Print and Play Games

In preparation for our next project, we all got together and printed out a bunch of print-and-play games and played them. We had a lot of fun playing all these random games together and trying to figure out how they all work. 

Game 1: Farrapos
Here Leslie and I got together to play this Brazilian strategy war game about territory control. There was a minor struggle cutting out all of the pieces representing the soldiers (and stapling the two sides together because we didn't have any glue), but overall the set-up was not too bad. Just a lot of cutting.
I really admired the map and the art, though, it was very nice looking and well put together. As for the game mechanics, they were very complex. On a movement basis, the game was simple, but the battles were very convoluted. Each individual battle would take just a lot of arithmetic and chart reading, and that was all the game was made up of. It was a complicated system for a basic game, because boiled down, it was really just Risk set in Brazil. If the battles were faster, it could be a cool game about controlling territory. Oh, well.

Game 2: Boxing (I don't have the link to this game, but I'll update if I find it)

Jamisha and I played this fun boxing card game that Randy had printed out. The game seemed easy to put together, just cutting out some cards. The graphics were a little simplistic, but it worked well for what it was. The only important thing on the card was what it was. You would put down different attack or defense cards at the same time and calculate the damage done, and repeat it until someone's stamina reached 0. There was a little more to it, but basically that's how it worked.

It was a fun and fast game, and I'm sure there was a strategy to it that I didn't really get, because I lost twice!

Game 3: Get to the Choppa!

This was the last game I played, a multiplayer game with 4 people racing to the chopper against the deadly Predator. If one of us got to the chopper, even if the rest of us had died, the soldiers won. If we all died, the Predator would have won, obviously. It was fun and playable, but it seemed a little bit too simple (even if the instructions seemed to go out of their way to be complicated). There probably should have been another level of conflict or obstacle preventing the players from their destination, like cliffs or rocks or something, I'm not sure. Definitely playable in 20 minutes after you've figured out the rules! That takes some doing, though. 

Overall I had a lot of fun. I do think it requires some digging, but there must be some true hidden gems amongst all these hundreds of games.