Original link: https://blog.codingnow.com/2023/05/boardgame.html
Today, a classmate left a message on an old post . Seeing that Yang Bo asked about the progress in this area last year, I thought I should make up this post.
In recent years, due to the epidemic, I have spent a lot of time at home. The children have also grown up a lot, and there are many more board games that can be opened. Now I seldom play board games with my friends outside, and I play three or four times a week at home.
Yundou will soon be nine years old, and Keke will be six and a half years old. The preferences of the siblings are obviously different. There are not many board games that we can play together. Generally, I play with my brother separately, or play with my sister alone. But there is one game that we all play a lot together, and that is Splendor (gem merchant).
The publisher of this game marked it as 10 years old +, and the majority of users voted on bgg were 8 years old +, and I think it is the same. 7 and 8 years old can fully understand the rules of the game and make overall plans. Coco can play when he is less than 6 years old, but he is relatively young and can only understand the rules and cannot think deeply about how to win the game. Fortunately, she is very weak in winning and losing, and she can explain herself every time she loses: it’s a game, winning or losing doesn’t matter.
When playing a four-player game at home, Ke Ke is playing with him. She only looks at the current goal every time. Because the game is won by scoring 15 points, she hardly takes the primary cards without points, and saves enough resources to get the secondary cards every time. In this way, there was one game that was so lucky that she won a final victory, which she talked about for a long time.
Yundou wanted to win very badly, and her mother never backed down. Our family often plays three-person games, and Yundou takes the second most times. Every time I lose, I look for opportunities to help him review the game. Guide him to roughly remember the distribution of cards, teach him a little knowledge of probability, and teach him to make long-term plans. In the past two years, we estimated that we played dozens of games, and he was almost losing confidence, but he won the first place in the last game solidly. Finally, the goal of defeating the mother was accomplished.
I think the game is quite skillful and accessible. It is the first choice for popularizing board games for children (or newcomers) in recent years. The expansion pack of the game can enrich the gameplay of the game, but we don’t open many of them. The original version is relatively simple and has a high ceiling, which makes it more pure to play.
At the end of last year, Splendor released a two-person duel version (Splendor Dual), which is also very good. Yundou has played more than ten games with his mother, and the winning rate is 50-50.
Recently we also opened a few tickets to Ride: Europe (ticket tour). Dou cares more about winning or losing, and almost flips the table when he loses, but he is also very happy when he wins. Ke Ke can also play, she doesn’t care about points being deducted if she can’t complete the route, as long as she completes one or two routes, she is very happy. Because she is still not clear about addition, she needs someone else to help her calculate the total score in the end. However, the single game of this game takes a long time, and Cocoa will be a little bit unable to persist in the end.
Coco prefers simpler games. Chromino (Bone Milo) is her favorite. For a while I played a game with her almost every day. At first glance, this game is purely luck, but there are still some skills to play carefully. Coco seems to have mastered some tricks and is becoming more and more proficient at playing, often winning games.
Another open lot is Set, which is translated into Chinese as a magical form and color card. I find it very helpful to train the pattern matching ability of the brain. I play this game for children, so I usually take two children to play as a host, and mainly observe them. Ke Ke played with me alone every day for a while, and I could feel that her ability was growing rapidly. She can beat her brother when she is in good form. However, Yundou was unconvinced and practiced for a few days. After all, the age advantage quickly prevailed.
I personally think that most of the problems we usually need to solve are constantly doing pattern matching in the brain. The game of Set is the simplification and abstraction of many problems. It’s good to practice more.
In addition, Ke Ke is not willing to play other board games. She prefers to play Lego, play house, and draw by herself.
Occasionally, we would re-dig some games we had opened in the past and play them for a few days. It may be that Yundou has grown up a bit, and when he replays the games he played when he was young, he will have some new discoveries, and he can find some strategies.
We played Azul a while ago and it was obvious that he’s clearly found some knack for scoring. In addition to getting high scores, framing opponents also requires careful calculation. Yundou can master some, but not much. If I really want him to deduct points, he still doesn’t deserve it.
Azul: Summer Pavilion (Summer Pavilion) is less confrontational, and I think it is more suitable for playing with children (if you don’t want to secretly give up chess). Yundou can focus more on achieving his goals without worrying too much about being framed by his opponent.
Century: Spice Road (Spice Road) has three versions. In terms of complexity, the later versions are gradually strengthened. If I open it with my friends, I think the third game is the most fun. But it’s a bit difficult for kids. The first game is easy to play, and the rules are similar to Splendor. Children understand how to play very quickly. If you don’t consider confrontation, you can basically get started after talking about it once.
