1 Comment Posted on April 10, 2017 Game night

Dixit Strategy

Dixit is one of my favorite party games. Everyone can quickly learn and play, but there are subtle strategies that will lead to victory.

Here is my strategy:

Use stories or phrases that target one or two people
Play the card that fit into the stories of others
Bluff when cards are revealed
Think through other players thought processes, and watch their reactions

Storytelling

When it is your turn to suggest a story or phrase, think very carefully about what to say. Consider your audience. You want at least one person, but not everyone to guess your card. You most likely have experiences with the other players. Use those experiences to make a clue that only they could guess.

To prevent people from teaming up on you and accusing you of cheating, change around who your target player is each time. Make the clue sufficiently vague, but clear to that one player.

Playing Cards

This part of the strategy is super simple. Whatever clue they give, find the card that fits the story or phrase the closest. After submitting your card, here is where the fun part comes in.

Bluffing

Dixit is the kind of game that you can get a significant lead, but then people will start trying to not guess for you just to stop you from winning. The key to overcoming this is to bluff.

When cards are revealed, don’t do anything that would reveal which card is yours. If you aren’t great at keeping a straight face, make exaggerated gestures and comments on all of them.Say things like “There are so many good options.” “Ooh, this one is good.” and laugh if the card is funny, (even if it is yours.) Act genuinely surprised by all the cards revealed.

Guessing

When it comes time to guess, watch the storyteller closely. They often will reveal their card just by their reactions to the cards revealed. If not, think about what you know about the person and how their thought processes work. This can be pretty difficult if you don’t know them well but do your best here.

Often you can eliminate cards that you know can’t be it, and then just guess on the ones left over. You know your own, and you other players may accidently reveal their card by not being surprised, or making subtle comments.

You won’t get them all right, but you will get it right more often than others, leading to a sound victory.

1 Comment Posted on April 3, 2017 Career Strategy

Career Strategy Summary

With graduation in striking distance at universities across the world, I’m posting the list of my career strategies. I recommend you checking them out. In summary, learn what you like, do work that you like, manage your career, and give back.

Career Strategy 1: What do you want to be when you grow up?

Career Strategy 2: Job Search

Career Strategy 3: Getting your First Real Job

Career Strategy 4: How to Get a Job at …

Career Strategy 5: Protecting your Personal brand

Career Strategy 6: Effective Interviewing

Career Strategy 7: Up, Over, Out, or Stay

Career Strategy 8: Being a Good Mentor

3 Comments Posted on March 27, 2017 Game night

Perudo: Liar’s Dice

Perudo is the original version of Liar’s Dice. The game was reinvigorated by its appearance in Pirates of the Caribbean where the stakes are undead service to Davy Jones.

My family plays this game whenever we get together because you can play with as many players as you have. It works just as well with 10 players as it does with 5. (We don’t play for undead service, just for glory).

The original rules are slightly different than the Pirates version. Each player rolls their dice inside their cup. You can look at your own dice, but not others. A player starts by saying how many dice of a type are under all the cups. (1s are wild.) For example, I would start and say 3 fives. The next player has to either increase the amount of dice or the number of the dice. He could say 4 fives, or 3 sixes, or anything higher than those.

If the next player doesn’t think that there are as many dice as the player just stated, they say “Dudo” which means, “I doubt”. Then if there is the stated amount, the doubter loses a dice. If not, the doubtee loses a dice.

You keep going until someone has one dice, and the rules change slightly. At that point, the person with 1 dice always starts the round, and no one else is allowed to change the type of dice, only the amount of dice. (once multiple players have 1 die, they can change it, but no one else can.)

Here is the strategy:

Play the probabilities
Play safe, but bluff
Force situations 2 away from you
When down to 1, bluff, but control the game

Play the Probabilities

You have some information about the game based on what you have rolled. Think about how many dice there are in play (suppose 20 for the example). Suppose you rolled two sixes. There are 15 dice you don’t know the result of, but on average, there should be 1/6 X 15 other sixes, plus 1/6 X 15 other ones (wild). This means there should be 5 other sixes on average. So you can guess up to 7 sixes.

Play Safe

Now, you know there should be about 7 sixes. There may not be, but you want someone else to get out, so play a little safe and call 5 sixes. The next person should probably say 6 sixes, and the person after says 7 sixes. At that point, the next player has a tough decision. There should be 7 sixes, but are there really? You have set them up so that someone will call it when it is not next to you.

