turn taking, and most importantly, listen carefully to our child. Turns out he wasn't the only one who needed to learn how to communicate. We don't play games as often as Hubby would like but when we do, it is always a break from the usual tuning out of each other's lives. The kids laugh and rarely break down in tears. We have an extensive collection of board games and really, they're treasures I'd go as far as to say that if you're considering getting married, you need to play a board game with each other first. You can learn volumes about each other.