TableTop Tournament

As many of you know I am a few years sober Pinterest mom. Like I overdid baby parties. My poor second child will never know the extravagance that was a themed to the extreme birthday party. I don't miss the mass amounts of people in my house or the millions of tiny people who seriously broke all our stuff. I do miss the planning a little bit and the fun of it. So I took it down a notch. When D and I were first married I would plan fun little video game tournaments for us. I always got my ass kicked because I love gaming and I suck at it. D is the exact opposite. He loves gaming and he freaking rocks at it. So I took that idea and applied it to a family Table Top Game Tournament. Small boy had the day off from school for a three day weekend and D took a day off from work to spend an extended weekend with us so I figured it was the perfect day for it. Enter TableTop Tournament 2016!

I started drawing a little bit again when we returned from PAX. I re-imagined us all as little elf people and created gamer profiles for all of us. It was a fun creation process and the family loved them (especially the tiny girl). There were also rules and a competition board to track the winner. 

The very first game in the tournament was Small World. This game takes forever so we started when tiny girl went to "nap." Barring one minor hiccup in forgotten rules, the game was great. And close! Small boy beat me by one point and D beat him by 3 if I remember correctly. So ultimately D won the first game (surprise surprise!)

Iced coffee, Small World and my two favorite guys!

 D is ruthless. And a really great gamer, video gamer, table top gamer, just in general!

Soon we released the Bug from her "nap" and she joined us for a round of King of Tokyo. We included her in the games (one of the rules) but her turns didn't actually count toward game play. Some day little Bug, some day! 

Who shall be the King of Tokyo?!

 Bug loved being included. Rolling dice is one of her most favorite things in the whole wide world. She's a lovely addition as "Player 4" to our little family.

Concentration wins!

Somehow I busted out an unreasonably quick win in this game. I rolled like a BOSS and racked up 20 points pretty fast. This is the opposite of how I usually play this game. My typical strategy is just to attempt to murder my opponents as fast as I can to win. But the rolls of 3 were ever in my favor so I went with it and stayed on Tokyo while my competition tried to kill me. Small Boy came close but I was able to purchase the "Stretchy" card and it helped me achieve a most glorious victory!

 Oh and did I mention that Tiny Girl won too? She declared "I WIN!" so we gave her the win. Well done, little one.

Next up was Catan Junior. This is Small Boy's jam. I have no idea how he does it but his kid wins this game 90% of the time. He doesn't seem to have any one set strategy which I think it actually his ultimate strategy! He's erratic and brilliant! 

 Unfortunately for Small Boy, this was the rare 10% of the time he didn't win. I seriously sat there wondering if I should let him win. Then decided against it because honestly, that's not the way D and I parent. And Small Boy is ruthless and learns things unreasonably fast and gets good at them even faster. So if I can get a win, I'll take it! There was no hard feelings.

 Bug also declared "I WIN" so she won. (She's only 2. She won't always win!)

 Eventually it got late and siblings will be siblings. Before starting our next game, we had a break for dinner and some outfit changes (jammies FTW). And of course, sibling brawl. It was a draw.

 I forgot to mention that there was an intermission between each tabletop game in which we played "Duck Game" on steam. If you have not played this with your family or friends, drop what you are doing, get it and play because it is the most hilarious and fun game I've played in a while. D usually wins but the rest of us don't even care because we laugh so hard playing that it's worth it. And every once in a while we get a good shot of D blows himself up somehow and we win!

intentional video game faces. 

 Our next game was Oh My Gods (which you will remember from a previous post, we purchased at PAX and is what got Small Boy into Greek Mythology) Best 2 of 3 games was the plan....mostly because I won the first game.

The second game was won by D (mostly because I wasn't paying attention and missed a card that Small Boy had put down. The third game was won by Small Boy after D made an incorrect guess because he missed a card that Small Boy put down. I believe L's strategy for this game is to just be so insane and wacky that we miss what he does. On our last game we didn't finish. It was way past bedtime (Bug had already gone to sleep) and the boy was exhausted.

 This is also not the best game for him because he likes to tell us what he's doing which helps us win. It ended with him very upset and tired. So we ended there and so I was, by default, declared the overall winner. Who knew?!

"I WIN!"

So I was able to obtain the ultimate Table Top prize package. This included the ability to choose a new tabletop game for the family (under $50). I chose Pandemic and also Sushi Go because they were way under $50 and I wanted Pandemic but also a game L would be able to learn and be good at right away. I also got a fun lanyard that declared me winner and three "overpowered game passes" which allow me to make my family game with me as long as nothing important is happening and time allows. Not that that will ever be an issue. These passes would probably have benefited Small Boy much more than they will me. Maybe I will gift them to him for his birthday!

Winner winner chicken dinner!

Overall, it was a great day and full of fun. I love that I have a small family that I can be nerdy with and have that much fun! It's kind of amazing. This will not be our last game tournament. Maybe someday we will be able to expand it to include another family. Now if only a certain family of 3 would be closer (I'm looking at you MillerStrong clan!) So, readers of mine, I encourage you to game more. We played Small World, King of Tokyo, Catan Junior and Oh My Gods (Star Realms would have been the tie breaker). They are all super fun and an almost 7 year old was able to play and do very well playing each game (Star Realms included even though we didn't play this time). So if you were looking for a new game, check out any of those and you won't be disappointed!

A Time I Had