Day 1: Games for getting to know each other

Thursdays games were a mix and old and new for most of us. We rotated through three games--Apples to Apples, Perudo, and Pictures and Propositions (many people know it as Telephone Pictionary). The goal in Apples to Apples is to collect green adjective cards by playing a red noun card from your hand that you think is the best match for the green card. Your odds improve the better you know the judge.

 The cards are in and awaiting the judge's decision

In perudo, players roll their dice but keep the results hidden from the other players. Players have to determine if their neighbors are bluffing and then convince everyone else that their bid is correct. Once again, knowing and reading the other players is a real asset to winning.

 Amy starts a bid.

Pictures and Propositions is designed more for laughs than competition. Each player writes a sentence, song lyric, or nonsense phrase at the top of her or his paper, and then it's the next person's turn. The next player draws a picture to represent the phrase, folds the paper to hide the writing, and passes it along for the next player to interpret the picture. This goes back and forth until the papers return to the original owners. Sometimes the message stays close to the original...but most of the time things mutate in a hurry. Here are a few samples from our class:

President LeRoy starts a squirrel fur trade at Calvin --> I love my 2 chipmunks--> two beavers in love --> Beaver dam has been broken! --> The dam is breaking --> The little plant that could

We all live on a yellow submarine --> three people are on a submarine --> people surfing on a piece of candy --> two guys surfing on big waves --> surfin' in the USA --> Surfing in the USA --> Surfing in the U.S.A.

The Lord of the rings --> the Lord of the rings is about dropping a ring in the eye of a volcano --> cliff diving onto alligators --> jumping into a lake of alligators --> a man falling into an alligator/crocodile pit --> a man jumps into a hole on a dog

On Friday we'll take a look at the board game that launched a million others (Settlers of Catan), and then we'll see some homemade expansions that give new ways to play an old game.