Week one of my third year of University and I am sitting in a class for 3 hours playing board games…. I know you’re jealous! Who would’ve thought, the girl who hates most games is actually interested in playing board games because of BCM300! I am going to be truely honest with you all, I have only ever played monopoly, cards against humanity and maybe scrabble… I’m basic when it comes to games.
Now before I get into detail about specific games, I feel as though I should go into detail as to why we are studying games? Why board games? What does that have to do with anything? Well let’s put it this way, people who play mainly board games unlock different stories and discover a whole new world. Games allow our minds to devalue into a new dimension, which I like to call it game mode… and through the past 3 tutorials in BCM300 I have been able to unlock my own game mode while playing board games. With my blog post, I am going to talk more about the games I have been able to play within BCM300 and also express to you my own thoughts and opinions whether they may be negative or positive while playing these games.
The first game in which I play was called ‘unstable unicorn’ created by Ramy Badie, not trying to sound rude, however when I first saw this game I automatically sighed and was uninterested, Oh how I was wrong. This game focuses on two aspects, unicorns (very cute unicorns) and destruction. The goal of this game is to be the first person to collect seven different unicorns in your play area, which is called your stable. Now let’s talk about how to play this game (well how I think it is played). At the beginning of the game you start to build your unicorn army, each unicorn has their own magical and special powers. Within the game you use different upgrades and downgrades to protect and build and your stable. You have 13 different baby unicorn cards, 22 basic unicorn cards, 30 magical unicorn cards, 23 magic cards, 8 downgrade cards, 14 upgrade cards, and 14 instant cards, and all I can say is that the game is so intense and fun due to all the different actions and moves each card can make. The game is made up of 4 phases, which I found it very hard to wrap my head around… the first phase is ‘beginning of your turn’ which is basically if any of your cards have an effect at the beginning of your turn you can use that effect. The second phase is the ‘draw phase’ which is when you draw 1 card from the draw pile. The third phase is the ‘action phase’ which is when you can play either one card from your hand or draw another card from the draw pile. The last phase is ‘end of your turn’ which is when you discard down to the hand limit, which is 7. In all honesty this game took so long to understand and so long to play with a large group which did end up in myself becoming bored and uninterested, however for the majority of the game I was very interested and had a load of fun.
Now onto the second game, this game was probably this most interesting game I have played in a while, and guess who created it? Our own university tutor, Richard hall, called ‘Die Rich’. This game is created around the ‘Carthaginian general Hannibal’, with a Roman setting. Richard explained that his inspiration for this game came from the Second Punic Wars. This game is both strategic and very fun. Richard hall gave us the rundown of the game, and due to the fact that he was the creator the way I am going to explain how to play this game will never amount to his description, however, I will give it a go.
This game is set up in different stacks of cards that all have a different trait. There are scoring cards which have to show up within the deck equally, so as Richard states ‘theres a mathematical way’ of doing it properly. You divide the remaining cards into 4 stacks and shuffle the scoring cards, the Hannibal card must be at the very bottom. Within the game you must display one of your cards and when a scoring card pops up, the cards you have displayed are scored. There are four different types of cards, Property; The number on the card states where your property is and you want to have your property control over all areas. There are market cards; the number states the price of your market, lower numbers are sustainable, but if someone has a lower card then you are destroyed. The politic cards; the number states your position on a left-right spectrum, basically if you put down a number 3 you can take 1, 2 and 3 (so you have more control on the spectrum) and the last card is the party card (bacchanal), only one player can put down this card and if their are two cards down then they cancel out. Okay, so basically each player picks up cards and they each put one down, now depending on which card you have placed down is how the game is played. Richard hall has created a whole Blog post on his game and how to play his creation. Here is the link: https://unicorndispatches.wordpress.com/
So there you have it, these are the two games that mainly suck out to me throughout the past tutorial, not only do I want to continue to play new board games, I am very excited the hopefully create my own. This subject has taught me that there is so much more to playing games than just following the rules. I could go on forever on my new obsession with board games, however, I wont boar you for that long!
I have some words of wisdom for you all, I was someone who ‘hated’ games and taking the time to wait for everyone to take their turn, and playing by the rules, but TRUST ME it is so much more fun when you just relax and really immerse yourself into the game!
Thank you BCM300 for showing me something new 🙂
– Charlotte xx
Game Cultures 