Halloween Games

   Halloween, a time of scaring people, parties, and all things monsters, is right around the corner. I decided I would do a little list of my favorite monster games that would be a great addition to any family party.

   Smash Up:
   Choose two factions to mix together in this fun card game. Use their special powers to try and out score your opponents. There is even a monster expansion for more monster goodness.

 

   Rampage:
   Use your monster to reek havoc on Meeple City. Who will capture the most meeples while flicking, throwing and blowing down a city?

 

   King of Tokyo:
   Monsters are taking over Tokyo and are fighting over who gets to be the king. Claw your way to the top in this fun family game. Just beware, you can only take so much before you need to heal or someone else will be the King of Tokyo.

   Gloom:
   Who can have the worst day before they die? In this card game, make your family as miserable as you can before they die while trying to cheer up your opponents family. The person with the lowest score is the winner of this game.

 

  Castle Panic:
   Can you defeat the monsters before they knock down the castle? In this co-op game, work together and try and take out the monsters before they take you out. It's a great game to play if you have younger kids since you work together.

 

   Monsters University Dice:
   Will you have the most monsters left at the end of this game? Pass them left, right, or place them in the center. Whoever has the last monster in the game wins this easy game. Fun for all ages, even my four year old understands this one.

 

  
   What are some of your favorite monster games?

Castle Panic Review

   Castle Panic is a fun filled co-op game that is great to play with both adults and kids, especially if they still need a little bit of help playing. The point of the game is to work together to try and save the castle from the monsters that are trying to break it down.

   Inside, there is a board that has six sections, two in each color. The outside ring is the Forrest. Then it is the Archer ring, Knight ring and the Swordsman ring. The castle towers and walls go in the middle section.

   Here are the Monster tokens, walls and tower pieces, plastic stands for your castle pieces and a deck of cards.

   The triangle pieces are called Monster Tokens. These are what you are playing against.

   There are four monster bosses. These tokens do different things such as: moving the Monster tokens closer and making you draw extra Monster tokens.

   There are also Special Monster tokens. These have you do things such as draw more Monster tokens, discard all of a certain type of card from your hand, move all monsters in a certain color or move them on the board.

   There is a Boulder token. If you draw this, roll the die. Whatever number is rolled is the number the Boulder rolls through. The Boulder keeps going until it hits either a wall, tower piece or a fortify wall. If there are Monsters in that section, they are all killed off. If there is nothing in the center to stop the boulder, it goes right through the middle and keeps going.

   The last type of Monster Tokens are the actual monsters. There are Goblins that have one life point, Orcs that have two life points and Trolls that have three life points. Each Monster token has the number of life points on it. The current number they have should be pointing at the Castle. If they get hit, turn it to the next number. If it is on a one and they get hit, they are removed from the game.

   There are two fortify wall pieces and a tar piece.

   There are a couple different types of cards. These are what you use to get rid of the monsters. There are many different ones that do special things such as moving a monster back, letting you draw extra cards and helping you to hit the monsters. Then there are the Archer, Knight and Swordsman cards. These either have red, blue or green dots around the name. The cards are used to hit the monsters in the corresponding color and ring. There are also Any Color Archers, Knights and Swordsman. These can be used in any of the colors. The Hero cards can be used for any ring of the corresponding color. Each card can only be used on one monster but you may play as many cards as you are able.

   There are Brick and Mortar cards. If you play these together, you can rebuild one wall and place it wherever a wall is missing. You can never rebuild the Castle towers.

   There is a Fortify Wall card. This lets you add a little token to the wall. This makes it so that the monsters have one more layer to get through before they can knock down your tower.

  There is also a Tar card. When you play this, you can place it on a Monster. This keeps him there during the monster moving phase for that turn.

   To set up, you will place your castle pieces in a ring around the center of the board with a wall in front of it. Then you will take three Goblin tokens, two Orc tokens and one Troll token. Place these randomly around the archer section below the numbers.

   Once the board is set up, pass out the number of cards depending on the number of players. The turns go as follows:

  - Draw cards until you are back up to the hand amount

  - You may discard and draw one card if you'd like

  - Trade cards with a fellow player. You may trade one card with one player unless you have six players, then you may trade two.

