It was probably about a year ago that Barrie, my younger daughter currently 9 years old, started to become interested in playing Memoir ’44, a tactical combat board game about World War II. I don’t remember how it started. Maybe she saw me playing it with someone else. Anyway, occasionally I’d play it with her, choosing various scenarios depending on our mood, sometimes a scenario with tanks, sometimes a scenario on the beach, or something else. A couple of times, Barrie even played Memoir 44 with the 11 year old son of my wargaming buddy.

Of course, I have all the expansions to the game because I love the Commands & Colors system. At one point, then, Barrie noticed the Air Power expansion and wanted to try a game with that. I thought it probably a little advanced for her level of experience, but I made the following proposal: we’d start over with the first scenario (meant to be an introductory one) and work our way through the book one-by-one, in order. When we’d finished the scenarios that came with the base game, we’d start on the first expansion. In that way, we could build up our understanding of the game and the new units that come with the expansions, and at the same time make sure we hadn’t skipped any scenarios we might otherwise enjoy. She loved that idea, and that’s what we’ve been doing, with her 12-year-old sister Julia, over the last month-and-a-half.

Julia and I play as a team, always taking the Axis side. Barrie takes the Allies. We’ve been through nine scenarios so far. Usually we play a game Shabbat afternoon, but we’ve also played Shabbat at night, Sunday afternoon, and even a weekday night. One weekday when we were all home because of the weather, we played two scenarios back-to-back. We all have a fantastic time. Julia always rolls our dice, but together we choose cards. The wins have gone about 50 percent to us and 50 percent to Barrie.

I love playing games with my children.

A few weeks ago, I spent several days in Salt Lake City on business. During the day, the mountains around the city look beautiful, but at night it’s difficult to see much and I didn’t feel like getting lost on a drive. So instead of sitting in my hotel room, I went to visit a local game store that I discovered through a little internet research. What a find!

Game Night Games is an amazing store. It’s a little unusual for a game store in that it carries no roleplaying games, no collectible card games, and no miniatures. But in terms of board games and non-collectible card games, I haven’t been to a brick-and-mortar store with a better collection. Game Night Games’ inventory is both broad and deep. The store has many different board games of all styles and genres. There are complex Euro games, light family games, heavy themed games, children’s games, war games, traditional card games, and modern card games. And not just a few in each category. The store has separate sections for different categories, some by theme and some by style. There’s a section for science fiction games, a section for young children, a section for economic games, and several more. The store also has multiple copies in stock of most games.

But that’s not all. The store is neat, clean, the fixtures are nice and all match, each section has a painted wood sign, and they even have fancy custom printed paper shopping bags (like the kind you get at a nice department store). It’s the kind of place that would be attractive to non-hobbyists as well.

When I went to Game Night Games on Tuesday night, there was a meeting taking place of the Board Game Designers Guild of Utah. This group meets 1-2 times per month to playtest each others games and discuss advice on getting games published. The group was extremely welcoming and I participated in two playtests that night. The first was a Latter Day Saints themed game that was a cross between a Euro style and a war game. I thought it was a very good game and while I recommended the designer consider a few areas that could be improved, it definitely had the potential to be published. (Unfortunately, I don’t remember the name of the game. I recorded the play in Board Game Geek as “Unpublished Prototype.”) The second was Abstracts. This game has been published before, but the designer is working on an update. For what I little know of trivia games, it had some interesting twists, but I didn’t enjoy it. I’s just not my type of game. Nevertheless, I think the designer must have appreciated my comments because he gave me a free copy of one of his other games (a card game that uses a standard deck, so doesn’t seem to be in the BGG database).

With all the great game play and conversation, I neglected to actually purchase anything on Tuesday, so I had to go back on Wednesday (what a shame!). As I was ready to check out with Army of Frogs and Leaping Lizards (for my neices), a group of people completely different from the night before invited me to play Werewolf with them. I did, twice. And though whene I played it before, I hated it, this time was fun. I think the nature of the players makes a big difference. My home group is much more analytical and serious. This group was ready to have fun with the accusations and betrayals.

In summary, if you’re ever in Salt Lake City, you most definitely should check out Game Night Games.

So far the month of October is back up to 10 games played. But the only major game so far was one of Ticket to Ride. And with all the days at home for the Jewish holidays, I consider it a slow month. Hopefully, I’ll get in some good games this weekend. Kemp Mill Game Day is at my house this Saturday night.

In the meantime, I did play a couple of games of It’s Alive, two-player with Ido. He came over late on Shabbat afternoon. I’ve played the prototype before and wasn’t expecting two-player to work very well, but it did. Two quick games. I enjoyed it very much. At the risk of being labeled a shill for daring to speak publicly about my colleague’s game, I think I’ll post a review on BGG.

Also played some Flea Circus with the girls. Barrie doesn’t like it any more, but Julia is still a big fan. These days, I can’t ever seem to get them to agree on a game, so we often end up with something like one game of Flea Circus followed by one game of Ticket to Ride. I like Flea Circus. Barrie’s doing better at choosing the best cards to play. Julia finally understands and remembers the rules, but she’s still pretty much playing random cards. I posted an article in the strategy forum on BGG explaining how to throw the game. We’ll see how that goes over. It’s the first strategy posting for Flea Circus!