Story Time!

by Becky Topol, 7/2/13

My name is Becky, but for two years I was also Elja, a Dwarf princess who abandoned her mountain home.  She rejected all the Dwarf ways, favored a spiked club over a traditional war hammer, and became a Barbarian.  Dungeons and Dragons (D&D) was an important and joyful part of my life, but I also found it a little frustrating.  D&D is, at its core, a battle system.  The dice-rolling battle part of the game is fun, tense, and exciting, but took up more time than I’d like.  What I REALLY wanted to focus on was the story, like my cleric companion’s past in a traveling circus, or the rogue’s bizarre obsession with Owlbears.  Games can vary immensely in the quality and quantity of storytelling depending on the Game Master and players, and quests can be designed to focus more on story than combat.  However, I have recently discovered games that focus almost completely on storytelling, and I am addicted.

There is huge variety in storytelling games; some use a more traditional board game format.  In Mice and Mystics, for example, you lay out tiles to build a castle, and play intrepid mice facing down horrors like cats and roaches.  Using your characters’ special skills you attempt to work together to save the realm from an evil sorceress, creating an epic tale as you go.  The board game Tales of the Arabian Nights sends you on a mystical quest through the world of Sinbad, Aladdin, and Scheherezade.  During your travels, your character may find wealth and magic, be cursed (or get married, which is just as bad for many characters), or get

transformed into an ape.  The story unfolds as players choose from a variety of possible reactions to each scenario encountered:  Do you pray?  Hide?  Stand and fight?  Once you pick, you flip to the appropriate page, just like a choose-your-own-adventure book, and find out what happens next.

Some storytelling games are incredibly simple.  In Tell Tale, you flip a card to reveal a picture, which you must then incorporate as the next part of an ongoing story.  Its simple, free-form nature makes it an ideal way to spark creativity in children and adults alike.  Similar but more advanced is Once Upon a Time, where each player is dealt cards with different story elements and an ending.  The players then play cards to tell a story together, with each trying to incorporate their own elements, like “Knight” or “Village”, and eventually reach their assigned ending.  This game is a fun combination of collaboration and competition, since the players all work together to tell a fun story, while also looking for opportunities to interrupt and steer the tale in their preferred direction.

My absolute favorites are storytelling games that follow the more traditional role-playing game (RPG) format -

pens, paper, some dice, and plenty of imagination. The very popular Fiasco starts with a handful of dice being rolled to determine the various relationships, objects, and needs that drive the characters.  After building this web of relationships, players take turns to frame and resolve scenes.  Different-colored dice determine positive and negative outcomes, and their distribution affects the storyline for each character.  The result is often something like a Coen Brothers movie, in that things go crazily, darkly, hilariously wrong.  Numerous free playsets are available, so you can play in settings ranging from mundane suburbia to the Wild West to a Mars colony.

Finally, there’s Forsooth!  Yes, the title actually includes an exclamation point, and I think it deserves it.  Essentially, it’s a role-playing game in which you improvise your own Shakespearean play.  You pick a setting, such as “a haunted castle near an enchanted glen in France,” and two themes to drive the tale.  Everyone plays at least two characters, one of whom is their Protagonist.  All Protagonists have to be either “wed or dead” for the play to end, because that’s the way things work in the Bard’s world.  At the end of each scene, the players award points to whichever character they think did the best, either by furthering the plot, developing their character or just being funniest.  It is possible to play this game without using Shakespearean language, but as it stands, it’s the perfect game for Shakespeare fans.  I can’t think of any other game where I’ve been encouraged to throw bonus points at my friends for making clever puns.

If you're interested in Shakespeare-themed storytelling games, RSVP for Labyrinth’s Taste of Shakespeare, being held on August 24 in cooperation with the Shakespeare Theatre Company! We will be playing RPGs including Forsooth! and the Shakespearean playset of Fiasco.