In my house, the spice route preceded the gem merchants. However, after playing for a long time, gem merchants are more accepting. But recently, maybe because Yundou lost too much on the gem merchant, so we wanted to change the taste, we played a few more rounds of spices. I explained to him the efficiency of card combinations, and he seemed to understand a little bit. However, after a few rounds, the improvement is still obvious. It’s just that he still focuses on the achievement of his own goals, and it is difficult to pay attention to his opponents at the same time.
Regarding confrontational games, I recommend Lost city (lost city) and Battle Line (ancient battle formation). Especially for the latter, the opponent’s formation must be considered. The standard two-player mode of Battle Line has strategy cards, which are more complicated to add. We play more in the three-player variant, which only uses digital cards. I haven’t seen the introduction of this variant in the manual, so I can simply write it here:
Put 9 flags in a Y shape, and three people sit around, and each person will face 6 flags, which is 3-3 against two opponents. Instead of using strategy cards, only number cards are used. Take turns to act, and you can only declare capture the flag on your own turn. The first to win three flags in a row or four flags in a row wins.
Using this game, I told Yundou the story of Tian Ji’s horse racing. He listened very interestingly, and I told him many idioms before going to bed for many consecutive days, from the Spring and Autumn and Warring States to the Three Kingdoms of Qin and Han. It is a historical enlightenment.
Whether it is Lost City or Battle Line, the luck component is relatively large. That’s not a bad thing for kids. Because he can always win a few sets with luck, after all, victory always makes people happy. Unlike playing Go, the frustration is too strong.
Similar to Lost City, there is the Arboretum Arboretum, which can accommodate up to 4 people. Scoring is more complicated. When I play by myself, I am particularly prone to falling into the trap of wanting both, but not getting a few points in total. On the contrary, the children’s thinking is relatively simple, and they are trying their best to score points for a kind of tree to get the first place.
Another game that Yundou is particularly fond of is Cartographers Kingdom Cartographer. I had a lot of fun drawing my own map. When I first started playing this game, I helped him explain the rules of the scorecard. Later, I slowly let him read the rule text on the card by himself. His reading ability is very poor, and he often fails to understand the topics in exams and homework and makes mistakes. I thought it might be good training for me to understand board game cards.
A word of caution: if you want to buy the full Cartographer of Kingdoms expansion, be sure to buy the big box. I just bought the original version first, and then bought the hero expansion separately. It turned out that there were three small map expansions that were only included in the big box and not sold separately. If you just want to experience it, the original version is enough to play.
We’ve also played a few games of Cascadia (Journey to Cascadia) for games that require variable win conditions per game. At the beginning, I was also the one who explained the victory conditions drawn in each game. Later, I asked Yundou to read the rules by himself. After playing a few games, he memorized those victory conditions by heart. This kind of card-drawing puzzle game is quite interesting, and it is a bit similar to the kingdom cartographer.
Tried the Calico cat blanket before the Cascadia. Both kids played together. But the complete rules are too difficult for Cocoa to understand, and only the simplified home version can be opened. If the two games are put together, I choose Cascadia, which is more interesting.
Finally a word about co-op play.
The Mind was already familiar with it before. Yundou is inexplicably passionate about this game, and will play a game with me every few days. Because I played too much, it became a routine. Everyone counted silently in their hearts, and adjusted the rhythm a few times to align. We have a tacit understanding that we can pass the first stage without a single mistake, and occasionally complete the second stage. That is to say, every time a card is played, it is played back, and the table is full of cards and then turned over one by one, which is quite a sense of accomplishment.
Another recommendation is The Crew: Mission Deep Sea Submariner. We started playing with the astronauts in the previous game, The Crew: The Quest for Planet Nine. If you are only playing now, you can skip the previous work completely.
This is a bit like playing bridge, but there is no confrontation, only cooperation. After playing a few games, Yundou gradually understood how to avoid mistakes. Coco can’t play at all, so we usually start a three-player game. We didn’t clear the level once, because the later tasks required high card-playing skills, and the difficulty was still too high for him. But this does not prevent us from restarting the game from the beginning at intervals.
Because my mother spends less time with her baby, the main reason is that I take Yundou to play. So we have more variants for two people. This luck component is bigger, but it doesn’t take away too much fun.
There is also a Forbidden Island is also very interesting. Feels like a plague crisis. The difficulty is relatively low, and cocoa can also play. This game has an advantage over the previous ones. You can direct your baby when he can’t play. Ke Ke didn’t have much opinion when she was playing, but she was very happy to participate in it.
Yundou prefers Star Realms, another sci-fi theme. To be precise, this is not a cooperative game, and the original version focuses more on two-player battles. In the extended version, there is a mode of cooperating to complete tasks. Yundou likes it more, and he is more willing to defeat the aliens with me.
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