Whooped by my son – Sweet!

Have you had the enjoyable experience of being whooped by your kids in a board game?

Well, this week I had that great experience again.

After having been on a business trip for most of this week, I returned home nice an tired. My flight home lasted most of the day and when I finally got home, I was ready to just plop down and close my eyes for a good rest.

So I was surprised when our oldest son, Trevor came into the kitchen and plunked down a game on the table. There, sitting before my eyes was Power Grid. While we haven’t posted a review of Power Grid before, let me just say that I love it. I think it’s a fantastic board game.

For those that aren’t familiar with Power Grid, I’ll quickly tell you that it’s a game about building and extending your network of power plants. It has many different elements in the game that are so cool. It has auctions, fluctuating resource markets, network building, and many strategic decisions in each phase of every turn. And because of all that, it’s also a long game.

So when Trevor placed Power Grid on the table, I had a dilemma. I sure don’t want to pass up a chance to play a game with my 16 yr old. When he’s in the mood to play a game together, I better jump. Here he was, on a school night wanting to hang with dad. And before I left for my trip I had just bought The Robots expansion for Power Grid and had talked to him about it and how anxious I was to play it. But my mind and body sure wasn’t set for such an endeavor that night.

After telling him how torn I was, I told him that Power Grid just wasn’t in the cards. I told him that I’d be more than happy to play a shorter or lighter game, but I’d have to take a rain check on Power Grid. Unfortunately nothing else seemed to strike his fancy right then.

But when I walked into my room after that, I noticed a package on my bed that could only mean one thing – a copy of Yinsh that I recently ordered had arrived!

Now, here was a game that I’d be up for playing with Trevor. There are a few games that have been on my wish list for a number of years. And I believe Yinsh has been at the top the longest. It’s been hard to find in game stores and seems to be out of stock at a lot of online game stores as well. So when I saw it pop up on Amazon a couple weeks ago for only $22, I had to jump on it.

After seeing the package on the bed, my body regained some energy and I quickly opened it up and hustled downstairs to tell Trevor that a game was on.

Yinsh is a 2-player abstract strategy game with a very unique way to play. It’s all about getting 5 double-sided markers in a row with your color face up. Do this 3 times and you win the game. The challenge is in how you can flip the markers to get them to show your color face up. And once you get 5 in a row, you remove those markers and then also remove one of the pieces that allows you to flip markers. So as you get closer to winning, you also get handicapped.

Like I said, I’ve had my eye on it for years and just knew that it would be a 2-player game that I’d most likely love. And after playing it that night, I’m excited to report that my guess was right. It’s a fantastic game!

The only problem was that Trevor whooped me up and down – twice.

And I loved every minute of it!

It’s simply a great feeling when you can go head-to-head with your son and get beat. We’ve written before about whether you should let your kids win when playing board games. And it’s pretty clear that the older and wiser they get, this question isn’t even relevant. When you can sit down for a bit with a child for a mental challenge like this – no matter the outcome – it’s pretty sweet!

Of course the other part that makes the story sweet is that Trevor and I are planning a late night of gaming goodness tonight where for starters I’ll get a rematch of Yinsh and then who knows what else.

Here’s to game time with your family!

Update: Now we have full reviews of both Yinsh and Power Grid.