Games for all (especially me)!

The weekend of July 12th began on Friday for me when my daughter asked, "Can we play Hulk?"  You must understand that I've given her a good hand-full of Heroclix figures to play with.  These include a Valkyrie, a Polaris with a twisted head and an Incredible Hulk.  We usually put on plays with these, but I took the opportunity on this day to set up a solo game of Heroclix and let her play along.  I went with a Hulk-Themed game.  It took a while to set up, a three year old can ask a lot of questions, after all.  It was a battle for the moon: The Defenders vs The Intelligentsia!

The Defenders  (Classic Line-up)

The Defenders, with the help of The Silver Surfer, land on the moon.  They've heard that the moon's surface was under threat.  And it was!  The Leader and his band of villains are trying to take it over in order to strike the earth.

Sadie checks out the line-up

In hindsight, I should have lined The Defenders up along the side of the table where my daughter was watching.  Sure she loved the Robot Hulk, but he's not the real thing.  The thing that caught her attention was Doc Sampson's punch (indicated on the clix by a transparent swoosh).  The "bad Hulks quickly surrounded the real Hulk as would really happen in the Marvel Universe.  Namor went off on his own to attack the first human he saw and Doctor Strange and The Silver Surfer, as is their nature, helped The Hulk.

Notice the swoosh on Doc Sampson

The Hulk had a tough battle, but he prevailed.  The combo of the three Defenders was too much for the bad Hulks.  And the real Hulk, I soon discovered, can take a lot of close combat punishment.

Sadie rolls the dice!

The game was great for me, the Defenders are my favorite.  For my daughter it was an exercise in not grabbing, asking before touching and waiting her turn.  In those respects the game was a great success.  She got to play with the dice and got to play with game pieces and tokens as long as she asked first.  The gaming day did not end there...  We ran a couple of errands and moved onto the next round!

The next round of "gaming"

I couldn't make my poor daughter play Heroclix all day, or could I????  NO! NO!  NO!

We have the Disney Princess version of Candy Land at home.  For those of you who don't know, or don't remember, the movement mechanic of this game is based on drawing color cards, double color cards and special movement cards at random.  (It sounds really funny to talk about Candy Land in "game-speak" AND it is).  The challenge here isn't the colors, kids learn those pretty early, it's the movement!  The twisty, turny board is tricky for little players.  So we patiently count colors until we get the idea.  This can take a couple of games to get straightened out.

Cinderella!

Sadie chose Cinderella and I chose Belle from Beauty and the Beast.  I'd like to tell you that I chose this because of the old Jean Cocteau film of the same name.  The film was ground-breaking in terms of story telling techniques and special effects created with camera tricks.  The film... blah, blah, blah.  Sadie said "You're Belle."  So I was Belle.  It was actually a close game with Cinderella winning and getting to the Princess Party first.  My daughter was quite happy.

Quite Happy!

That would have been great, if that was the end.  Up Next....

This game came in the mail the same day.  It's a hide & seek type game based on Jack The Ripper.  I bought this because it appeals to my liking for games and my wife's interest in sordid crimes.  We played one round which she won.  The learning curve is big.  The set-up of this game can be daunting, but once you play it, it is simple and logical.  It took us about two hours to play the first game.  Subsequent games should take less.