  - Play as many cards as you would like

  - Move all Monster tokens one ring closer to the castle. Monsters will keep moving forward until they are killed. If they are in the Swordsman area and are not killed, they will run into a wall or tower piece. When this happens, the wall or tower falls down and takes one life point from the monster that hit it. If there is no wall or tower piece, the monster moves into the tower circle and will move clockwise one space around the tower until it either knocks down all of the walls or is killed.

  - Draw two new monsters and play them in the order drawn. If they are a Monster, roll the die and place them on the number you roll in the Forrest area. These can not be hit until they are moved into the Archer ring unless they are hit by a Boulder.

  - Play continues clockwise

   If you roll the die and a number comes up that already has a Monster token on it, place it next to the monster that is already there. There is no limit to the number of monsters that can be on any section of the board.

   Once all of the monsters have been killed and taken off the board, if you have any pieces of the castle towers remaining, you win! If all of the Castle towers are knocked down, the game ends and the monsters have won.

   I think this game is a lot of fun and a great co-op game. You really have to work together to win at this one. There has been many times when it has been a close call or we have lost. It is also a great party game since you can play with up to six people. It's easy to learn and play so you won't use up all of your game night trying to explain it. It's also a great family night game!

King of Tokyo Review

   Who wouldn't want to be the King of Tokyo? Okay, I technically wouldn't want to, but in a game, definitely!

    Here's the inside of the box. Everything fits rather nicely.

 

   The game play and rules are simple. Pick your monster and its matching monster board. There are many fun monsters you can choose from.

   Set the points on your monster board to 0 and life to 10

 

   Place the board between you.

 

   Make a pile of your energy cubes. You use these to buy power up cards.

   These are the cards that you will use your energy cubes on. The amount of cubes is in the top left corner. The description of what it does is on the bottom. The artwork on the cards is pretty amazing! Shuffle these cards and place the first three on the side of the board, face up. Those are the ones you can choose from. Once a player buys a card, take the top card off of the deck and place it where the other one was.

   Some of the cards make it so you can do things such as poison a person. There are tokens for those powers to help you keep track.

   There are six dice. There is a lightning bolt that gives you an energy cube. A heart that heals. The paw is an attack. There are numbers one through three. If you get three of the same number, you get points. Three ones are worth one point. Three twos are worth two points. Three threes are worth three points. After you have your three of the same number, if you roll an additional one, it scores one more point. There are two green dice. There are cards that give you extra dice to roll. Only the person that has that card can use the extra dice.

   Your game is now set up and ready to go!

   The first player rolls all six dice. You can re-roll any of the dice you like. You can re-roll twice. The first person that gets an attack is put into Tokyo City. Place your monster on the Tokyo City circle on the board.

 

Here are the rules:
- You can not heal while in Tokyo City.
- If you are attacked, you take one damage per attack rolled.
- When you are attacked, you can take your damage and decide to leave Tokyo City.
- When you leave Tokyo, whoever attacked you must go into Tokyo City.
- If you are in Tokyo and you roll attacks, you attack every player that is not in Tokyo.
- You get one point when you go into Tokyo City.
- If you are still in Tokyo City when it comes around to your turn again, you get two points.
- If you are playing with five or six people, you use the Tokyo Bay circle as well.
- Tokyo Bay is used the same as Tokyo City.
- Once you get down to four people, you no longer use the Tokyo Bay space.

Keep going until you have a King of Tokyo. You become the King by either getting to 20 points first or when everyone else dies.

I really really enjoy this game. It's a fun family game that only takes about half an hour. Our boys love to play this game. It has a lot of luck and not much strategy. If you are looking for a game for the whole family, this is one I would highly recommend!

