We’ve got to get you to Jakarta!

I finally found something with all the fun of math, the spontaneity of chess, and the ease and the social cache of the Debate Club.

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you board games!

The gang has become absolutely obsessed. (We had to find something to do on  nights that American Ninja Warrior isn’t on TV.) These aren’t games like Parcheesi or Monopoly, things that I played (and sucked at) as a child. And fortunately these aren’t like the black hole of despair that is Backgammon. (I should explain that the ex husband taught me how to play, and then attempted to gaslight me by changing and rewriting the rules to his advantage. There was a real Lucy/Charlie Brown/football dynamic, I was the football.)

So Backgammon=Me as Texas=Louise.

The games we’re playing these days (and nights, weekends, afternoons, etc) are probably more like Dungeons and Dragons with less Mountain Dew and more vodka. Here are my favorites:

Puerto Rico – This one is about colonizing the New World. It sounds like a Ken Burns special when you try and explain it but there are few thrills greater than realizing you’ve blocked your dear friend/arch mortal enemy/owner of ALL the indigo from using the shipping lanes and his whole crop will wither and die in the fields HA HA HA SUCK IT MIKE!

Dominion – I like this one because I get to deploy my sophisticated tactic which I  call ‘Randomly Lashing Out.’ The cards are pretty and alcohol doesn’t seem like a huge obstacle.  Problems begin when you play with Miss V, who has the warm and merciful heart of a Reef Shark and can see in seven dimensions. (Pro tip – ALWAYS sit upstream from Miss V.)

Pandemic – You and your teammates all try and work together to save the planet from a devastating plague of tiny plastic cubes. The best part of this collaborative game is all standing over the board shrieking “We’ve got to get you to Jakarta!”  This game became way more difficult when we actually bothered to read the rules. (Another Pro tip – don’t play the Heroes edition, you will lose.)

So we got it together long enough to save the world a third of time!

How was your weekend?