Christmas 2018

A few things I want to remember about Christmas and New Year's this year:

This was our first year to have a non-believer in our household. Partly because of that, and partly because I wanted our kids to have more tangibly participate in our charitable giving, we found a project we could all do together. We bought "home kits" for refugees being housed in the Salt Lake City area. We all went to the store together and found the items on the list. The refugee group also requested Beanie Babies animals for the children. I wanted each of my kids to choose an animal to donate. The store didn't have what we needed, but I knew they were carried at my local grocery store, so we headed over there. The boys chose Minion-branded Beanie Babies. Trixie chose Skye from Paw Patrol, which I think she has only seen once. All she knew was this stuffed animal was a pink doggy, and she wanted it.

Now, I made it very clear that these toys were NOT FOR OUR FAMILY. They all repeated it many times. Everyone seemed to understand this concept. The toys were set aside with the home kits, and they were not played with. A few days later I had time to take the donations to the center in Salt Lake City. I let Trixie hold "her" pink dog on the way up, and I let her come in to deliver it. She willingly gave it to the lady but seemed a little confused as to why she wasn't giving it to another kid since I'd been telling her ever since we picked them out that these toys were for other kids.

Then she cried the whole way home about her pink dog and demanded several times that I return to the refugee center and retrieve it. I did not.

After that she started telling us that Santa was going to bring her a pink doggy, and he did.

The dog has hardly left her side since Christmas morning. She even took it with her for her surgery a few days after Christmas (ear tubes in, adenoids out).

The boys woke us up bright and early Christmas morning. We made the awake kids line up on the stairs before coming down.

We had a nice time opening presents. I always let the kids choose things for everyone in our family at the dollar store. This year Ike used some of his own money to buy a nicer gift for Felix, and it was sweet to see him get so excited about giving a gift. I think next year we may do a name exchange and allow the kids to buy each other nicer things. (I may be sick of dollar store trinkets filling up my house.)

Felicia got some real presents, including a book about her first year. She also recieved that little blue bouncy hours, and she's rather afraid of it.

But what Felicia most loved was the domino she found under the couch. She carried it around all morning.

After breakfast at home, we went to Eric's grandma's house and hung out with Eric's brother, Andrew, and Eric's brother, Nathan, and Nathan's family.

Eventually we headed home and had our traditional dinner of chicken biryani with Andrew and with my friends, Priscilla and Joey.

Our post-Christmas break included lots of board gaming. Trixie had her surgery somewhere in there. We had a game night with Eric's cousins, and a game day with another cousin and his wife along with Janssen and Bart. We had previously celebrated New Year's Eve with this same group, pre-kids. We all toasted to no kids in 2006, and we all succeeded in no kids until 2010. We weren't together on New Year's Eve exactly this year, but I'm pretty sure we all could have toasted to no kids in 2019. (We have 11 kids between the three families. It was a little chaotic, but lots of fun.)

Eric's sister and her family come for a visit. (No pictures!) We stayed up way too late playing games.

It was hard to go back to real life when the break was over.

Review: Pandemic

We don't own this game, but we have basically stolen it from Eric's dad. We love it.

Pandemic is a different strategic board game than most. It's different because it's collaborative rather than competitive. Either everyone wins, or everyone loses.

The idea is that there are four diseases breaking out around the world. The players must prevent the diseases from outbreaking and try to cure each disease, by collecting city cards. These city cards can also be used to travel and build research stations (which are necessary to cure the diseases and are vital to traveling around the world.) Each of the players has a specific role that gives him certain special powers in addition to the basic powers that each player has. After each turn, the diseases grow in a few cities, so it's often a matter of two steps forward, one step back. Every so often an epidemic card pops up, and that adds a whole new city to the mix and increases the rate of disease growth, thus intensifying the challenges in the game.

One of the things I love about this game is that you can adjust the difficulty level within each game. Usually when we are playing with new people we'll make the game easier, but when we play by ourselves we make it as challenging as possible. Also, the roles are assigned randomly, so each game can have a different combination of special powers for the players. This adds a fun dynamic and means the players have to adjust the strategy for each game.

There is an expansion pack, and it provides several different ways to change the game. We've played the game with a couple of the expansion options, but mostly we are happy to play the traditional game over and over and over again.

