board game

Baffled – the game where you’ll need the memory of an elephant to win

October 22, 2018 by Penny Leave a Comment

Baffled is one of those games where I made the mistake of just getting the rules leaflet out first and reading that in isolation to try to get to grips with the game. I ended up a bit Baffled myself. The trick with games is to actually get the board and other things out of the box first and read the rules in conjunction with them. Games generally make a lot more sense when you do that. Certainly Baffled does!

Aim of the game

The aim of the game in Baffled is to stay in the game longer than any other player. Each player is given a number of “life” cards at the start of the game and when they have used up all their lives they are out.

A test of memory

But what do you actually have to do? I hear you ask. Well – that bit is relatively simple. In theory at least.

You need to memorise the position of 12 symbols on the board. In the centre of the Baffled board are 12 squares, labelled A through to L. They are arranged with three of each side of a central square.

The symbols themselves appear on 12 different tiles and what they are, and the colours are important. The game contains the following:

Numbers: 1 (blue), 2 (green), 3 (red), 4 (yellow)

Animals: Dolphin (blue), Frog (green), Ladybird (red), Lion (yellow)

Fruits: Plum (blue), Apple (green), Strawberry (red), Lemon (yellow)

At the start of the game the symbol tiles are all covered up and placed around the inner square. They are then revealed to players who have 60 seconds to try to memorise where they all are. That doesn’t sound too difficult to start with.

Play

Around the edge of the board is a typical board game style path for players to work their way around based on throws of the die. At each square though players are asked to do something related to the symbol tiles.

On the simplest squares they just need to try to remember where a particular symbol is. After making their guess the cover of that square is revealed so everyone can see if they got it right or not. If they didn’t then they lose a life.

In addition to this there are squares when a player can challenge another player (of their choosing) to state where a particular symbol is around the board. If the challenged player gets it right then the one asking the question loses a life, so you need to choose carefully.

On other squares players must name what symbols are at two particular locations on the board. Remembering one can be tricky enough, but two???

The squares on the board that really confuse matters though are the swap squares. A player may land on a square where they are told to swap around the positions of two of the symbol tiles. ~Even worse for the memory are the squares where they are just told to swap any two tiles of their choosing!

Winning back lives

As you can probably tell, there are plenty of squares around the board that are full of opportunities for you to lose lives. There are luckily also four squares where you can try to win a life back. Located in the corners of the board these squares require you to find three of one of the symbol types. This could be three fruit, three numbers, three animals, or the three things that are in your colour group. Each player having a playing counter which is either blue, green, red or yellow.

If you have a good memory, and can keep track of all the swapping around of symbols that has been taking place, then you deserve to be able to regain a life!

Baffled – the verdict

We absolutely loved playing Baffled. It was by far one of the best family games we’ve played lately. The swapping around of symbols keeps even the players with good memories on their toes. It’s quite funny watching how frustrated other players can get when they’re desperately trying to remember where they saw something. After playing a couple of games back to back they can merge into one. It can be difficult to try to figure out if you are actually remembering where symbols are located in that game, or in an earlier one!

As is fast becoming our measure of whether a family board game is good or not, discussion soon turned to whether my mum would enjoy the game. We’re pretty sure she would, but there’s also an edge of fear as we know what a good memory and eye for detail she can have!

Baffled – the facts

Baffled is for 2-4 players, age 8+. It is available to buy online here and has an RRP of £22.00 At the time of writing it is available online for £20.80. It is produced by Cheatwell Games.

Disclaimer: We received our copy of Baffled as a raffle prize at Blog On Toys as it had been entered into the Blog On Toy Awards. We were not asked to write a review of the game. This post contains affiliate links.

Seven League Boots

October 3, 2018 by Penny Leave a Comment

We’re suckers for board games that look old and interesting in some way. Don’t get me wrong, we also love finding the gems from our 80s childhood that everyone remembers, but sometimes it’s nice to just try something completely random. That’s exactly what we did with Seven League Boots.

About Seven League Boots

Picked up from a car boot sale, the aim of Seven League Boots is to travel all around the board, visiting each corner and collecting an appropriately coloured counter at each as proof.

