#TabletopDay - My fav tabletop games

 Do you like freaking enormous games that take all day to play, an hour to set up, and that you'll probably play wrong for a while but you'll still love?? The Arkham Horror is for you! The base game is already big--so big that I wound up buying more dice to play it regularly*. But now there are several expansions that make it even more epically huge (which I haven't gotten to play yet, much to my woe), and it's easily and all-day thing if you want it to be.

But it's so cool, you guys. Even though the last time I played I wound up mostly Lost In Time And Space.

Here's what I most love about it:

• It's a whole story--there's so many things to track and follow and work around
• It's not competitive, it's collaborative--there's no point in being mean to the people you're playing with because it's all of you against the board, and the board will probably win anyway, so work together
• It's got lots of little tokens and bits and stuff to mess with and read and move around
• Dice!
• It's freaking gorgeous, dudes.

If you're in the mood for a faster game that involves jokes about sheep and wood, this is the one for you! It's not complicated, how it goes is mostly about how well you pick your original placement, but it's super satisfying collecting resources, trading with neighbors, and building things up. There's a number of expansions, too, so you can get bigger and fancier stuff going on, and it's easy to learn.

Also, it's all modular--the board changes every time you play!

Back when we were kids, we lived overseas in places where there wasn't often TV and where cable hadn't been invented yet. We read books, or we played games--all those classic family games like Monopoly, Candy Land, Life, Trivial Persuit. But my fav was always Parcheesi.

It's cooler than Sorry, though basically the same sort of game. It's less likely to be missing pieces than Chinese Checkers. Our copy had really nice wooden pieces that felt nice in our little-kid hands and looked like candy. It's easy enough for kids to play, but fancy enough that adults can play, too, without feeling dumb. It just always felt really classy to me, and I still love it.

What're your favorite games? Share in the comments and I'll start a list of games I need to check out!

 *Well, my friend bought them for me. They have my name on them. I love them.

#TabletopDay - The meanest game of Uno you will ever play

Uno is one of those games you learn when you're a kid because it's easy and it's fun and it's not too fussed about how many people play it. It's also mean. Like, seriously, the only physical fight I've ever gotten into was over a three-person hand of Uno--the other two, my best friends, teamed up to skip or reverse on me for twenty minutes straight and the only time I got a go was when I had to pick up cards, so I kicked one of them. She hit me, so I hit her back, and then she bit me and tore my nightgown with her steel-enforced teeth. 

Good times.

Anyway, Uno is also one of those games where you have lots of house rules* AND one where there's lots of variation-decks so you can mix it up.

My brother and I recently created the meanest house rule ever, and it will murder your game and make all your friends hate you, and it's awesome.

It's this:

• If someone drops any Draw card on you, you can avoid having to draw those cards by playing ANOTHER draw card that matches, and the next person has to draw the cards listed on BOTH cards. 

The best part of this rule? There's no limit to it. When we were playing, we had a hand that circled twelve times and the last person had to draw more cards then there were in the draw deck, and we wound up adding a second deck to the game!

It's hilarious, you guys, everyone waiting for the time when there's no more Draw cards and someone has to pick up the whole deck. Everyone holding so many cards that they can't find the ones they're looking for because their hands are too small to fan them out properly. The wails of the lost as they take forever to get through all the cards they're holding.

It's the best house rule ever.

What're your best house rules?

*Ours are: You keep drawing when you don't have a match until you find one you can play, no matter how many you have to draw. If you go out of turn, you have to draw five. Sometimes we have random stupid things you have to say every time someone plays a certain card; depends on how dunk we are.