New Arrivals This Week 6/25/13 to 7/1/13

by Becky "Ready My Airship!" Topol

We’re all crazy excited about Kings of Air and Steam. A pick-up-and-deliver game in a brightly-colored, cartoony steampunk world, Kings of Air and Steam challenges players to use their airships to deliver goods to rail depots, where trains can haul them to the wealthy cities, all for your profit.  When I say “airships”, I feel the need to emphasize that the pieces are fiercely adorable zeppelin stand-ups in a rainbow of colors, and I am in love with them.  Despite being awesome, the zeppelins are forbidden to land in the cities, so players have to use clever planning to come up with a series of cargo drops and movements to get their payload from the factories to the rich captains of industry in the cities.  Players secretly decide all their actions at the beginning of the turn - movement or upgrades to airships and trains, building depots, begging for a loan, etc - and then all reveal their first move simultaneously.  Turn order and character specifications determine who will actually move first on each action card.  The board is modular, and its size changes with the number of players.  Cities (including Geekopolis!) can be in a different arrangement from game to game, which means greater variety and replayability.  Kings of Air and Steam is a gorgeous game that we can’t wait to take for a spin!

Via Appia is another new board game this week.  You play as Roman senators, attempting to be the first to get from Rome to Brindisium.  Of course, there’s no road from Rome to Brindisium yet, so you’re going to have to build it as you go.  Essentially a tile-laying game, Via Appia is rife with difficult decisions; doing something that may help you in the moment may also give your opponent a big advantage in a later turn, but the quarry mechanic means that things are always changing in a very visible way.  The quarry is what I’m most excited about in this one.  If you’re building a road, you need the stones to come from somewhere, and Via Appia does this by including a device like an arcade’s coin-pusher game.  You place stones in the back of the quarry pusher, and slowly press them forward with a wooden arm in the hope that a bigger, more valuable stone will slide forward off the edge.  Players use the stones they collect this way to add to the road, visit different cities along the way, and earn money.  With this totally unique mechanic and so many different choices on each turn, Via Appia promises to be an exciting challenge.

For the card gamers among us, Archaeology: The Card Game is a set-collection game that we've just begun to carry due to the large number of requests for it. Taking the role of archaeologists, players attempt to buy and sell various artifacts ranging from lowly papyrus scraps to the highly valuable pharaoh’s mask.  Larger sets of the same item are worth more points when sold to the museum, but you can’t keep a set in your hand too long: Sandstorm cards will force you to get rid of half your hand, and Thief cards allow players to steal cards from each other.  This constant threat keeps tension high, and forces quick, sometimes painful, decision-making (if I’d held out on selling those talismans for just ONE MORE TURN I’d have had the whole set!  Argh!).  Archaeology is a relatively quick, easy to pick up, and super-engaging game for two to four players.

With summer getting into full swing, it’s the perfect time for more-portable versions of classic games like Battleship.  Whether you’re heading out to an afternoon at the park or a week at the beach, you might want to pack the new Battleship: Card Game or Battleship: Fun on the Run, a new miniature version of the classic peg game.  For more fun on the road, we’ve added Summer Fun Mad Libs to our growing collection of old-school write-in books.  Letters from Camp Mad Libs are perfect for kids heading off to summer camp, or anyone who likes sending silly mail to friends.  Each page is a fill-in-the-blanks letter, ready to be torn out, sealed with a sticker, stamped, and mailed!

And if you do want to bring your games on a trip, we’re now carrying Rubber Box Bands - specially-designed elastic bands in various sizes meant to keep game boxes closed tight.  They’re a great addition to any game collection (even one that stays home) to keep rulesheets, cards, and parts in their boxes.  I know I’d be heartbroken if a zeppelin got lost...

New Arrivals This Week 6/18/13 to 6/24/13

Hanabi is one of the great new arrivals at Labyrinth this week.  A nominee for this year’s prestigious

Spiel des Jahres award, Hanabi  is a cooperative card game in which nobody can see their own cards, but can see everybody else’s.  Players must rely on limited clues from their teammates to deduce what they should do next.  The aim is to collectively play consecutive numbers in each of five colors, while making less than four errors in a game.  This is a fantastic, high-tension card game that avoids many of the pitfalls common to cooperative games.  For example, it’s impossible for one person to take control of the game and dictate how everyone else plays, since everybody has to pay close attention and really rely on each other for information.  Challenging, yet easy to learn, Hanabi is a true cooperative game unlike anything else around.

