Gaming with Ted, 2 and a bit

[carldjcross]

Just recently my son who is just over two years old has started asking to play Daddy's games.

Now honestly I'm not the sort to buy meeples instead of teddy bears and I'm not trying to grow my own mini-geek but I suppose he's grown curious about those interesting looking boxes in the corner of the room.

He's played games before of course. When he was about 18 months I bought him Cranium Cariboo on the recommendation of the Geek. This is a game which had all of his favourite things in it: keys, balls and treasure and was an instant hit.

Cariboo is all about finding multicoloured balls hidden underneath trapdoors. Players draw cards and  match colours, shapes, numbers or letters, opening the trapdoors with a key. Any balls found are dropped into the “whirlpool”, a covered gutter at the side of the board. When all six balls have been found the treasure chest opens to reveal a sparkly jewel.

The pieces are nice and chunky for handling by little hands.

The first proper game we tried was Lost Cities the Board Game or “The Jungle Game”. A mixed success as we laid cards 1-10 (I reckoned zero too difficult a concept just yet) of a single suit face up in front of us. I then asked Ted to choose which card to play next and moved our explorer up the track one at a time as in the full game.

Although he got it he was a little confused that we were only moving one space even though we had just played a six card. I don't think he was very happy with the numbers on the spaces either.

He likes looking at Tsuro or “The Dragon Game” but not much else. At least he knows what a dragon and phoenix is though.

We've had the most success with “The Pirate Game” or Cartegena. We play with just one pirate each  and a common deck of cards. On each turn we turn over the next card and move our pirate to that space, ignoring any spaces currently occupied.

Okay so there's no appreciable strategy but I reckon that playing his first euro game at his age is pretty good and at the moment we're both enjoying ourselves.

I guess the last question is do I let him win? Sometimes, but then again he's gotta learn.

[Snakes in the Tiki Lounge]

When I was much younger, I used to play chess sometimes with an Uncle.

I think to some degree, the fact that he'd usually, but not always win was a good part of what kept me coming back for more.

[slug]

For sure you need to let him win occasionally otherwise it will get boring for him after a while.  (just no-one tell my 8 y.o. daughter this)

Slug

[carldjcross]

For sure you need to let him win occasionally otherwise it will get boring for him after a while.  (just no-one tell my 8 y.o. daughter this)

Slug

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Yeah, yeah right. I "let" people beat me all the time! 

Since the games we are playing right now are random it works out pretty evenly. I sometimes "forget" to take my turn though.