You could probably even say 6 sixes and be safe, especially if you take into account how the other players react to you saying 5 sixes. If people are surprised, you may need to back down your number. Read people’s faces when you call things and try to figure out what they have.

Down to 1

Once you are down to 1, you don’t have much of a chance of winning, but you can send a lot of other players down to Davy Jones locker with you. If there are a lot of other dice in play, say 2 or 3 of the dice that you have. If not, just say exactly what you have. You don’t want to get out because you bluffed when you didn’t need to.

Once the other players have whittled down their dice, you will be facing other players at 1 dice. It becomes a luck game on who rolls the highest dice. If you roll a six, and they roll a 3, you say 1 six, and they have to say 2 of something. If you role something really low, there may be a benefit to saying a higher number and try to guess what they rolled, but it is a 1/5 chance of getting it.

Good luck!

1 Comment Posted on March 20, 2017March 20, 2017 Kids Games, Simple Games

Quiet Paper Games for Church

There is a delicate balance between making your kids listen during church, and just hoping that they are quiet so that they don’t distract others who are trying to listen.

This is the strategy for how to keep your kids distracted while you listen.

When I was younger, I remember when 3-year-old brother disappeared underneath the pew in front of us. We didn’t get to church early enough to get a good seat, so we were pretty far back. After a little while, I saw my brother’s head pop up in the very front row. Some nice people had him sit by them while my mother scrambled up to get him.

To avoid this situation in your future, I’ve compiled a list of quiet paper games to help you.

Dots and Boxes
Tic Tac Toe
A little better (modified killing game)
Telestrations
Counting to 21
Random Drawing
Drawing with your eyes closed

Dots and Boxes

The classic dots and boxes game can take as long as you need and can be done very quietly. Start with ten by ten dots like below. Take turns connecting dots. If you complete a square, write your initial in the box and get another turn. Refer to the Dots and Boxes strategy on how to win.

Tic-Tac-Toe

After a few times of the regular version, it gets pretty monotonous. At that point, you can change things up by changing the rules. Here are some suggestions.

Reverse Tic-Tac-Toe. If the other person gets three in a row, you win.
4 in a row. Make the board 4 by 4, and you have to get 4 in a row to win
Multiple playing areas. Make 2 or 3 Tic-Tac-Toe boards and on your turn, you get to play on any of them. You have to get 3 in a row twice to win.

A Little Better

My older brother and I made up a game called the killing game. Basically, you start by drawing someone or something and the next person draws a new someone or something that has to be strong enough to kill the thing you drew. This goes back and forth until there is an argument about whether the Death Star can be defeated by Voldemort.

Needless to say, my mom hated this game.

I since adapted the game to make it church appropriate. Instead of killing, you just have to draw something a little better. It works best with categories like; bad guys, super heroes, or Pokemon. We have even played the faster version around the dinner table where you just have to say someone a little worse. (The bad guy one got a little tricky with our kids because the worst guy they knew about was Bowser.)

Telestrations

There is an actual Telestrations game, but you can play it without all the extra frills. Take a piece of paper, and one person draws a picture. The next person writes what they think they are seeing in the picture and folds the paper so that you can only see the words. The next person draws a picture of the words etc.

You can have multiple papers going along the pew. You can even make it church themed by requiring the first picture to be scripture heroes.

Counting to 21

This is the same as the counting up game referenced here, except that you write it on a piece of paper. The game is pretty fast so it won’t last long, but you can change it up by adding multiple players, or changing what you must add up to. This is good for a few minutes of peace.

Random Drawing

I don’t mean just draw something random.

This is where one person draws a quick squiggle on the paper and the other person has to make something out of it. We often would each draw a squiggle so that both players could be drawing. I’ve seen the youth play this, and some of them get really good pictures out of it.

Blind Drawing

One player names something that you have to draw, and both players have to do it with their eyes closed. Whoever has the most complete picture wins. You can judge yourselves, or rope someone else in afterward.

What ideas do you have to keep kids distracted in church?

1 Comment Posted on March 13, 2017 Game night, Strategy Games

Pandemic Strategy (Guest Blog)

I’ve invited my brother-in-law Joseph Erickson to post his thoughts around Pandemic strategy. Cooperative board games are great to play with kids because you can lead them along. One of the best is Pandemic. Joseph discusses it below, but I want to add that one of the keys to cooperative games is to let people play. Don’t dominate the game on your own, allow everyone to participate, even if it means a sub-optimal move. You can give suggestions, but if you are the game controller, people will leave with a bad taste in their mouth. Now to Joseph.