And one final note. This game makes me want to travel. It's a little counter-intuitive, because why should I want to travel to these disease-filled cities? But, I do. It's doubly-odd that this game makes me want to travel even more than Ticket to Ride, which is a game that is far more about traveling than Pandemic.

Review: Carcassonne

We've owned Carcassonne for a quite a while, and it's one of our favorites - it's a wonder I haven't blogged about it before.

In Carcassonne you are building a city, essentially. On your turn, you draw a tile randomly, and then you add it to the existing map. Your tile may have a portion of a town, a road or a monastery. Once you lay your tile, you then can lay one worker on the tile that you just laid. Your workers collect points for you based on the jobs they are doing - farmer, knight, monk, or robber. You have a limited number of men, so you want to be wise in where you place them. Different jobs earn different values of points. Some jobs last a long time - others allow you to get your man back (so you can use him again) relatively quickly. The trick is to use your men and play your tiles in a way that will get you the most points. The game ends when there are no more tiles to be added to the board.

Carcassone is for 2-5 players, plus there are about 1.5 gazillion expansions - most of which I know nothing about. We love this game because we can teach it to people in about 10 minutes (at the most), and it can be played in about 20 minutes. We have played plenty of times with people who have little or no experience with the game who still manage to win, so it's great in that way too.

Review: Dixit

Dixit is one of the newest award winning games. The premise is quite simple. Each player holds six cards in his hand. Each card has a picture on it. (The pictures tend to be fairly surreal. Some of these pictures are quite lovely, and I'd like to own prints of a few of them.) On your turn, you are the "storyteller." You select one of the pictures in your hand and lay it face down on the table. You then give a clue about the picture. The clue can be anything you'd like as long as it is a verbal clue. Each player then lays a card (face down) that he feels best fits the clue. The cards are then mixed up and turned face up on the table. Each player then guesses which card truly belonged to the story teller.

If you guess correctly, you get some points. If somebody guesses your card when you were not the storyteller, you get a point. The real trick is in the storytelling. If everybody selects the correct card, the storyteller receives no points. If nobody guesses correctly, the storyteller still receives no points. So the trick is to be obscure, but not too obscure.

It's a fun game and is great for groups. You could play it with three players, but four is really a minimum to have an enjoyable time. There are enough pieces to accommodate six players, but you could easily play with a few more if you tweaked things.

I recently reviewed another board game, and I've got at least three more that I need to get around to reviewing at some point. We are big board game geeks, and we are always looking for board game geek friends. If you are new-ish to my blog and care to read more about fun board games, here are some of my other board game reviews:
Qwirkle
Aquaretto
Blokus
Fish Eat Fish
Puerto Rico
Tigris and Euphrates
Ticket to Ride - Europe
Liars' Dice
Survive!
Acquire
Settlers of Catan

Review: Qwirkle

I haven't reviewed a board game in a while, which certainly doesn't mean that I have lost my interest in them. Oh no, I'm far too nerdy to ever lose my interest in board games.

This year for Christmas Eric's brother got his parents a game called Qwirkle. We played it quite a bit while we stayed at their house for Christmas, and now it's on my list of board games we need to acquire.

The premise of the board game is really simple. In fact, you can probably figure it out basically by looking at the picture. The object of the game is to create strings of tiles with like colors or shapes. Where possible, you want to double up your points by placing tiles where they can be counted in two lines. (Think about Scrabble where you can count two words if you play the tiles correctly.)

This is a great game if you are looking for something that won't take a ton of time. Plus, it is a great game for kids. It's decent for only two players, but it is definitely better with at least three people.

Pumpkin Eater

I like to play games. I came from a not-so-often-game-playing family. Eric came from an often-game-playing family. We are in Texas visiting my family right now, and we brought some games to play. We are pleased to report that Liars' Dice was a hit. We played two rounds, and my dad beat Eric in the second. I was pretty impressed, and my dad said, "I don't play games. That doesn't mean I can't play games."

We've also played a lot of games with my little sister, Marissa, and her boyfriend, Stevan. Last night we were playing Rook, L family style, and we were all having a grand time. Until somebody was upset with a misdeal that was called and decided to cheat. He thought he could hide his cheating eyes from his wife, but ha! Dude, I'm your wife. I know everything. Then there was another game in which somebody else cheated to get even and there was much frowning and dismay and then we all just cleaned the kitchen.

Seriously, though, Eric is a cheater. Don't trust him.

