2013 / Card game / 2-6 players
**
An inevitable product and gift, she tends to use these more as a Guess Who than the proper game. It was good to see that no more thought was put into the stats than with the My Little Pony set, with Frankie Stein's SAT score of 1 making them considerably dumber than the overachieving pets.
Monopoly: Sailor Moon
2024 / Trading board game / 2-6 players
***
This was a bit of a Christmas dilemma when searching for affordable Sailor Moon stuff, but I wanted us to upgrade from Monopoly Junior anyway (which barely even counts as a game) and the curiously specific theming around the exact season of the anime we just watched (the best one) and the pieces doubling as shiny souvenir tat ultimately triumphed over my distaste for completely irrelevant board game adaptations, especially ones that nonsensically use characters in place of properties. How do you mortgage Tuxedo Mask? What the hell is going on???
None of this bothered the young player, who wanted to play it every day of the school holidays after Christmas (and had to be talked out of multiple rounds for the sake of sanity). We use the house rule of everyone starting out with three random properties characters, keeping games within a tolerable range of 15–90 minutes depending on who shuffled.
Star Realms: Rise of Empire – Backer Promo Pack
2024 / Deckbuilding card game expansion pack / 2+ players
****
This is mainly variety for its own sake, but Hero cards are new to me, since I'd avoided having people in my spaceship game before, and it's nice to see more docking action and double faction bonuses. Along with the Frontiers Promos, I've now got enough nu-school cards to separate the two eras (pre- and post-Frontiers) to suit almost imperceptibly different moods.
The Settlers of Catan
1995 (1997 edition) / Strategy board game / 3-4 players
***
Resold
Resold
The last of the modern board game trinity after Catan and Carcassonne, it looked to be a promising silver medallist (with bonus geographical and historical education angles helping to justify it as a family purchase), but the six year old showed no interest in playing with plastic trains, and it's not really one I can play against myself, so I had to settle for upselling it for minor profit.
2007 / Dice activity / 1+ players
***
With our existing sets being heavy on the nouns, this verby batch seemed a necessary addition to get full creative use out of the concept, so I set up a budget price alert about a year and a half ago that finally paid off. I now supposedly have everything I need to create endless roleplaying NPCs and situations on the fly, except perhaps for an optimally functioning mind.
2011 / Roleplaying game adventure / 2+ players
****
These laid-back prompts for an island trek were just what I was hoping for when the young player wanted to play 'Story Game' on the Catan board again with no preparation and I grabbed a trusty Adventure Anthology off the bookshelf. The map helped to populate the hexes (not to scale) with equivalent creatures, structures and morbid ambiance as our characters set about gathering wood to build a bridge across a narrow channel back to the mainland, even though one of us can fly and the others are capable swimmers. All those points put into Mind were clearly a waste.
2015 / Card game / 1-5 players
***
The most abstract of games was a charity shop steal (not literally), though sorting ascending and descending number piles isn't the most rewarding solo activity in my roster. It'll be more useful as maths practice when my daughter's a bit older, and not being allowed to warn young teammates about potentially costly mistakes is no doubt where the real challenge lies.
2004 / Board game variant / 2-5 players
****
This setup for two-player Cluedo worked a treat with a young player who enjoyed beating me to the rooms to steal the sequestered cards. She'll probably insist on it even when we have enough players for the normal game.
2015 / Economic card game rule variant / 1 player
****
My daughter likes to impress the select nobles she's impressed by, but her interest doesn't usually stretch to a full game of gem... conquest or whatever's going on, so I was glad to find some guy's solo house rules online.
The ever-dwindling supply seemed hopeless until I succeeded with one gem left in the stock on normal difficulty, so working up the levels could be a satisfying challenge when I feel like something lighter than Machina Arcana.