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Do you always seem to win at board games? Or perhaps you feel you are consistently on the losing side when you play? Maybe board games often result in fighting. If you’ve had any of these issues, then I would recommend playing a cooperative board game. Your friends become your teammates and your foe becomes the game itself. High on the list of great cooperative games is Pandemic.

When I think of possible outcomes for Pandemic, one “blonde” joke comes to mind. There was a redhead, a brunette, and a blonde on an island. They decided they would take their chances and swim the 50 miles back to the mainland. The redhead swam 20 miles and couldn’t go any farther and drowned. The brunette swam 30 miles, but met the same fate. The blonde swam 49 miles and decided she was too tired, so she swam all the way back to the island. Pandemic can be just like this. Either you will die trying to win, or you will spend a lot of energy “swimming” but forget what the actual goal is.

Pandemic is about saving the world. There are 4 different diseases that are spreading each turn. Your job is to find the cures before time runs out. There are many ways to find the cures, but there are also many ways where the board game beats you.

This brings me to the first key to the game – remember what it takes to win. Every time someone has a turn it is a good idea to ask, “Is this helping us get a cure?” Four cures is all you have to do to beat the game. There can still be many disease pieces on the game board. You can have several outbreaks. While it is important to keep tabs on the many ways you can lose to the board game, focusing on getting the cures give you the best chance to win.

The next key is to maximize. This game is a good lesson in basic economics because every turn has trade-offs. You can choose to remove disease pieces or trade city cards or move to another city. While most of the time doing anything is helpful, there is usually a better choice to stay on track for the win. As often as possible use all 4 moves that you are given. Perhaps remove a disease piece before moving the three times to your intended city.

Another key to Pandemic is to understand and utilize all special powers. Each player will be given a role card that has a particular power. Use this power often. It is a valuable advantage. There are also event cards. Don’t forget about these after they’ve been drawn. These cards have kept me alive or made a big difference in winning many times. All these powers are there to give you an advantage because the game can be pretty impossible without them.

The final key or strategy for Pandemic is communication. This is a cooperative game, so work together. Ask each other for ideas and openly discuss what should be done every turn. Not only will this bring out the best ideas, but it will also make the game more fun.

1 Comment Posted on March 6, 2017 Strategy Games

Lord of the Rings: Confrontation Strategy

This is my all-time favorite two-player game. The complexities of strategy along with the simplicity of play make it accessible but extremely satisfying.

My brother and I had been playing this game one night many years ago. It was the day before he left on a two-year mission for our church. He ended up sneaking in a win at the last part of the game. At that point, it was pretty late, so we went to bed. I kept playing the game over and over in my mind, and an hour or two later, I went to his room and tried to get him to play one more time. He refused flat out!

This gave me the opportunity to think about how to beat him for two years. When he did finally return, we had our fated rematch and I came out victorious! My family still reminds me about this every time the game comes out.

The game itself has the fellowship of the ring fighting to get Frodo into Mordor while facing hordes of overpowered servants of the dark lord Sauron. You move pieces around like Stratego on a grid and face off in battles. It is quick to learn, and each game can be completed in 15 minutes.

Strategy

The strategy for LOTR: Confrontation is very complex. There isn’t one great thing to do because once your opponent knows your strategy, it is completely obsolete. Refer to my post on what to do when people know your strategy for tips on other games, but in this game, you can’t have one set strategy. What you can do is know the strengths and weaknesses of each character and take advantage of them as much as possible.

I will lay out the strategies for each character on each side, and then talk about general strategies.

The Fellowship

Unit	Good For/Against	Bad Against
Gandolf	Sarumon Cave Troll Flying Nazgul Black Rider	Orcs (Watch out for Orcs when trying to bring out Gandolf the White)
Boromir	5 point characters	Warg
Legolas	Flying Nazgul	All others
Gimli	Orcs	All others
Aragorn	Sarumon	Level 5 Units
Merry	Witch-King	All others
Pippin	Scouting only	Warg
Sam	Staying with Frodo	With Frodo, no one
Frodo	No One! Run away!	Everyone!

Your goal early on should be to kill as many of Sauron’s minions as possible while preparing a path for Frodo to sneak through.

Gandolf is your main killer. He has an advantage over almost everyone, but don’t get tricked into sacrificing him to the Orcs. Use Pippin to test for weaknesses and attack characters with less than 5 with Gandolf. Eventually, you will end up getting killed by a 5 character, but then prepare to come back as Gandolf the white.

