I'm interested. half PPR is my preference

I have a picture of Tigger as the Carolina Panthers (NFL football team) logo

we had a quick family camping trip. so some small games in the downtime.

Survive!: Escape from Atlantis, is always a blast. I actually won, since the two older kids were so intent on killing each other's people rather than hunting down dad's.

Magical Athlete - my copy is worn and well loved, but it's never leaving. We had a race with the druid (moves whenever someone uses a special ability) and the Ranger (move 4 when rolls a 1 or 2...so almost always at least a 4). The entire race the ranger never used his ability.

famously small towns of Macon, GA (150k population) and Homestead, FL (80k population).

I live in a town of 5k, so I'm sure it's the same.

Thank you! That's a very helpful post. With those differences I'll put it on the list to keep an eye out for

Star Realms...I have the original game, but stopped following it after it started getting expansions and the whole fantasy realms line.

How different is the Star Wars game than Star Realms?

My buddy at work has expressed interest in Gaslands. Typical me, I purchased a bunch of stuff for it a couple years ago and let it sit un touched.

pulled it out to re-read the rules and the boys wanted in. Well, they wanted to paint first. So we had all of them paint their own car and glue some machine guns (and spikes...so many toothpicks died that day). I also have a 3d printer now, so finally some terrain that matches.

All the boys painted their own cars, just needing a little help with glue. My youngest (6) painted the batmobile and it's pretty impressive.

so we had a race. one of the kids had a monster truck to use, so things weren't "fair" can-wise, but who cares.

Right after this image, the Red Truck rammed the monster truck. which caused a wipeout of the monster truck, who spin forward past the green buggy. Purple Cherokee moves forward and flamethrowers both the bug and the monster truck.

After turning round, Monster Truck runs over the green buggy and crushes it. Batmobile power slides around the corner and zips to victory.

I was the Green Buggy

My oldest son loves Oceans, so when a request for it comes up, I try to oblige. It is definitely 'nicer' than Evolution, and the combos are fun. My youngest son (6) wants to play, so we let him in...and try not to take too much of an advantage with having a partial player in. We help him just get big combos and cool animals.

Sometimes we play with the # of fish for a 2 player game, this time I forgot to adjust and had the # of fish for a 3 player game, so we ended up with very well-developed species. I had a great combo of a, apex predator and a deep sea kraken. The kraken lets you attack again, with every attack after the first going straight into points rather than population. My oldest put a Cthulu leech, which steals population, and forced me to give up on my kraken. Then he jumped ahead with 2 species...translucent, communicating, whale cleaning mammals, and translucent, schooling, filter feeders, that i could never create the right circumstance to attack.

Then we broke out Blood Bowl Team Manager. Yet another game I had owned in the past, then traded away. I found a F:ATtie selling this, so got a good deal on it + Sudden death.

I remember it being a 'middling' game, but it was worth more than I was paying for it. Oh man, was I wrong. We had an freaking awesome game.

3 players, Vampires, Elves, Chaos.

Early weeks, Vampires gained lots of fans. Chaos did okay. Elves had no fans, but lots of upgrades and star players.

Week 3, my elves thought they were in good shape, and had a chance to tackle and steal the ball. I had a 4 star player able to tackle (Aurora Silverleaf). She began my reign of terror, wherein I rolled 'X' 5 dice in a row. Silverleaf rolled double X's and tackled herself. A Wardancer tripped over her own feet. The following week Silverleaf ended up in my lineup again and somehow rolled double X's again!

Vampires figured out how to use their thralls to absorb some punishment, then feed on them to power up his vampires. Chaos was having great fun with cheating Beastmen.

in the Final week, The winner of the Blood Bowl was going to take it all. We threw everything at it. Each team ended up with 3-4 players in the bowl. My Death Roller (the Crushinator) ended up with 4 cheating tokens. the two other players I had were cheating as well. and we would have won it all! the Death Roller got through all 4 cheating tokens without getting expelled....then the other two players were ejected!