To make each step of your journey, you need to have either the appropriate footwear, or a pair of magic boots. That’s where the Seven League Boots come in.

How to play Seven League Boots

Each player chooses a playing piece colour and places their piece at the centre of the board on the “home square”. They also place a counter of their colour in each of the four corners of the board.

The pile of playing cards (27 in total) are shuffled and four cards are dealt to each player. These are your footwear, which allow you to travel around the board. The remaining cards are placed face down in a pile on the table, next to the board.

Each leg of a journey has a picture of a piece of footwear on it. To be allowed to travel along a path you have to have the appropriate footwear. For your turn you can either play a card and move your playing piece one step around the board, or, if you don’t have appropriate footwear, you can use your turn to swap. When you play a card, or swap one, you place it face up on a discard pile, and then take a new card from the face down pile.

The twist in the game is if you have a card with the Seven League Boots on it. These cards mean that you can go along a path that has any footwear on it.

The winner of the game is the first person to return home after collecting all four of their coloured counters from the four corners of the board.

What are Seven League Boots?

Seven League Boots come from European folklore and were boots that allow the wearer to take strides of seven leagues per step, where a league is a unit of length. Boots are often presented to the main character in a story by someone magical to help them complete something significant in the story.

In this game’s case the Seven League Boots allow the player who has the card the “magical powers” to travel along any path in the game.

What we thought of Seven League Boots

We played Seven League Boots with Master C when he was off school sick one day. I’ve been on the look out for games to replace Snakes and Ladders and Ludo for someone like him who can’t yet read properly, but loves playing board games.

Once we’d explained the rules to him and how he needed the appropriate footwear to travel along each path he was well away. He thoroughly enjoyed the game, especially because he won. It was nice and simple enough for him to follow what going on and also for him to strategically plan ahead and retain cards that he could see would aid him in getting to where he wanted to go.

For the adults playing, the game had enough complexity to keep us entertained, whilst also being simple enough that my son didn’t need help. The design of the board and the playing cards have a very 70s feel about them, giving the game a retro charm befitting of its age.

I can definitely see it as a game that we will come back until Master C graduates on to the next level of board games.

Seven League Boots – the facts

Number of players: 2 – 4

Age range: 5+

Believed to have been first published by Condor under their Condor Playvalue name in 1974, the game is copyright Seven Towns Ltd.

If you’re interested in vintage board games then why not head over to Facebook and join our new vintage board games group.

Ludo

August 14, 2018 by Penny Leave a Comment

Ever since he realised that there was a second game on the back of the Snakes and Ladders board, Master C has become slightly obsessed with Ludo. It’s one of those games that I remember playing as a child as part of a compendium of games, but yet I don’t think I’ve touched it since childhood.

Ludo’s origins

I do vaguely remember that Ludo is actually based on the Indian game Pachisi. Described by some as the “national game of India”, Pachisi is a cross and circle game (otherwise known as a race game) in which players move around the board, in a race against each other. First played in medieval India, the number of spaces moved was determined by throwing six or seven cowrie shells and whether the shells landed with the opening upwards or not gave you a score.

Game play

We’ve obviously moved on since then, and Ludo is played with a single die now and up to four players. Each player has four counters and each has a corner of the board as their initial home position.

If a player rolls a six then they move one of their counters into their starting position, and from there a second roll of the die determines how many spaces they need to move. Players then race around the cross shape on the board, until they get back to almost where they started. Then they have to head up their coloured strait towards “home” in the centre of the board.

The aim is to get all four of their coloured counters home. But it’s not as easy as it may initially seem!

The twist

With players having all four counters, and different starting times for them, it ends up with everyones counters overlapping on the board. Even more so if you have three or four players. If you land on a square that already has a player’s counter on it then you knock them off the board and they have to go back to their home position, and await a six to start again.

It’s also possible to block other players by getting two of your counters on adjacent squares. If you manage this then it means that other plays can not knock you off, but also can’t get past you.

The only place on the board where you are really safe is on your home strait, as then no one else can catch you.