Review: Aquaretto

Many moons ago I wrote a whole bunch of reviews for our favorite board games. I haven't written one in a while, and that is sad because we got two new board games for Christmas.

One of the games we got is called Aquaretto. Eric's Mom bought it for us, and she bought it's predecessor, Zooloretto, at the same time for Eric's brother.

Let's be honest. We were not impressed with the cover. We read the back:

Create your own aquarium and attract visitors with exotic aquatic animals. Particularly attractive to visitors are the shows featuring the feeding of dolphins, whales, and seals. The player who best takes care of his animals can hope for repeated visits by satisfied customers.

Not impressed? Neither were we. It just sounded so juvenile. But, Eric's mom bought it because the game store people said it was the great game these days.

Shortly after Christmas we set about to learn the rules and decide if this game was as good as the game store people said it was. And really, it is. It's just a great little game, and it's not nearly as juvenile as the box makes it seem. The object of the game is to earn points. You earn points by collecting animals, but you can only have three types of animals in your park, unless you buy an expansion which will allow you to add new types of animals. If you take a truck that has animals you are not collecting, then that animal goes in the holding pen, and you are penalized at the end of the game for it.

Even that is a very simplified explanation. The game is actually quite competitive, and it takes a lot of looking around at your opponents' boards to determine what animals everyone is collecting. It's also a game where you can see exactly how everyone else is doing, and you can count your opponents' points. Although, we've found that even though it is generally apparent who is doing well and who isn't, nobody keeps exact score until the counting is done at the end.

I'd highly recommend Aquaretto. It is very refreshing and entertaining strategy game.

Plex

Everyone in Eric's family is really into games. One of my favorite times of year is about the third week in August when we go to Park City with the extended L. family. It's just board games day in and day out. Also food. And night games on the golf course. And food. And playing games with the cousins. Also, as an interesting note, I only knew two of my ten cousins growing up, so marrying into Eric's family where he has about thirty cousins on the L. side and five million on the K. side was really exciting to me.

Anyway, Eric has one cousin in particular, Abe, who likes to make up games. I first played one of his made up games, Pork, when Eric and I were dating or maybe we were engaged by that point. Anyway, Abe's wife, Erin, was also there, and so were Bart and Janssen. It was destined to be a fun night because the six of us just exude fun. Which is why we are all so crazy about board games, I guess.

One time over Christmas break the extended L. family went to a giant cabin called Spring Haven for a few days. That is where Abe introduced us to Plex, another of his invented games. It is a great game where the object is to buy properties that are close together. But you are also investing money so that you can earn more so that you can buy more properties. And if all goes well you will have lots of money when everybody else has none, and you will get properties for cheap because you buy properties (and you make investments) by bidding. And that's all the summary you're going to get from me.

So, Eric set out to make Abe's game. I let Abe know about it, and he sent me some files with the cards already made up. Eric worked really hard for about two days cutting and cutting and cutting to get the game ready to go. We have played it with a few folks, and so far everybody loves it. Eric and I really think Abe could market the game, and we'd be happy to let him use our copy as the prototype to show to some head honchos of a game company in case he is not so interested in cutting.

This first picture is of Eric sitting in front of the heater (hogging all the heat!) while designing the coins of the game. I sent this picture to Abe and Erin letting them know what a game-making fiend Eric has become, and that is when Abe sent me the files. Also, this is just to show you that Eric does own a pair of non-pink pajamas.


And this is the final version of the game. As you can see lots of things were done by hand. But it's such a great game, it was definitely worth the time we (mostly Eric) put into it.

The Finished Product

We have finished making our own version of Suvive! Here are a few photos of the final product:

Here is a photo of the board. Check out that sea serpent! Pretty cool, huh?

This next photo was taken in the middle of a game. As you can see most of the sand has been removed, and there are a lot of swimmers!

And this is the photo that we will need to put on the box. See how much fun we're having? Don't you need your own version of the game?

e.g.

Remember yesterday when I mentioned that people ask us if we know how to play Dice? And we tell them that we brought dice to them? Well, here is a conversation I had today in seminary:

Me: Remember, tomorrow is Scripture Mastery game day! So prepare! For the games and the candy!
Zak: We should play the dice game.
Isaac: No, stupid, we can't play that. It's Haki's game. She doesn't have it.
Me: Do you mean Liar's Dice? Because you know how to play that game because of me! We brought it here and taught it to Haki. Haki taught it to you because of us.
Zak: So you have it?
Me: Yes, of course I do.

