Zelda Monoply

This week we played Zelda Monopoly at my Brother Eric's house with his wife Erin. Zelda Monopoly is the same game play as regular monopoly just cooler looking. The money instead of being dollars is Rupees like in the video games. My favorite part about this game board is that the colors are so bright and vibrant. The colors on the property are more of a jewel tone rather than the regular shade. The names of the properties have been changed to fit the theme. Chance was replace with a potion bottle and Community Chest was replaced with a Treasure Chest.

We rolled to see who went first and Eric began by collecting one of the light blue properties. Erin was next and she landed on a blue property splitting the set early. My turn came and I landed on one of the railroads. Caleb however managed to land on a Treasure Chest card and went directly to jail. Few round passed with everyone collecting properties. One of our house rules is any time you have to pay money for instance paying to get out of jail the money goes in the middle for free parking. I was the lucking one to collect the first round of free parking money adding up to about seven hundred rupees to my stack of cash. So with my small collection of properties I was happy to have the money and more trading power. I ended up trading Erin a green property for one of her orange giving us both a monopoly.

Caleb it turns out was sitting on a good deal of rupees and had decent properties to trade so the next thing I knew he was putting up a house on one of his monopoly. Before anyone really knew it the one house that he had built turned into two costing three hundred rupees when landed on. Eric as well had a good deal of money yet hardly any properties so when he landed he was okay but his cash pile shrunk. I on the other hand had spent all my free parking money was almost broke landing there. Three hundred is not much compared to the hotels he built later costing 1150 rupees but when you just spent all your money buying your own house it was not pleasant.

 
Eric was the first player who went bankrupt and with the stock pile Caleb had I knew me and Erin were not too far from following suit. I ended up needing to mortgage one of my properties it was some extra cash but the money really did not buy me much time. Erin ended up being the next one out and I followed suit. Caleb won with quiet the pile of properties and cash.

Eurchre

Euchre is typically a four player card game with a little less than half the deck of cards. Few nights back Caleb and I played with our friends Mike and Tiffany. Game play begins with shuffling and dealing. Dealing depending on who you play with can be a variation. The way we always play dealing has to be uneven but everyone ending with five cards. That will leave you with an extra four cards three of which are left face down. Those cards stay in front of the dealer then play begins clockwise.The person to the left of the dealer can chose to pass or let the dealer pick it up. If everyone passes then the dealer has the option to pick it up or pass. If they chose to pass then the person to the left has the option to call the suit they want to be trump.

This game I was to the left and had the option first to choose suit if I wanted. In Euchre Jacks become the highest card if they are in the suit that becomes trump. The same color jack as trump suite then becomes the second highest card. Since I have both black jacks and the Ace of Spades I am going to call Spades and trump because I have the three highest cards in the round. The person to the left of the dealer then beings the round first by playing a card that they feel will win that set.

In this hand Caleb leads with the Ace of diamonds then each person would have to lay a diamond if they had one. In my case I would have to lay the Jack of Diamonds. Mike my partner has played his King of Diamonds. For this set Caleb will take the hand.

He then gets to lead again and leads the Queen of Hearts and Mike throws down the King of Hearts making us the leading party. Now its Tiffany's turn and she plays the Ace of Hearts switching the lead. I however have no hearts so I play lowest trump to ensure that I take the hand. Then with only the two highest cards in my hand left I play both and take both hands ending the round. Mike and I took three tricks earning our point for the round. Fives are typically used for scoring. If your team calls trump your team has the chance of winning one or two points. Your team has to take at least three tricks to earn a point and all five to win two points. If the opposing team takes 3 or more trick when called trump you have then been euchred causing the other team to earn two points. The game ends when a team has ten points. Mike and I won the game of Euchre that night 10 to 3.

Risk

Every week my boyfriend Caleb and I try to get together with a group of friends and have a game night. I am not talking video games I am talking good old card and board games. We got a bunch of new games over the holiday so of course they all must get their turn. We got a Dr. Who Risk game and started playing the day we got it. Game play isn't too bad after you read all the instructions and the instructions for Risk happen to be fairly long. I glance over the instruction book and read the main bits out loud so that way we can slowly being game play. In the version we have all the Territory cards are dealt at the beginning of the game. The game board is a map of the world and territory cards are places such as Alaska, Greenland, or China. Once everyone has their territories they start putting their armies on the board. In our case of the Dr. Who version we get to take over the world with different color Daleks. At the beginning each person receives three Daleks per territory and they use them later to defend and attack other territories. The territory cards are then returned to the deck and one is drawn at the being of each person’s turn to make a safe territory that cannot be attacked. Your turn consists of placing new Daleks you get at the beginning of each turn, attacking, and maneuvering reinforcements. Risk is heavy on strategy and good dice rolls. Risk is one of Caleb's favorite games so the first time we played he was the winner. The next time we played with his family I came in from behind with the win. It’s been a few weeks since then and last game night our friend Mike borrowed 1985 Risk from his dad so after playing the new one playing the original was a must. His dad said they had only played it once and everything should all be there. Well the instructions were missing as well as the mission cards. While we figured we could play without the mission card and just look the instruction up online if we had to the instructions for set up were completely different. the instructions for original game play were also 16 full size pages long. Well half way through set up of the style we knew I finally find in the instructions that lists this version of set up. We read more of the instructions from online and give up on the set up and that game all together and play a Michigan favorite Euchre. Tune in next time for the game play and winners of Euchre.