Still alive, and well?

I continue to play board games with my girls most weeks (and occasionally with my Mum), its just that we have been playing mainly the same stuff.

We now have a routine where a game will become the flavour of the month and get played over and over while past favourites sit on the shelf, so I have not had much to say.

I am also finding myself playing solo games a fair bit more - Friday and Marvel Legendary are on high rotation (for solo play).

So why the blog? well a subject came up on BGG that concerned me regarding playing games with children, namely how "Hard" should one play against children?

Many seem to advocate playing just as you would with adults - others always letting the kids win at first, both of which seem most odd to me.

Playing at 100%.
This seems to suggest children are just short adults, which they are not (in case you needed reminding) children need a little more time to grasp more than just the rules IME, so I could never use this method.

Let the Wookie win.
Or how to raise an entitled brat, that is not to say I have not let my kids win in a close game, but I never set out thinking they must win this game! again I couldn't do this, seems to me to defeat my purpose of playing hobby games with my girls.

the Badger method.
My girls have been playing hobby games for years now, and so we are in the happy place where I can use other games they know to help describe rules and tactics, however, before we got here I had a method of my own.

• The 5 6 7 8 year old rule, my youngest could "take back" a move once per game, once she saw what others would do next, this offset the advantages that big sister and Daddy had well.

•  Learning games - the first few times we played a game we would declare it a "learning game" so we would often play cards face up, explain why we may do things while playing, to give us all a better understanding of the game.
• Rules lite, I would remove some rules from the game till we had more experience of the game, farmers in Carcasonne being the best example, makes the rest of the game easier to take in, then when reintroduced my girls only had to learn one new thing.

• Watch it played / dice tower / tabletop I would let my girls help me pick what games we would get, so they were more invested in the game when it arrived.

This is just what worked with my two, at the risk of sounding like a hippy all kids are unique so all I can recommend is mix and match ideas till you find what works for you.


Laters

Mav

Currently playing
Marvel Legendary,
Stone age,
Nintendo Switch :)

Games almost out the door,
Dice masters,
Hanabi.