I'm so glad this game has spread like wildfire.

Family Project

Remember last November when it was Blog Every Day Month (or something) and I blogged about some of our favorite family games? Do you remember? Or did you skim over those because you do not care about our games? Well, hmph. Anyway, we brought a lot of our favorite games with us to New Zealand, and some of them have become quite popular. For instance, a few people have asked us, "Do you guys know how to play Liar's Dice?" To which we have responded, "Are you kidding? You know how to play the dice game BECAUSE of us!"

Anyway, we somehow got it into our heads that it would be fun to introduce Survive! Of course, the problem was that we don't have it, and Parker Brothers hasn't made it for years. The only family members that own it are Eric's parents and that is because Bry and Bri found it on eBay (I think) and gave it to them. "No problem," Eric thought. "We'll just make it."

Yes, we will make the board, 16 sand hexes, 16 jungle hexes, 8 rock hexes, 14 boats, 40 men with points underneath, 5 whales, 5 sea monsters and 6 sharks.

And then we set to work. We are now almost finished, and we are really absurdly pleased with ourselves and how everything is turning out.

Eric worked really hard to create the board. He traced the hexes that he printed and had laminated, first with pencil, then with a Sharpie.
Then he painted it blue and created the islands in the corners.

I used Make'n'Bake clay and a steak knife to create the shark fins, whale tales and sea serpent heads. I'm ridiculously proud of those sea serpents. Look at them! They are scary and green.

The cheapest part of the game were the metal washers and and garage sale stickers that will be considered men.

Eric has made some boats, and soon we will cut the excess off the board so we can have the hexes on cardboard rather than just laminated paper. I'll post a picture when it's all complete.

Of course, it is worth noting that it is actually costing us more to put the game together than it would to have just bought a version off eBay. But, think of the quality time! And the fun we've had!

Nintendo Wii

Eric and I spent a good deal of time during Christmas break with his old high school buddy, Jon, and his wife, Carrie. Most of that time we played the tank game on the Wii. It was tons of fun. We played on teams, and Carrie and I were pretty amazing. One night two of Eric and Jon's friends came over, Ryan and Joe, and we all took turns playing the winner. Carrie and I pretty much dominated, which thrilled us to no end. At one point, Ryan said, "How are the girls winning at a tank game? It defies genetics!" I replied, "It's all about communication!" "Co-what?" Ryan is funny.

Really though, I love the Nintendo Wii! The graphics are simple, the games are simple, and I guess that's why a lot of people don't like it. But I totally dig simple, mindless computer games, and that's the sort of games you've got with the Wii. They are just fun! To me, games aren't about the graphics anyway.

In addition to the tank game, we played a little cow racing and a couple of other games. The overall essence of the Wii is fun. They are games anyone can enjoy, not just people who are good at and play video games a lot. Your grandma would enjoy the Wii. Really. It's just that fun.

Review: Blokus

Blokus is our most recently acquired game, which I received for my birthday. It is a fun game for either 1, 2 or 4 players. Each player chooses a color and has 22 pieces. One color goes first, and he places any of his pieces on the board with at least one of the squares in his designated corner. Play continues in a circle. On each move, your pieces must touch any of your other pieces at a corner. You must touch on a corner, and nowhere else. Of course, you can touch all the other colors any way you like. The pic is really the best example. The idea is to weasel your way into tight spaces and cut off your opponents so they don't get to lay as many pieces.

As you can see from the pic, each pieces is composed of up to 5 squares. The end of the game happens when nobody can lay any more pieces. When that occurs, each player counts how many total squares are left in his remaining pieces. The person with the lowest score wins.

It's a pretty quick game. Takes about 20 minutes. Requires a lot of planning and adapting- strategery, if you will. If you play with two players, each player is two colors. If you play alone, the goal is to fit all the pieces in and still play by the corners-only rule. You can also do this challenge in a team. Eric and I did, and Michelle helped. It was fun!

You can also play Blokus online.

By the way, this is the last of the board game posts. These are all the games we have and play regularly. Actually, now that I think of it, we also have Disney Trivial Pursuit, but that's pretty self-explanatory.

Review: Fish Eat Fish

Doesn't Fish Eat Fish sound like such a fun game? Well, it is. And it's easy and fast. We can usually play a game in about 20 minutes, depending on how thoughtfully people attack other fish.