Dominion: Guilds is the brand new expansion for Dominion. Every Dominion expansion has had its own theme which adds an interesting new element to Dominion gameplay, and Guilds is no different. In this new set, the focus is on new options for how to save and spend your wealth.  Some cards allow players to overpay when buying cards in order to gain extra effects. Other cards give players coin tokens they can spend to buy cards, but unlike regular coins in Dominion, these don’t go away from turn to turn. This may lead to more efficient deck-building, since players don’t have to pick between either wasting the money they draw or buying cards they don’t really want, leading to a cluttered and inefficient deck.  Guilds gives a new spin to Dominion’s theme and gameplay - after all, you certainly can’t be an iron-fisted ruler if you can’t control your money.

Yottsugo is a tricky word puzzler consisting of interlocking pieces with letters on them.  Working on your own or cooperatively, you choose a set of letters from one of the many challenge envelopes.

You must try to organize these letters into grids consisting of four or eight words, both horizontally and vertically.  Each envelope unfolds like a piece of origami to reveal several layers of clues if you get stuck.  In my experience, Yottsugo is definitely a higher-level word game, so if you’re looking to give your vocab muscles a workout, Yottsugo is a cool new option.

For the caveman in all of us, there’s Ooga Booga.  A simple, silly memory game, Ooga Booga challenges you and the rest of your tribe to remember a chant that gets longer and longer as the game goes on.  Contending with caveman lingo, table-banging gestures, and direction-reversals, the first one to get rid of all their cards becomes the new chief of the tribe!  This game is absolutely hilarious for kids as much as adults - I’ve never seen or played in a game where everyone wasn’t laughing, smiling, and cheering the whole time.  Not to mention that I became chief my very first time playing...

And those are just a few of the new arrivals this week! Others include Terzetto, a marble-placement strategy challenge for two.  Fish to Fish is a race to pick the correct tiles to transform one fish into another.  Cheese Louise! is fun spatial puzzle racing game in which you have to hurry to find the right slice of Swiss cheese to cover up all the delicious condiments on your sandwich.  Warning: Delicious condiments may contain bugs!

Sink Your Teeth into Morels

by David Kempe, 6/18/13

Morels is a mushroom-themed, two-player, card-based strategy game by Two Lanterns Games.  Players can take one of several actions on their turn. They can take cards into their hand, either a single card from from the card row or all of up to 4 cards in the Decay (the area for cards that go too long without getting picked). Players can also cook or sell mushrooms they have collected for victory points or walking sticks respectively. Lastly, players can play Frying Pans out of their hands to use in the cooking process.

There are several different types of cards: Mushrooms, Frying Pans, Baskets, Moons, Butter, and Cider. Most of the different Mushrooms have a sale price in sticks and a cooking amount for points, except for the Destroying Angel, which reduces a player’s hand size for several turns. Frying Pans are required to cook mushrooms. Baskets increase a player’s hand size. Moons get a player an extra special double mushroom card. Butter and Cider get a player extra points for cooking, provided the player cooks a large enough group of mushrooms at once.

We found that the hand size mechanic was integral to gameplay; the stringent hand size affected our decision-making process more than any other mechanic in the game. As such, there was never enough incentive to take Destroying Angels, even if one could get a few good Mushrooms with them, since the mushrooms we wanted never got to the Decay.

Players use the walking sticks they acquire through selling mushrooms to take cards from the far end of the card row, which they could not usually take. Although selling mushrooms can really open up a player’s options during the game, we found that a single good sale of mushrooms could give a player enough sticks for the entire game.

Morels has a very similar feel to Jaipur, while borrowing the card row mechanic that Copycat steals from Through the Ages. It’s very strategy-oriented because players can always get exactly the card they need, provided they have hand space to wait and sticks to grab the cards in a pinch. I highly recommend Morels, not only for the casual gamer interested in more strategy, but also for veteran board gamers looking for something quick.

On the way to DC...

Tuesday was a beautiful day, sunny and breezy. We followed a tug that was heading for Quantico most of the day. Chatted with Navy Patrol Boat #4 to get our instructions through the live ammo training exercise in progress. Finally when we were just about out of the exercise perimeter, we heard some shots and saw water splashing. With all the precaution, we had hoped for something more exciting!

As we made our way into the Port Tobacco River, we had to navigate through a sea of crab pots. After zigging and zagging, we enjoyed a lovely evening in a great little anchorage. We were even serenaded by church bells every half hour.













Wednesday...on to DC!



