Games, Friends, and Luchador around the world

Rivera and Howell family — Making new friends in London.

“Don’t talk to strangers.”

Isn’t that one of the first safety precautions parents teach their kids?

And once kids get online, parent strongly caution them not to meet up with people they’ve met online.

Well, I guess it’s a good thing I’m not a young kid any more. Because the other night my wife Michelle and I had a wonderful time meeting someone for the first time that I connected with online years ago.

Strangers become friends

If you never talk to strangers, how can you ever gain friends?

Luchador dice game — Doing battle in the Luchador ring with the Rivera family.

It’s one of those crazy things of life that we tell our kids not to talk to strangers. In doing so, what we’re really telling them is just not to talk to people that we haven’t pre-screened for them.

Because we totally set them up to talk to (and play with) strangers when we introduce them to our friends’ kids or neighbors. After all, before we introduce them, those other kids are total strangers to them.

As we grow, we encounter situations of meeting “strangers” all the time. And in fact, one of the greatest things to teach our kids as they grow and become independent is how to interact with others and make friends.

And even if they don’t become fast friends, we want our kids to become very adept at meeting and interacting well with people. After all, working well with other people is a key component to being successful in a career and life in general.

So what we really want to teach our kids is how to choose good friends – those that will enrich their life and help reach their greatest potential.

Friends around the world

Since we starting doing board game reviews more than 6 years ago, our scope of contacts around the world has increased tremendously.

Not only have we worked with hundreds of global game publishers, but we’ve also heard from tons of parents and families all over the world. The vast majority of those are folks I’ve never met (nor anticipate having the chance to ever meet in person).

But those I have met face-to-face after connecting online through board games have all been wonderful people!

And just this week I had that experience again.

Games with the Rivera family in London

Years ago, I came in contact with Mark Rivera through our game reviews on BoardGameGeek.com. Of course, it was obvious that we shared a love of board games (or we wouldn’t be posting on BGG). But I also discovered that we had other things in common.

Mark and Colin proudly display their winning glory.

Since that time, we’ve connected and stayed in contact through other social media channels as well. As such, we’ve had glimpses into the lives of each other’s families and our personal interests over the last few years.

So when I found out that I’d be traveling to London for business, I quickly did a few things. First, since this would be my first visit to England, planned for my wife Michelle to join me on the trip. Second, to take best advantage of the joint trip, I scheduled a week of vacation immediately following my business meetings. And third, I reached out to Mark about finally meeting and getting to play a game together.

Mark kindly invited Michelle and I to his home the other evening for cakes and games and we had a terrific time!

We met his wife and his son, Colin, and had a great visit getting to know one another better. Unfortunately Colin’s wife was ill so we were unable to meet her.

We also discovered that Mark’s daughter is currently living near our home in Utah. So of course we plan to repay the favor and invite her over to our home as well.

Luchador – Mexican Wrestling Dice

We didn’t spend as much time playing games as we may have anticipated, but that’s only because we were having such a pleasant time just visiting and sharing stories.

But when it came time to settle into a game, we took to the ring in Luchador!

Going into the evening, I was hopeful that we’d play Luchador because it’s a game that Mark designed and was published by Backspindle Games but which I hadn’t yet played.

Luchador is a fun dice game that comes complete with a wrestling ring for the battles.

It can be played by 2 players in a head-to-head match or by 4 players as tag teams.

The tag team mode is great not only because more can enjoy playing, but also because we can tag-out to our partner when we get into trouble.

Since it’s a dice game, you can already guess that it’s full of luck. In each round, 2 players square off in the ring and simultaneously roll their colored dice. If any of the dice don’t stay in the ring, they don’t count.

Players then compare dice results for Hits, Misses, Blocks, Counter punches, and Pins. If a player scores a Hit, that player then rolls the Hit die to see how much damage they cause to the other player who then marks down his health on his character reference sheet.

After taking a certain amount of damage, players fall into a “pin” zone in which they may be pinned if their opponent rolls a Pin result. If that happens, then the pinning player rolls the Pin die to see the outcome and the player being pinned rolls to stay alive.

At the end of each round, if a player wants to tag-out, they high-five their partner and switch places in the ring. Also, the player wanting out must first roll one of their colored dice to see if they can get out of the ring. If they roll a Miss, then they can’t yet leave and must stay in another round.

The game keeps going until either one player is knocked out (lost all health) or is Pinned. Then the other team excitedly celebrates their victory.

In this quick rundown I didn’t cover all the details, but suffice it to say that they’re pretty straightforward as well. In addition to the basic rules, players can also choose to play with some advanced rules.

The advanced rules include special character background stories with unique strengths and weaknesses that enhance the game play and let players execute special rolls that can deal some serious damage (which had a big impact in our second game).

Luchador feels like a “press-your-luck” type of game. Deciding how long to stay in the ring and hoping your dice rolling luck will hold out is a big part of the game. And even when you’re down on your luck (and health), there’s always hope that you can pull out a monster-good roll to turn the tide and win the game.