The premise of the game is to attack your opponents' fish and eat them. You start with five fish, and then you start attacking. You each lay a card face down with a number on it. Then you flip your card over. The bigger card wins. When you win, you stack fish on top of the fish you just ate, thus making you stronger. That means, if your stack has 4 fish in it, and you attack a fish of only 1, you have an advantage of 3. If you lay a 1 you are worth 5. He must lay a 4 to tie you, and if you tie, you both die. Cards consists mostly of numbers (0, 1, 2, 2, 3, 3, 4, 5), but there each person has two octopus cards and a shark card. The idea of the game is to know when you need to win and when you can sacrifice a fish or two. You can only play each card once, so it is also important to pay attention to which players are still holding on to their most valuable cards.

Way fun game. Easy. The box says ages 8 and up, but I think you could play with younger kids. They just wouldn't have much strategy. The game accommodates 2-5 players. And it's probably one of the cheapest games I've blogged about.

Review: Puerto Rico

Puerto Rico is one of the most complicated board games we play. I feel like I can't even begin to describe it to you, but I will attempt nonetheless. The overall goal is to earn victory points. To do that, you have to load goods onto ships. To produce goods, you have to build settlements, provide employees to work the settlements, and build factories with employees to work at the factories. Plus you sell your goods to get money, which you use to buy factories and buildings that give you certain privileges.

That is a really simplistic description of this rather complicated, but extremely fun game. This might be my favorite board game these days. There is a lot of strategy involved, and some luck. Unlike other games, you really can't have the same strategy every time. You have to vary it according to the other players' strategies.

Puerto Rico is pretty intense and competitive, but it doesn't cause nearly the contention that Tigris and Euphrates does, perhaps because it is not a game of warring states.

The game is meant for 2-5 players. It takes 1-2 hours.

Review: Tigris and Euphrates

Tigris and Euphrates is a game that Eric got for some event last year. Perhaps Christmas. I really don't remember.

It is a game that causes much contention. Eric always wants to play it. I usually don't want to play it.

The basic idea is a game of warring states. Each player has four leaders, each leader represents one type of service- religion, markets, farms and government. You play tiles to build onto your kingdoms and strengthen your leaders. For each tile you lay in the kingdom where you have the leader of the corresponding color, you get a cube of that color. If you add a red tile in the kingdom where you have a red leader, you get a red cube. Likewise, if you add a green tile in a kingdom where somebody else has a green leader, then that player gets a green cube. In the end, your total point value is the number of your lowest color. So, if you have 14 black, 12 red, 10 blue, and only 3 green, your score is 3.

The fighting comes when you merge kingdoms and kick off your opponents leaders in order to strengthen yourself and gain points in a specific color. Usually kingdoms are intertwined with leaders, so if you merge two kingdoms, it involves all the players, not just you and one other.

The game is 2-4 players. Usually takes 1-2 hours. Can cause many fights. Scores can be very close, but there can also be huge discrepancies. There is a fair amount of luck in the tiles you get, but there is a lot of strategy involved- knowing where to put your leaders, when to pick fights, etc.
There are also monuments and treasures. I'm not going into those, though.

Review: Ticket to Ride- Europe

We picked up Ticket to Ride-Europe for Eric's dad per the suggestion of the Game Store Salesman. It is a very fun game! Each person gets one long mission and must build train tracks to accomplish that goal. You build train tracks by collecting colored cards and laying them to build sections of track. For example, the section of track from Petrograd to Moscow costs four white cards. Each mission is made of several sections like that example- with several different colors, and some sections have certain stipulations attached. On each turn, you also have the opportunity to draw up to three smaller missions. Of those, you MUST keep at least one. The object is to accomplish your missions. Each mission is worth the amount of points designated on the card. For every mission you have not accomplished by the end of the game, you are docked the designated amount of points. Thus, it is possible to earn negative points. Obviously, the object of the game is to get points!

This is a FUN FUN game! We were hooked immediately and promptly "borrowed" the game from Eric's dad for about a month. Then we got our friends Janssen and Bart hooked on the game. Then they borrowed it from us and got more people hooked. Eventually we bought our own game, and so did Janssen and Bart.

The game is 2-5 players and takes about an hour. Sometimes Eric and I play where we each are two colors and have two main missions. We could sometimes play those games in about 40 minutes. The more familiar you are with the board, the faster you get at playing the game.

