Giveaway Winner & It's All Fun and Games Blogfest

The winner of my copy of Backlash is:

Mindy

It's All Fun and Games Blogfest

Alex J. Cavanaugh's It's All Fun and Games Blogfest

It’s All Fun & Games Blogfest, June 6, 2011 - list your three most favorite games and why. Board games, card games, RPG, video games, physical games, drinking games - even mind games! If it’s a game you enjoy playing, it’s worth sharing.

My family loves to play games. We've got an entire closet full of board games, and we're also video gamers. When our children were younger, we had a game room with a TV and lounge chairs we got from the local 2nd hand store. Since some of my kids are pretty artistic, I had them paint murals on the walls of their favorite games. By the time it was finished they'd mostly grown up and moved out, but I still love the paintings on the walls of my exercise room.

 

Now, as to my three favorite games:

StarCraft II

Since I was just talking about video games I'll start with this one. We've been StarCraft fans for many years and would have LAN parties as a family, sometimes playing with each other and sometimes playing against each other. Now with the Internet we're able to do it online when we're in different cities. After waiting more than a decade since StarCraft Broodwar, they came out with StarCraft II. I love what they've done with the graphics and the storyline rocks. This particular version is just the human campaign. We'll eventually get the Protoss and the Zerg campaigns as well. You can play the campaign by yourself, or you can play scenarios you set up online with friends or just people online.

Seafarers of Catan

This is an extension to the Settlers of Catan board game. We love this game because the way it's designed it can be different (literally) every time you play it. Each of the hexagons you see above (land and ocean) can be placed either in established patterns provided in a booklet that comes with the game or in ones you make up yourself. The basic game is for 2-4 players, but you can get an extension set to add two players. The difference between Settlers and Seafarers is the addition of ships and a pirate.

The Great Dalmuti

The Great Dalmuti is a card game that's similar to the game Scum (in our family we routinely mix terms from the two games). In this game you have a king (the Great Dalmuti), who's the person that wins the most recent hand, then a vice king (2nd person to go out). On the losing end you have the scum (the last person to go out) and vice scum (the next to last person to go out). Hats are required for the top two people and the bottom two people. Below is a picture of a scum.

So these are three of my family's favorite games. What about you? Do you like to play games? What do you like to play and why?