Vampires 36, Elves 35, Chaos 34. One of the boys actually exclaimed "This game is awesome!" which, I'm not sure I've ever heard before.

I love all three games here. Spirit Island is definitely the crunchiest of the three. I'd say the Branch and Claw expansion is recommended, even with the additional upkeep. The Events really add a layer of unpredictability, which I like.

I have Horizons, and it's fine. It's a static board, vs the modular of the original game, but it has mostly? all the same minor and major powers. It doesn't have the 'expanded' difficulty options, where you can assign nationalities to the invaders, nor does it have scenarios.

but to learn the game and play, it's great! the included spirits are great starting spirits on par with several of the spirits in the base game. They can be included in to the base game later without a problem.

Nice. I have a 1st Edition copy that comes out about once a year. It's an event to play it, but worth the effort. I recently 3d-printed a Mt. Doom miniature to use with it.

awesome, quality time with the kids is always important. I haven't played marbles since I was in elementary school.

We love The Crew. I've wanted to try some COIN games, I owned Falling Sky for a while, but lost my game group shortly after.

I hope it makes up for the threats and harassment they've gotten and probably will continue to get from MAGAts

yeah, other than name...I'm not sure why he was running as a democrat.

yeah, I've moved fairly recently, and haven't found a regular game night to go to in my new town.

There are a number of good boardgame adaptations on the phone, several with async multiplayer as well as pass and play or vs a computer.

There are also a ton of solo-able games, depending on how complicated you want things to be.

I haven't played a game this way in several years, but I've had good experiences in the past playing games PBeM facilitated by ACTS (Automated Card Tracking System) and VASSAL.

Kids have been at summer camp this week, so we've had alittle time in the evenings to play some games.

We stretched Merchant of Venus over a couple nights, which is always a favorite of my wife's. We play FFG Edition, Classic Rules. She trounced me, getting to our target of 2500 Credits while I was still at 1700. Normally she plans her moves, but this time was much more open and loose with her turns. She ended up all over the eastern half of the board and picked up several relics that let her really fly through the various gates.

Last night we played Mint Imperium a mint-tin version of Star Wars Rebellion. Now...I love rebellion, both with and without the expansion. but sometimes you don't want a 3 hour game. Mint Imperium takes it and condenses the experience both physically, into the tin, and time-wise into about 45 minutes.

The rules do kinda assume you've played Rebellion, so there are a couple gaps in how they present information.

Well, I finally got it played. And it's as advertised, a 45 minute version of Rebellion.

I love rebellion, so my view is skewed. Mint Imperium definitely does the job of condensing the whole game down. I'm glad I have it. It will be traveling with me.

But I would absolutely agree, if you haven't played Rebellion, you might have a tough time with the rules. There are just some assumptions on what to do that are hard to convey in the little crib sheet that the rules come on.

Rebels won by the way. I ended up with a 50/50 choice and choose incorrectly.

any other games they do like? what works for one 12 year old won't for another.

Menara - cooperative dexterity game, where you building towers Legendary - Marvel Superhero deckbuilding . "Semi" coop, but if you tweak the difficulty, the focus is on coop Flashpoint:Fire Rescue - Firemen. rescue people, fight fires.
Pandemic/Forbidden Island - this is the 'classic' coop. it's a little puzzly for my tastes, but it's popular.
D&D Adventure Games - Wrath of Ashardalon, Castle Ravenloft. alittle older, but scratches a coop dungeon crawler itch.

my son (11) really enjoys Aeon's End and Spirit Island.

This is a good move. There will always be some who claim "it'll always be Bragg for me!" and that's okay. Having spent time at Liberty (Bragg), Moore (Benning) and Johnson (Polk) it will always be difficult to separate the names from the memories I have of them. People can have their memories, but that doesn't mean we should continue to enshrine the names of traitors to the nation, people who don't embody the ideals we claim to uphold.

We should work to be better. and if that means that future soldiers make memories at Ft. Liberty instead of Ft. Bragg, that's a small step in the right direction.