Sauron’s Minions

Unit	Good For/Against	Bad Against
Balrog	Protecting the tunnel All Characters (but Boromir)	Noble Sacrifice Boromir
Shelob	All Characters (but Boromir)	Warg
Witch-King	All Characters (but Boromir and Merry)	All others
Flying Nazgul	Scouting Frodo	Legolas Gandolf Aragorn
Black Rider	Scouting Frodo	Gandolf Aragorn
Saruman	Rushing past Gandolf and killing all weak characters	Gandolf Aragorn
Orcs	Gandolf	Gimli
Warg	Pippin Frodo	All others
Cave Troll	One free kill	Gandolf

Sauron has a distinct military advantage, but the fellowship can whittle away at your army until you can’t stop Frodo. If you can sneak past Gandolf, Saruman can do some excellent damage to the Fellowship. Use your 5 characters and sacrifice yourself to Gandolf. Guard the Gandolf the White space to ensure he doesn’t return.

You want to kill enough characters that you can force Frodo to move towards you. Whenever you attack Frodo, you open yourself up to him sneaking through, so if you can trap his movements and require him to attack you, you can usually win.

This is a great game. I suggest you pick up a copy and play often.

Leave a comment Posted on February 27, 2017February 28, 2017 Game night, Strategy Games

King of Tokyo Strategy

This is a top 3 game for my 8-year-old girl. She loves taking a big handful of dice and shaking them out. She also loves the giant monsters and the powers you can gain.

Here is the strategy:

Get in Tokyo early
Collect energy in early turns
Choose a winning strategy and focus on it
1. Kill everyone
2. Risky Tokyo points
3. Extra turns
4. Sneaky slow ramp up with a quick ending.

Get in Tokyo

Anytime throughout the game, when your points are higher than 7 or 8, you want to get into Tokyo. Early in the game, this is very useful because opponents have not acquired high attacking powers and they are often trying to get energy. You can usually get 5-7 free points before you have to make a retreat.

Depending on the other players’ upgrades, you want to exit Tokyo when your points drop below 4. Anything less than that can lead you to an early demise.

Energy

To win the game you really need to upgrade your skills. Collect energy in early turns to prepare you for the future. If you are getting the points from being in Tokyo, you can spend the rest of your dice trying to get energy.

Win Strategies

Choosing your winning strategy depends on the available cards to purchase. You really won’t know what you will be able to do until you see what is available.

Killing everyone

This is my favorite strategy because it ends before people know what hit them. Stay middle of the pack, attacking here and there and collecting energy and cards, but purchase the upgrades that give you extra attacks and multiple player attacks.

Once the game gets going and you have enough offensive upgrades, attack relentlessly against the players with the least life. The other advantage of the attacking strategy is that you will often get extra points by being in Tokyo, so if you need to back away from the attacking strategy, you could still win on points

Risky Tokyo points

Another strategy that can sometimes work is to try to stay in Tokyo as long as possible. You can squeeze just a few more points out of Tokyo and exit around 2 life points.

Collect upgrades that give you advantages in Tokyo: healing, extra attacks, defense, etc.

This strategy can pay off well but often leaves you vulnerable to the killing strategy.

Extra Turns

You can also win just by having a bunch of extra turns. Target the cards that give you extra turns for your roles. Play as normal, but take advantage of the extra turns to take the lead.

Sneaky Strike

All your strategies should employ some elements of the sneaky strike. If you get ahead in the game to0 quickly early on, the other players will collude to eliminate you. You need to be in the middle of the pack, slowly collecting points and upgrades until you are ready to make your move.

Collect a lot of energy and stay alive in the game. Purchase cards that will increase your chances of getting points later in the game. Cards that increase the value of your rolls, give you more dice to roll or change your roll scoring conditions are all great cards for the sneaky strike.

Then, when you feel you are close, buy up any victory point cards and hope for the right roles.

In all of these strategies, you need to keep the target off of your back by staying close to the pack, but preparing for the end.

What other strategies have you used?

2 Comments Posted on February 20, 2017 Game night

Party Game Strategy

Married couples often get together for game nights. When we get an invitation, I get super excited. Sometimes, usually in the fine print, it says, “bring your favorite party game.” This used to fill me with dread. Why would anyone have a game night and not play strategy games?

Fortunately, I have learned how to appreciate the strategy of the party game. I’m going to share it with you so that you can be successful in all your game endeavors.