Very calm day, 3-5 knot winds on the nose, and an all day ebbing tide. We finally caught up with the turning tide maybe an hour before arriving at the Washington Channel. But along the way...

...we noticed tiny things struggling in the water. There were hundreds of cicadas drowning all around us! A couple of hitchhikers joined us for awhile before making the suicide dive into the Potomac. Poor creatures, seventeen years waiting to be free, then wasting that brief freedom trying (and failing) to learn to swim.

Mount Vernon comes along just around the corner from DC. It's a pretty sight from the river. Huge tour boats go in and out of there all day dropping folks off for the tour. We didn't head that way, but enjoyed it in passing. The osprey did not enjoy our passing!

Ah, arriving at last. This was totally new to us and a wee bit intimidating. You anchor in the middle of the channel with a stone wall on one side and a marina on the other...not to mention a half dozen really large day, evening and dinner cruise boats backing in and out of their slips all hours. So, we provided the early evening entertainment. The first couple of attempts were aborted because we couldn't get the anchor to set. It is a very soft mud bottom and we were not holding. Okay, no problem...we tried a different spot. Well, this time we were feeling a little close to one of the other boats, and, as if it's not bad enough that you're noticing this yourself, it's really special when they come out and verify it for you! One more time, okay two more times. Our next attempt in moving a little further out the channel put us in the path of one of the monster tour boats. Finally, finally, we got a spot, got a good hold and settled in to enjoy our time in DC! There were almost tears during that fiasco!

What a great place to visit. Check back with us and we'll give you the highlights. 

Thanks for visiting!

So, who knew this day would end so nicely?!



Hi, there! Welcome back! Although this is a short (just 2 weeks) adventure, it promises to be interesting. As you know, we've been sitting in place in VA for quite some time, so getting out even for a short time is exciting.



We are on our way to DC to anchor right downtown and walk or ride the metro to see the sights.  We've been planning this for a few months now, and we took off this morning from Locklies Creek, then north on the Chesapeake Bay to the Potomac.



Being the planners that we are, we had decided to take a quick overnight last week to cross the Rappahannock and buy fuel. It was a good plan, but the wind blew out of the west for days so there was no water in the creek. We have to wait for high tide on a good day to get out of the creek, but with the really low lows we were having, we didn't have a ghost of a chance. So, no bother, we just decided we would run over there this morning and fuel up on our way. Tom checked and we last fueled in Coinjock on our way north last year, so we should have been 30 or 40 gallons down.



Well, we called ahead and a nice young man met us early so we could get away quickly. Strangest thing, Tom could not squeeze even 7 gallons in the two tanks. It was a bit embarrassing, but it was quick. Ah, but the tricks the memory does play...Barb's memory finally kicked in and reminded Tom that he topped the tanks from jerry cans so we would have full tanks through the winter. Mystery solved...if a little late.



We played hopscotch with the storms down the Rappahannock and up the Bay, and we were winning! Two thunderstorms missed us completely. Of course, we did have to battle some funky monkey seas in the  Bay and we lost the game with the storms after all once we got into the Potomac. The good thing is that the seas were relatively calm as we got pelted with rain, and that, at least was welcomed. Skipper Bob led us to a pleasant anchorage in Smith Creek. We will head further up the Potomac in the morning, and maybe get the sails up!



We have truly missed being out on the water, even with the embarrassing start, rough seas, strong downpour and biting flies (for a short time after the storm), to sit here gently rocking at anchor in a lovely creek with a beautiful sunset is paradise.

Family Time Fun 

 

by Kathleen, 11/2/12

One of my favorite things about Thanksgiving is spending time with my family, just lying around eating and of course, playing games and doing puzzles. We frequently do a Christmas puzzle over the Thanksgiving weekend to start getting us in the mood for the holiday, but we also always play lots of games. Some of my very best Thanksgiving memories are playing Trivial Pursuit with my Mom and Dad after an early dinner while football played on T.V. in the background. Sensory overload? Perhaps, but we always had a blast and laughed and talked, which didn't necessarily happen as much if we weren't playing a game. Making my family play a game was a great way for us to actually pay attention to one another. If we didn't play a board or card game after dinner, Mom got too busy with cleaning up dishes, Dad would start reading, and I would try to get out of helping clean up to go play on my fancy, new Apple IIe (o.k., so I'm old), and even though we may all have been in the same house, we weren't really spending quality time together.

