Zombie Dice!

Long time no post because:
Carrie opened a new restaurant location for her company, which is super successful and awesome.
The holidays happened and we all know how time consuming that is.
We visited Chicago- both for work, Carrie at a conference and Michael giving Astro talks.
Then some family time and we got engaged!

But we're back and as nerdy as ever!

Zombie Dice is an insanely simple, fun game that's quick to play and great with 2 or several people.

Zombie Dice, with bonus Banjo!

In this game, you are a zombie searching for brains and the dice are potential prey. The goal in each round is to gobble up as many brains as possible without getting shotgunned to death (er. . . re-death?). Your turn ends when you pass or you get shot three times.

Shotgun, BRAINSSS, Footprints!

To play, you place all 13 dice in the fancy zombie cup that comes with the game. Shake it around and pick three random dice to roll. Each basic die (I'll get to "hero" dice from the expansion in a second) has three symbols: footprints, a brain, and a shotgun blast. After you roll, place the brains to one side and the shotgun blasts to the other. Keep any footprints in front of you. The Brains represent victims (and points for you) and the shotgun blasts represent you getting shot in the face with a shotgun. The dice have colors that represent their difficulty: green, yellow, and red = easy, medium, and hard respectively. An "easy" dice is one with less shotguns and more brains.

Two shots and footsteps, not so bueno.

You might have a chance here...

Now that you've separated your dice, you can decide to re-roll. There is no limit to how many rolls you take and each roll has the chance of letting you accumulate more points in the form of brains. On the re-roll, take any footprints (i.e. escaped victims) and then pull more random dice from the cup so that you have three dice to roll. There is no limit to how many rolls you take and each roll has the chance of letting you accumulate more points in the form of brains.

Save that brain and roll those feet!

There are those rotten shots again!

However, each roll also risks more shotgun blasts. If you hit three blasts, your turn is over and you loose all your brains. Do you want to take the risk? When your turn is up (either through getting shot in the face or through passing) you tally up your brain-points and put all dice back in the cup for the next player. The game ends when a player surpasses 13 brains. When this happens, you finish the round and then the game is over. 

The one with the most brains wins.

This is Michael, he likes BRAINSSSSSS!

Along with the base game, we also got an expansion that includes three "hero" dice: The Hottie, The Hunk, and Santa Clause (the most seasoned of all zombie hunters). Think of these as special characters in the game represented by special dice colors (pink, white, and red/white respectively). With these new dice come some new effects and symbols. The Hunk has a double brain (double points!) as well as a double shotgun (double hits). Santa comes with presents! Instead of brains he can drop items that you keep in front of you as power ups: an energy drink (this lets you count each green footprints as a brain.... no running from the fast zombie!) and a football helmet (now you can take four shotgun hits before dying!).

Santa Double Brains!

"Special Santa Helmet"

Here come SANTA!

The Hottie and The Hunk some brains

There is one more twist with the heroes. They can save one another! If you roll a hero's brain (or have one in your brain pile) during your turn and you roll another hero's shotgun, that brain gets taken from you and the dice goes back into the cup. Oh, this doesn't count for santa's double brain item, since in his case this counts as a present!
HO HO HO!

Left, Right, Center, Screaming Nephews!

After months of promising to visit Carrie's big brother & his family and life getting in the way, we finally made the trip across the mountains this weekend. Off to the desert of Washington we went for some family time!

Almost Uncle Michael, Malia, and Aunt Carrie, just your average bunch of weirdos!

While we were there we spent some time relaxing and going on a few little adventures. Jason, Carrie's brother, took us to a little craft bazar; Carrie and Jason spent lots of weekends as kids at events like this one with their Grandma Dot, so wandering the tables was nostalgic and fun thing to share with Michael and Jason's kids. Of course we had to get snow cones and hot dogs before heading home!

Malia and Carrie and drawings!

Through the afternoon, Carrie and her niece spent time drawing together, while Michael got his butt kicked in football with the boys. He claims the ref was biased, but Jason and Carrie know better... We ate tacos (made by Carrie, so they were delicious!) and enjoyed more family time with Grandma Jo and Aunt Sherry, then caught the Tri-City American's hockey game. Before we headed off to the game, Jason's wife introduced us to a new game: Left, Right, Center!

L, R, C dice and candy markers!

The game is very simple, you have 3 dice to pass and each player starts with 3 markers. The game comes with little plastic chips for markers, but we played with candy instead (the nephews were VERY excited about the candy)! Each die is marked on 3 sides with dots, and the other sides are marked individually with L, R, and C, which stand for left, right, and center. So you have a 50/50 chance of rolling a dot or a letter on each die.

"Lucky bananas!"

To play, you roll as many dice as you have pieces of candy in your pile, so 3 to start. For each letter you roll, you must pass a marker to either the person on your left (L) or right (R), or place it in the center (C). Markers that get placed in the center are out of the game. For each dot rolled, you get to keep a piece! Throughout the game, the markers will be passed back and forth between players and the "pot" of markers in the center of the table will grow. The last person with a single marker in front of them wins! Not only does that person get the joy of beating every one else (as Carrie's nephew, JJ, would say, "Ba-Bam!") but they also win the pot comprised of all the center pieces.