One difficulty is that all the cities are written in their native language- Roma, Vien, Lisboa, Kyiv, etc. I find that I have a general idea of the geography of many European cities, but I sometimes don't know what countries they belong to. I can't believe I'm admitting that to the whole Internet. But there you have it. Where are Sochi and Zagrab anyway?

Review: Liars' Dice

As featured in the second Pirates of the Caribbean movie, Liars' Dice is a quick and easy game that can involve gambling. Or not.

Each person starts with five dice in his/her cup. Everyone rolls, but keeps his dice hidden so each person can only see his dice. Then, one person begins the bidding. The object is to guess how many of a certain number are there in the whole table. So, if you are playing a game with 6 players (30 dice) on average, there would be 5 of each number on the table (five ones, five twos, five threes, etc). The bids are passed in a circle until somebody challenges the bids. If player A says there are six fives on the table, then the next player can "call" it. Everyone reveals their dice and says how many fives they rolled. If there were at least six fives, the challenger must give up one die. If there were less than six fives, the person who placed the bid loses a die.


There is a fair amount of skill involved in this game, and a lot of luck. If you get four or five of a kind, you have a pretty good chance of skewing that number high. If you're good at bluffing, you can make other players believe you have numbers you don't have, which causes them to count on you when they make their bids.

This is a fun game that is great for large crowds. It can be played quite quickly, all depending on how many players you have. I've played with up to 13 people before. Bidding can get tricky because there are specific rules about it (you must raise the bid every time). A very, very fun, quick game!


Addendum: Bidding Rules
Each player must raise the bid on his turn or "call" the previous player. You may raise the bid by increasing the quantity of dice or by raising the number on the dice. Here is an example of a bidding round.

• 4 threes
• 4 fours (this person must say AT LEAST 4 of something. If he sticks with the quantity of 4, he must raise the number on the dice. He raised the number from three to four. He could not have said 4 twos).
• 4 sixes
• 5 twos
• 6 twos (this person really wanted to keep the number two. The only way to do that was to increase the quantity).
• 6 threes
• 6 fives
• 7 ones (this person did not feel comfortable with 6 sixes, but felt good about 7 ones)
• I call you. Everyone counts the number of ones to see how many ones there are at the table. If there are at least seven ones, the person who called loses one die. If there are fewer than seven, the person who claimed that there were at least seven loses one.
  

I hope that makes sense. It's a fun, fun game!

Review: Survive!

Survive! is a fun game. Not so much strategy-based, although there is a little strategy involved. The object of the game is to get your 10 men onto the safe corners of the board before the island blows up. At the end of each person's turn, the person removes a hex, so the island is gradually falling apart leaving people stranded in the water among sharks, whales and sea serpents. It's a fun game, and family favorite. I'm pretty sure it's not made any more. Eric and I don't actually own the game, and I have a feeling we'd have a hard time finding it if we wanted.

This is a great game for anybody.

Review: Acquire

Another game that we really like to play, and is one of my particular favorites is Acquire. I won this game the very first time I played, which is why, I think, it holds a special place in my heart.

The object of the game is to acquire the majority and/or minority holdings in various companies that are built up with the tiles that are placed on the board. The board consists of tiles that each go in a specific place (1A-12I). When two tiles are placed next to each other, a company is formed. Each person holds six tiles, so you can decide which tiles to lay, and which to hold back (in order to prevent companies from merging if you won't benefit from such a merge, etc). When two companies are joined together, the smaller one is merged into the larger. When a company has at least 11 tiles, it can no longer be merged (but it can still have companies merged into it). Companies are constantly getting merged into others, and when that happens, the people with the most and second most shares of stock in that company gets paid. You have to continually have companies that sell out so you can keep buying more stocks in other companies. In the end, the companies that are left get sold. The larger the company, the more your stock is worth.

It's really a very simple game. You have to keep track of who else is invested in the companies you are invested in so that you can maintain your position as Majority or Minority holder. Otherwise, you might spend all your money buying excessive shares in a company that nobody else is trying for, when you should have been buying stocks in other companies.

The game can accommodate five players, and usually lasts about an hour. It is really easy to learn and can be a lot of fun. With seven companies on the board, and a full game of five players, it becomes really challenging keeping track of who owns how many of which company, and even if you know, it doesn't meant that you have enough money to do anything about it.