Another thing those days taught me was that not all games are for all people. My Father hated Scrabble, which was always a favorite for my Mom and me. Usually I could always talk them into playing Trivial Pursuit, but I, being young, couldn't ever compete. There were other games over the years that my family loved, but it was challenging to find just the right game to make everyone happy. For that reason, I thought I'd share with you some of my family's current favorites. My husband is legally blind so it makes playing certain board games challenging for him. Here are some of the ones we play most often!

Wits & Wagers Family



Wits & Wagers is a well-loved and highly awarded series of trivia games, that make the genre fun even for non-trivia nuts by adding in a mechanic that lets you bet on other players answers. In this family-friendly version, the betting is simplified by giving each player a large meeple and a small meeple to divvy up among guesses they think are the best. Containing kid-friendly questions, dry-erase boards and markers, and wooden meeples, Wits & Wagers Family is an easily travelling version of the classic game, and great for all generations!

To me, this is a much more fun trivia game than Trivial Pursuit ever was. It gives kids a chance of possibly winning while maintaining the fun of trivia games. I would think kids of about 5 or 6 and up could play this. Even younger could play on a team. There is also a new version, Wits & Wagers party, which would be good with slightly older kids (maybe 10 and up).

Qwirkle 

A great abstract strategy game, Qwirkle uses wooden tiles with different colored shapes that players arrange in lines – either by shape, or by color. There are rules that make placement sometimes challenging, and the winning player is the one who can make the most scoring lines of tiles and keep the other opponents' scores low.

I love this game. It is like Scrabble with shapes and colors. We began playing this as a family when my son was about 4 years old, but it is still a regular for our family and on game night with friends. All ages and skill levels love this game and it can be easily adapted for younger children. It can also turn into a pretty strategic game when played by adults. It won the Spiel des Jahres last year (German Boardgame of the Year award - like the Oscars of boardgames), even though it was created by an American woman.

Tsuro

A beautiful, simple game of tile laying strategy, this game is especially easy to learn for new players. This game is fast and easy, with enough strategy thrown in to make it fun for even hard-core gamers. This is one of the favorites in Labyrinth's aftercare programs, and is regularly played and won by children as young as 1st grade! You are building a maze of paths and trying to remain the last person on the board. It plays in about 15 to 20 minutes, and can support 2 to 8 players which is one of the reasons it is a party favorite.

Ticket to Ride

In Ticket to Ride, players collect cards of various types of train cars that they then use to claim railway routes in North America. The longer the routes, the more points they earn. Additional points come to those who fulfill Destination Tickets – goal cards that connect distant cities; and to the player who builds the longest continuous route.

Although this one is a little tough for my husband because he can't always see all the cities on the board, he still really likes it. This is one of the very best games to introduce friends and family to Euro-style board games. It is pretty quick, definitely less than an hour, and easy to learn. I would think that a child of about 7 or 8 who has experience with games could play this, but it does take a bit more concentration and may be better with slightlyolder kids or adults.

Rummikub

This is a classic that I learned from my grandmother. It was my favorite all through high school. It is kind of like the card game Rummy, but soooo much more fun with lots more perceptual reasoning. My husband and I are both pretty good at this game, somy child has had a hard time competing, but he is now starting to get it. We do have to help him. This is definitely the one that makes my husband and I the most competitive. It can get ugly!

Two by Two

The floodwaters are rising and the animals need to board the ark!

In this deceptively simple game, players move their boats around a steadily deteriorating landscape, matching pairs in order to rescue stranded animals.

Animals that are rare at the end of the game are worth more points than those that are common.

This is a new family favorite and we will probably play it this Thanksgiving. It is simple and the animals are cute. I love trying to get the super rare unicorns. We frequently read the Shel Silverstein poem, The Unicorn, before or after playing. It has always been one of my favorite poems.

I'm sure you can imagine, as the owner of a game store, my family and I play a lot of games, but these are some of the ones we return to again and again. My son and I have a lot of other favorites that we frequently play, but when my Mom heads to town we are more than likely to bring one of these out. If you'd like to have a new game for the holidays, stop by and talk to our knowledgeable staff. We can help you find a game that is just right for you and your family. We also have a huge selection of jigsaw puzzles and travel games.