The kids’ reactions

As I mentioned when I wrote about Snakes and Ladders, Ludo is a much more complicated game, as you an play it with a huge amount of strategy. It’s up to you which counters you move when and whether you aim to knock the opposition off the board or not with certain moves. Realistically, it’s a huge step up from Snakes and Ladders, but at the same time it’s a perfect game for introducing strategy to children.

Master C got so excited the first time that he managed to knock me off the board. He also takes a great thrill from being able to block other players by getting two of his counters together. He may not yet understand all the strategy behind why you might do either of these things, but it’s a brilliant way to get him starting to think about them.

It’s also helped his mental maths come on even faster. As well as counting out each move of his own, he’s also been working out what he needs to roll to knock other players off the board.

Ludo around the world

I admit that I hadn’t really thought much about Ludo being played elsewhere until I innocently put a picture of the board up on my Facebook page and a Dutch friend commented.

He pointed out that Ludo looked much like a game in The Netherlands called “mens erger je niet”, which roughly translates as “Man, don’t get annoyed”. Intrigued I went off to do a bit of research and it seems that in German Ludo is called “Man, don’t get upset”. Ludo also has similar names in Albanian, Bulgarian, Croatian, Czech, Macedonian, Russian, Serbian, Slovak, Slovene, and Turkish. In Greece there is also a reference to players behaviour in the fact that they call it “Grumbler” and Italian just call it “Don’t get upset”.

I had no idea that what I had just thought of as a simple game could bring about such a response from players! And I Guess it just puzzles me even more as to why it so often seems to be found on the reverse of a game as innocent as Snakes and Ladders!

A variety of different Ludo sets (with and without Snakes and Ladders) are available to buy online here.

Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links.

Snakes and Ladders

August 8, 2018 by Penny Leave a Comment

Snakes and Ladders is one of those board games that feels like it’s been around for ever. It therefore seems like possibly a bit of a strange one to be the subject of a blog post, but please bear with me on this one.

A few months back Bonn and I came across a copy of it at a car boot sale that we stumbled across on our way back from Harwich on bank holiday Monday. I seem to recall that it didn’t cost very much and, as I feel like I’m very much having to restock all the toys and games I have for my kids since splitting from their Dad, I decided to grab a copy. I’m so glad I did.

The game came home with us, ended up on the shelf with some other games and to be honest I didn’t give it much more thought at first. Then, as the weather started to improve, Master C and I took to going and sitting at one of the picnic benches in his school playground in a morning, whilst we waited for the school bell to ring. On that particular table is a giant version of Snake and Ladders and we started passing the time in a morning by me rolling an imaginary die and him moving an imaginary counter round the board in an attempt to win before the bell went. One morning I happened to mention to him that we had a real copy of the game at home and his eyes nearly popped out of his head. Bad mum for not telling him sooner I guess!

Since then the pair of us have ended up playing Snake and Ladders quite regularly. It’s made me realise what a wonderful game it is for a child his age. On so many different levels.

Firstly, and this almost goes without saying, board games are a wonderful way to engage with your kids. Conversations can happen whilst you’re playing. It’s like the action of playing a game means that children somehow forget that they normally don’t tell you anything about their day at school. It’s also proper focussed time with them. No opportunity to pick up your phone and end up down a social media rabbit hole when you’re having to take turns.

A game like Snakes and Ladders also introduces children to so many different things. There’s the whole concept of taking turns. It may seem obvious to us as adults, but it’s a skill that children need to learn. There’s maths involved in rolling the die, counting the dots on the surface and then moving a playing piece the right number of spaces on the board. Regular playing of board games can help a child so much with some of what they are more formally taught in the classroom.

In a game like Snakes and Ladders there are rules to follow. If you land on the bottom of a ladder you go up it, if you land on a snake’s head you go down it. Simple rules, but again another concept that it’s important for children to learn.

And finally, there’s the fact that sometimes you win and sometimes you lose. As I’ve discovered, it’s very difficult to cheat in Snakes and Ladders, short of not rolling the die correctly. It’s totally random as to what you land on and this means that whoever is playing has an equal chance of winning. There’s no strategy involved. After the initial disappointment of going down their first snake, children soon realise that even mummy can end up landing on a snake on the final row of the board and soon be back to the beginning. And how Master C laughs whenever that happens!