"Candy, candy, candy!"

"Ba-Bam!"

Our games always ended with the last 2 pieces being passed around the table for a bit with loud nephews cheering for which ever side of the candy they were currently on, then when that last "C" was rolled cheers and screams! JJ, the youngest of Jason's kids won almost every time; he was rolling in the candy! Lucky little dude!

With a table ranging from Grandma to my 7 year old nephew, this was the perfect game to get everyone involved and excited without things being too complicated! The biggest struggle was keeping the dice on the table when the boys got worked up, but seeing them having fun was a blast! This game is excellent for family get togethers and given the simplicity of the rules (and the obvious tie to gambling) one can make this fun for a group of adults as well (just throw in some money and maybe some booze in the mix and you've got yourself a party!)

Hockey games are good times for brother snuggles.

The nephews won a few, Carrie won a few, and the Tri-City Americans won, then we made it back across the mountains in the rain! Successful weekend in our eyes! Check back soon for more games and explorations!

=^.^=, Carrie and Michael

First Post! Acquaintances and Abalone

Hi! We're Carrie and Michael!

Michael is an astrophysicist and Carrie is a restaurant manager by day, an artist when the mood hits. We live in the PNW with our divo cat, Banjo! We're a pretty average nerdy 20-something couple, who love comic books, games, and science, but our interests don't stop there! Food, beer, art, cats, music and successful adulting are just a few of the things we tend to geek out over. We've decided to write a blog together in order to share our adventures as we explore our interests, whether it be something we already love or a new passion we've discovered.

Carrie and Michael!

Along with ourselves, we'd like to introduce one of the first games we enjoyed as a couple. Abalone is a fantastic strategy game for 2! While wandering a brain game store, a clerk gave us a demo and we've been hooked ever since. Little marbles act as an army forcing your opponent off the board. The rules are simple, but the strategy can get pretty deep.

The object of the game is simple: be the first to knock 6 of your opponents marbles off the board. Each player takes turns making a move. Marbles can move one space per turn in any direction. Each turn, you may move a single marble, or a contiguous, aligned group of 2 or 3 marbles. A group must be moved in the same way, i.e. forward/back, or side to side and remain in the same configuration.

The game! Plus a kitty.

The Rule book! Pretty straightforward. That's part of the reason why we like it! On the left you see a diagram describing the different types of moves you can make.

You can move your marbles into your opponent's marbles. This is like a "battle" and is how the game progresses (i.e. how you are able to push your opponent's marbles off the board). If your moving group has more marbles than your opponent along your intended direction of travel, then your side "wins"; your marbles go forward one space and your opponent's marbles get pushed back. However, if your opponent's marbles are of equal to or greater number than your advancing group, you are not allowed to make this move and must make a different choice.

Moving the three wide marbles into the two black marbles causes the black marbles
to be pushed back. The black side loses one marble in the process

Of course, when you "attack" by pushing your opponent's marbles with a large group, you could leave your "unit" open to a counterattack flanking. A three-marble group is pretty strong along its front and back, but on the side it only takes a two-marble group to slice it into weaker groups. So, strategies revolve around moving your marbles as a larger group, choosing formations that allow easy maneuverability and balance defense and offense, and knowing when to best attack your opponent. In particular, it is generally not a good idea to leave marbles isolated. Lone groups of 1, 2, or even 3 marbles can be quite susceptible to attack and easily out-maneuvered. Attacking your opponent's pieces so as to split up their marbles is a smart strategy, as it can waste precious moves to bring back marbles once they have been isolated from the larger group.

Near the beginning of a game, Michael likes to choose a side and move his pieces all as a group toward that side. Loosing some pieces at the beginning of the game is fine if it means winning a better position on the board. He tends to look for places where he can bisect a group of marbles. This is nice because your opponent cannot push your marble if it is against some of their own, so this decreases the chance of a flanking counterattack. Carrie is generally good at stopping Michael's strategy, though lately Michael has learned how to use her counterattacks against her and push Carrie's pieces into a corner. She is not a fan of this.

Funny enough, for a long time both of us were under the impression that the game ended when ALL of your opponent's pieces were off the board. The game was still fun, but it took a whole lot longer. We also found out that Carrie is quite good at playing guerrilla warfare with a smaller army. So, even when Michael was winning, Carrie would still be fighting with her scrappy band of rogue marbles. She also enjoyed playing a little game she calls "hide and go fuck yourself" when she had clearly lost, but still had one or two marbles on the board. Basically, she would force Michael to re-group his whole marble army in order to finally pin down her flailing final pieces. In retrospect, this strategy is likely why the game isn't suppose to go down to that few of pieces.

So there you have it, Abalone in a nutshell of sorts! Simple, yet logically complex in the most delightful way! We hope you enjoy our little introduction and game synopsis! Check back with us soon for more fun and games!

=^.^=, Carrie and Michael