More Games More Fun, Week 1

Tonight was our first games class. We signed up for the community education class, More Games, More Fun, taught by the same guy who taught the Beyond Monopoly class we took last fall. (We had actually signed up for his Two Player Games class this spring, but forgot to put it on our calendars, and completely forgot until the weekend after the class.)

The first game we played was La Strada, which reminded me of Through the Desert, which we played last fall. In the game, you are a merchant, and your goal is to build roads to various towns and hamlets to sell your goods. The more towns and hamlets the better, but if another player has a presence in the town, too, your final score is diminished. Fun game — each turn is fairly simple, but you really want to pay attention to what other players are doing so you can plan your moves accordingly.

The second game was High Society. This is an auction game where you try to end up with the most toys. Everyone starts out with the same amount of money, and there are 10 “toy” cards, 3 cards that up your points by twice, a thief card, a card that decreases your points by half, and a card that decreases your points by 5. I’m not great at auction games, but still had some fun with it.

The final game was Coyote, a game somewhat like Polish poker (or Indian poker…neither of which is very politically correct). Each player has a numbered card on their head that everyone but themselves can see. You go around the group, each person bidding on what they think the total of those cards are, but not going over. If you think the person before you is over the total, you challenge them. Whoever was wrong gets a coyote. As players get three coyotes, they are out of the game. This one was quite fun, quick and easy to learn. Though, it got really hard when the game was down to just the last two people…