Interestingly the version of Snakes and Ladders that we picked up came with Ludo on the reverse of the board. A game that I vaguely remembered from childhood and one that I assumed was equally as fair as Snakes and Ladders. How wrong I was! Look out for a whole separate blog post about this game and why it’s apparently called “Man, don’t get annoyed!” in some parts of the world!

It goes without saying that there are numerous versions of Snakes and Ladders out there. You can find a wide selection online here.

Smart Ass – a family board game

July 7, 2018 by Penny Leave a Comment

The last year as seen us play loads of board games together as a family. We’ve found them a fantastic way of getting people of all ages together, laughing and bonding in a way that sitting in front of the TV just can’t compete with. We’re also using them as a bit of a stealth way of educating the kids. Whether it be understanding the concept of taking turns for the younger children, or building the older ones’ general knowledge, board games are an excellent way of doing both as a family. When I saw Smart Ass at Blog On I knew that it would be perfect for that general knowledge building for the older kids.

Smart Ass is all about showing off if you know the answer. Or even if you just think you do. It’s perfectly acceptable to shout out the answer and totally goes against the way that some kids feel that it’s not right to be seen to be smart.

How to play Smart Ass

In Smart Ass the aim of the game is to be first around the board working out Who Am I? What Am I? or Where Am I? The first player to reach the end is the ultimate Smart Ass.

Designed for 2 to 6 players and for ages 12 to adult, play starts with the oldest Smart Ass player who is the Reader and will read the first question. This first player rolls the Jumbo Category Die to determine which category the first question will be from. This could be one of the following:

Blue – What Am I?
Green – Where Am I?
Orange – Who Am I?

Each question card lists 8 clue on it. Starting at the top of the list the player reads down the clues and other players can shout out an answer at any time. But, players only get one go at answering each question. So, if they get it wrong they’re frozen out responding to the rest of the clues.

Once someone gets the right answer that player (the one who got it right) rolls the Jumbo Movement Die and it tells them how many places to move their playing piece around the board.

Play then goes back to the player on the left of the first player, and you repeat the steps above, just moving round the players after each movement on the board.

Special Spaces on the Smart Ass Board

Dumb Ass – this is a penalty space. If you land on this you can’t answer the next questions. Basically, it’s like missing a turn.
Hard Ass – there are a separate pile of Hard Ass questions as this is effectively a bonus question space. Only the player who has landed on this space gets to answer the Hard Ass question. If they get it right then they can roll the Jumbo Movement Die again for a bonus move. If they answer incorrectly then play just moves on as if it had never happened!
Kick Ass Space – this is a basically the same as landing on a “go back” space. If you land on this then you have to move back three spaces on the board.

The winner of the game is the first person to land on “The End” and you don’t need a correct number on the Jumbo Movement Die to do so. They are the ultimate Smart Ass.

What we thought of Smart Ass

It’s quite possible that we’re all a bit thick, but we actually found the questions in Smart Ass were actually quite difficult. Yet, we could do all the Smart Ass questions! Not sure what that really says about our levels of general knowledge.

We enjoyed the game, and there were certainly quite a few laughs as we tried desperately to guess some of the answers. Even more as we then had to google who some of the people were to help explain them to other players.

One thing we would say about Smart Ass is that we think it could do with there being more spaces on the playing board. Once one player is on a roll the game can a actually finish quite quickly. In a way that’s good as it means each game can be relatively short, but with a playing age of 12 and up I felt that each one could go on for longer really.

Smart Ass is certainly a good addition to our selection of general knowledge games though. And it seems that 13 year olds aren’t too old for a bit of a laugh at calling someone a “Smart Ass”!

Smart Ass is available in high street toy shops or can also be bought online here. It has an RRP of £19.99, but can sometimes be found cheaper online.

Disclaimer: We were sent a copy of Smart Ass for the purposes of this review. All opinions remain my own. This post contains affiliate links.