No games for a week seemed to get everyone out of the woodwork and over to play games tonight. We met our neighbors Adam and Pricilla here in Karen Arms again recently, and they joined us tonight for the evening along with regulars Matt and Kathleen. Our first game was Geschenkt, a new release I had read about on the net, and one which I could make myself with a few business cards and gaming stones. It's very simple, you start with 11 stones, which are worth positive points, and use them to pass on cards, which are worth negative points. The player with the most points wins. It was intriguing, and we played it three times in a row, watching people pass on cards, and take them when they were out of tokens.

Burr and Natalie then joined us, bringing over the next game, Mad Gab. It's a game of mispronunciation, where you're given cards with phrases like "ASK RUDE ARRIVE HER" and you need to say it outloud to discover the real phrase (a screwdriver). This game had us laughing at almost every clue, while the "game" element left some things to be desired, it's more of an activity than a game. Next, as none of us wanted to play a large group game of Trivial Pursuit or Cranium, we split into two groups, one played Lord of the Fries, a game with zombies running a crazy restaurant where you try to fulfill orders for food with your cards, while the others played the classic Carcassonne, which went fairly quickly with four experienced players. Every week seems to be a varied mix of game types, sometimes party games, sometime deep thinkers, but I really enjoy them all and we are glad to have such indulgent friends willing to learn new games each week.