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Christmas board games

Today was Christmas and although it was one of our more successful ones as adults, my favorite part (about which I'll be writing) was playing the two board games I recently bought: Tsuro and Codenames Pictures.

I really like both of these games and while Codenames was wildly successful with my friends (so much so that they all put it on their Christmas lists), Tsuro kind of fell flat with them. I've tried to get my family to play board games at family gatherings before (mostly Apples to Apples, which they loved the one time we played it), with no luck; but for the last few holidays we've ended by playing Bang, a game my parents picked up. I was kind of hoping then that my family would be willing to give these a shot, especially since Lea hates Bang because of its steep learning curve. Both of these games, Tsuro in particular, take less than 3 minutes to learn.

Can you believe my surprise when Lea, Andy, AND my dad were all open to playing my games this morning? Mom had already played Tsuro once with me and could vouch that it's incredibly easy, so I purposefully started with that. Lo and behold, they loved it! Especially Lea and Andy, who loved the strategic aspect of it and kept trying to kill each other. When we played it later with Maggie, Mark, Karen, and Tom (Andy's parents), Lea and dad watched Kingsley but Lea kept coming back into the room to give pointers and take control over Andy's cards. If that doesn't say she loves the game a ton, I don't know what does. I'm glad they loved it as much as I do.

My first attempt at explaining Codenames didn't go over so well, so I ended up confusing them more than I wanted. Lea got it, but my parents and Andy were lost, even after we started. We only got half a round in when Mark and Maggie showed up, and the rest of the round went pretty poorly. Mom and dad, who had the key card, were only giving clues for one card at a time, which is not very fun.

I didn't think any of them were keen to try it again when we were all together at the table after dinner, but to my surprise, dad suggested we do it after Tsuro once Andy and Lea left. What a relief because I really didn't want to play Scrabble, even though mom was really pushing for it.

Maggie and Mark understood it right away, and since they were starting we were able to have a solid round to learn from. Everything after that was smooth sailing. It was a ton of fun and we laughed a lot. We did 6 rounds, which ended up - holy crap - being 2 hours! We played from 8:30pm to 10:30pm!

A few people complimented the games afterward, and I know Mark at least said that he liked how easy they were to pick up. I don't know how much of a favorite it will be for future holidays, but I'm glad to have played it even once.

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