Figure out how to actually “Win”
Have a positive attitude
Pick good games
Make it fun for others
Use it as an opportunity to plan a strategy game night

Winning Party Games

There can be satisfaction from guessing the word right before the buzzer in Catchphrase, or snagging the final card in Dixit, but often it feels like randomness and luck. (It feels that way, because it usually is.)

In one of my kids’ favorite books, Elephant asks Piggie if he knows the secret to throwing a ball. Piggy says, “Have fun!” Elephant is skeptical, but in the end *spoiler alert* Elephant learns to just have fun.

You win at party games by having fun! But wait…that sounds ridiculous. Who am I winning against? Well, you win the night if people leave saying, “Wow, that Brandon was really funny/fun/creative/witty. I’d like to spend time with them again.”

For the ultra-competitive, like me, you can even keep track in your mind how funny/fun/creative/witty you are in comparison to other people, and figure out where you fall in the line-up. For party game people, this won’t make any sense, but for strategy gamers, we get satisfaction from knowing who actually won.

Positive Attitude

No one likes to play games with people who have a bad attitude. Compliment people, joke with people, and play the game to the best of your abilities.

Pick the right game

Good party games include:

Make it fun for others

Part of winning the party game is making it fun for others. Some ideas for this include:

Compliment others when they are funny
Keep your humor light
Engage in witty banter as if the game wasn’t actually luck
Smile
Engage those that aren’t as comfortable

Plan for the future

If you are successful in your strategy, you should leave the game night with a good gauge of who is fun to play with and who you want to spend more time with. As you are leaving, grab people individually and suggest a strategy game night, or follow-up the next day.

Lastly, thank your host for the fun evening.

Do you have any other ideas for making party game night fun? I’d love to hear from you in the comments.

1 Comment Posted on February 15, 2017 Strategy Games

Star Wars X-Wing Miniatures Review

I got a text yesterday to see if I wanted to play a game last night. I was free at 9 PM, and I figured that I would be done by 10:30 or so. This was a gross underestimate. X-wing, it turns out, involves choosing ships, upgrades, and characters before the game even starts. This being my first time, and following my own Strategy For your Strategy blog, I had to read through a huge stack of cards to come up with a strategy as well as learn the rules.

We finally started the game around 10, and it lasted until a little after midnight. It may sound like I didn’t enjoy it, but the funny thing is, I loved all of it! A lot of the fun was figuring out what combination of cards will work together, and then try to implement the strategy while keeping track of what everyone else is trying to do.

In X-wing, you play the side of the Empire, the Rebellion, or the Scum (bounty hunters, etc). You choose ships and go through phases of movement and attacking. The ships move in the way regular ships should move, and if you don’t plan your flight path, you could find yourself crashing into an asteroid.

It has been awhile that I have had a hard time sleeping because my brain was trying to figure out the strategy for a game, but last night, I couldn’t stop. I love this game.

My only issue is the length of play. Now that I know the rules, I think it could be completed in an hour and a half with 20 minutes of prep, but this isn’t going to work for some people.

You can even modify the game to play with kids by removing the upgrade cards. It is fun to play and will teach them spatial reasoning skills and some planning and strategy. Additionally, the sweet space ships make the game awesome to play.

6 Comments Posted on February 13, 2017May 10, 2019 Simple Games

Counting to 21 Strategy

21 is a simple game that you can always win if you go second. The goal of the game is to be the first person to say “21”. The rules are that you can only add 1 or 2 to whatever the other player says.

For example, the first player can say “1” or “2”. If he said “2” the second player can say “3” or “4” and so on.

There is a strictly dominant strategy in this game. You can use backward induction to figure out what to do. Try to figure it out yourself first, but below is the strategy.

You need to get them to say 19 or 20; therefore, if you say 18, you win.
To say 18, you need to get them to say 16, or 17, so if you say 15, you win.
Continuing on, if you say 12 you win
if you say 9, you win,
if you say 6, you win,
if you say 3, you win
So, if you go second, you can guarantee that you will say 3, and win every time.

When playing this with people, the secret is to not let on that you are doing a strategy against them. To win the most times possible, act like you are thinking about what to do on every turn, even though you know what you will say.

If you go first, just hope that they don’t know the dominant strategy and mess up one time. Once that happens, you can get back onto the winning track and win every time.

There are different variations where you lose if you say 21. Can you figure out the dominant strategy in that game?