Winner, Winner, Family Dinner: Making the Most of Your Time at the Table

        What if YOU could lower the rates of substance abuse, depression, and teen pregnancy? What if you could do that in just 30 minutes a day?  Well, you can and you don’t even need to leave your house.  You can do this by eating dinner with your family! Family dinner is a sure bet.  If you googled family dinner, you’d see many articles written by experts explaining the benefits of a family gathering together around the table.  The facts are undeniable—children who eat dinner with their families regularly are less likely to abuse drugs, experience depression, as well many other benefits such as:

• Increased communication skills
• Better academic performance
• Improved nutrition and overall physical and mental health
• Decreased risk for eating disorders and teen pregnancy

     Children are not the only ones who benefit. Parents who sit down to dinner with their kids:

• Experience stress relief (You may have laughed out loud here. I know it is hard to believe.)
• Save  money
• Pass along values and lessons from one generation to the next
• Have daily communication with their children
•  Create a sense of family unity

     To sum up, eating dinner as a family is important! I have always known that and I am sure many of you have known that as well. Still, I am not sure if the time my family spends at the table is that beneficial. Sometimes we eat dinner and watch TV together.  Sometimes we sit at the table, eat as quickly as possible in silence, and try to get back to whatever we were doing before dinner so rudely interrupted.  Sometimes we do talk but we rarely get past the “how was your day?” routine.  Honestly, dinner isn’t always a wonderful experience.  It can even be stressful.  I am really hoping that I am not the only one out there who experiences this. 

     My children are young. They spend most of their time with me but I know soon, they will be teenagers; then, the time I have with them will be at a premium.  I need to learn to make the moments I have with them count. That is why I came up with this idea for a recurring blog post.  What if I started making more of the time we had at dinner?  We have to eat dinner everyday and we should get more than simple nutrition from it.  Each week I am going to plan games, activities, and conversation starters to help make dinner more meaningful and I thought I’d share my ideas with you.  Some of the topics I plan to cover are table manners, getting to know each other better, ancestors, basic astronomy, and as well as a wide variety of other topics.

     If you would like to experience all the benefits of family dinner, here is what you need to do:

1.  Make a family dinner goal.  It might not be possible for your family to eat dinner together everyday.  Some people may only see their children 3 or 4 days a week, some people may have jobs that keep them away from home, or teenagers may have extra-curricular activities.  Create a goal that will work for your family.  My husband is not home for dinner 3 or 4 days a week (and has an unpredictable schedule) so this is my goal:  I will eat dinner with my children at the table 6 days a week and with my husband as often as I can.  Your goal could be 3 days a week or 5 days a week or 7 days a week. You decide.
2. Plan interesting topics to talk about during dinner.  If you and your children are interested in certain topics, think of questions and ideas about those topics to share.  Maybe think of some fun activities that you could do while eating a meal together (especially if you have family members who aren’t into talking).  Feel free to ask your kids for help too!  If you are stumped on this, that is where I come in.  I will be posting new ideas so please come back by and check in.  
3.  Let go!  Don’t allow this to be another stressful thing added to your list of things you believe perfect parents do. Remember, you can do something perfect parents cannot—you exist.   So high five for being better than a perfect parent! While a little preparation might be helpful, hours of preparation for dinnertime fun is not required.  Most of all, don’t take over the dinner table.  Don’t drill your kids on hard facts if you bring up an educational topic.  Don’t interrupt a good conversation to get everyone back to the conversation you had planned. Your goal is to facilitate communication, not control it.   Go with the flow and relax.
4. Don’t give up! –even if you eat dinner together for a week and you experienced this:

a.       7 spilled glasses of water

b.      A screaming crying breakdown (by your kids or you).

c.       3 broken dishes

d.      Loud burping

e.      A toddler who cries uncontrollably because she fed all her food to the dog and she’s hungry

f.        18 rounds of “no I am not” vs “yes you are” chanted in harmony by your children

g.       A migraine

Hopefully that didn’t all happen to you (Okay, maybe it did).  Dinnertime can make a parent feel really frazzled.  If it is not pleasant for you, it probably wasn’t too fun for your kids either. Don’t give up.  In time, things will get better and you will feel rested and refreshed after a meal instead of frazzled.  Now is the time to teach your children what dinnertime is really like—it is meaningful, it is inspirational, and it is fun.  Soon you will find that you children will sit down quietly  less loudly and eager to participate in the night’s fun.   Remember that stress relief benefit I mentioned earlier…as you learn to communicate and play and laugh at the dinner table, it will lower your blood pressure and release positive endorphins.  Dinner done right will actually help you release the stress you have been collecting all day!

Are you ready to devote 30 minutes of your day to improve the lives of yourself and your children?  I know I am.  Stay tuned for the next post!
Do you do anything special to make your family dinners fun and interesting?  If so, feel free to leave a comment and share your ideas.