This week’s game was Survive: Escape from Atlantis. It is a game where you are given a set of meeples that need to escape from a sinking island. Each Meeple is a different point value and you are given those points if you can transport them from the island to solid land. Transporting your meeples can be a challenge with limited boat space, sharks, and other sea creatures trying to stop you. The hardest part of this game for me was my meeple management. I totally forgot where my valuable meeples were and it was very difficult to figure that out. Another difficult part is creating lasting “alliances” with other people so they don’t hurt you later in the game. I probably had to be on a boat with each other player at one point during the game and do something bad to every player as well. Managing when do attack and when to help each player is very difficult.

As previously mentioned, creating “alliances” is a big part of the game. As a leader, you have to build relationships and sometimes tear down hurtful relationships. The balance of relationships and actions is important in this game and as a leader. In addition, Leadership is about creating a plan (or vision) and sticking with it (for the most part). In Survive, you need a plan from the start and it is to you benefit to have that plan considering the different point values on the meeples. Survive is all about managing when and how you want to complete everything you need to get done before the island disappears.

I think someone that would enjoy this game is my friend, Caitlin. Caitlin would love the ability to choose from different actions and the ability to pave her own path in terms of what she wants to do with each meeple. Creating alliances and internationally hurting people would be other components that she would enjoy.

This week we played Captain Sonar, which is basically a cooler version of battleship involving other people. It wasn’t that hard to play so it is hard for me to pinpoint the hardest part about it. Maybe the hardest part was being the radar control person who had to listen for the other team’s moves and try to identify where they are on the map, because it requires attentiveness. The ties it had to leadership were definitely in the communication branch of it. You had to keep your teammates aware of possible explosions, where the other team is, and when you are moving your ship. Everyone has to be on the same page and god leadership requires good communication. I think my friend Megan would enjoy it because she’s in the Navy.

Today we played Pathfinder. The hardest part about it was actually understanding what was going on and staying engaged. Honestly I really didn’t like this game, it wasn’t fun. The ties that it has to leadership were that we had to work together in order to defeat the villain, and when one person didn’t succeed in killing a henchman or the villain, others had to step up and use teamwork and use their strengths in order to succeed. I didn’t like this game so I wouldn’t recommend it to anyone but if I had to, maybe I’d tell my freshman year roommate, Tracey, about it because maybe she’d like it.

This week’s game was Ladies and Gentleman. In this game, you are split up into teams of two people each. One person is the lady who has to shop for the dance and has to deliver the “goodies” she wants to her husband. The other person is the gentleman who has to collect money from the stock market in order to buy things for his wife. The game is interesting in the sense that the lady and gentleman are playing two separate games in order to achieve the most points by the end. The hardest part of this game is the lack of communication that is present in this game. When I was the lady, I had to find a way to manage what I really wanted and strategically plan out what was important in order to get the most elegant dress possible. As the gentleman, I had to get the best stocks possible to provide the most money for my lady while also helping her out with the numbered tokens. In both scenarios, I had to learn how to play my own game and not let my team down while also prioritizing what was important at different times.

The leadership skills are very evident in this game. The idea of working together to complete two completely separate objectives is very important in this game. As a leader, you need to focus on your own tasks while making sure that your team objective gets done. In addition, you need to prioritize what is important and when to act (ladies need to prioritize when they get certain clothing and gentleman need to prioritize when they get certain resources). This task management over the course of the various rounds is very important because of things like holding an item or waiting to complete a stock until it gains more money on it.

Someone that would really like this game is my mom. She would enjoy the simplicity of focusing on one thing and the ability to “shop”. In addition, she would enjoy the fact that it is short and the fact that she would have a teammate. My mom enjoys games that don’t deal with too much strategy and this would be right up her alley because you don’t need strategy in this game to have fun.

This week was a week where we could pick what we wanted to play. I picked a game called Spector Ops. In this game, there is a ghost who has to complete objectives in secret and escape before he is caught. The rest of the players are hunting the ghost and trying to kill him before he escapes. The hardest part of this game was the unknown. As a regular character (I played as the wolf), you don’t know where the ghost is and you have to find him. In addition, there is a traitor among the players and that was easily the hardest part. As the ghost, you have to map out your movements to the point that the other characters can’t find you. Being the ghost was terrifying because you have no idea where anyone is going and at any point they could find out where you are.

The biggest leadership skills in this game deal with communication. The team needs to properly communicate in order to find the ghost as quickly as possible. As a team, making sure everyone is heard and coming to a clear understanding is very important. In addition, each person has a unique ability that can benefit the team in a unique way. As a leader, it is important to evaluate the strengths of each team member and assess when to use each ability.

Someone that would enjoy this game is my brother, Graham. He loves games that deal with mystery and figuring out who everyone is. In addition, he loves games that are fast paced and have various character abilities. This game is perfect for him because he would love the role of the ghost or a regular character. His favorite part would be the traitor element though and that would keep him intrigued throughout the game.

This week’s game was Ultimate Werewolf. This is a game where everyone is a different character (for the most part). There was some werewolves who want to kill everyone except themselves, while everyone is trying to hunt them down. Throughout the game, people are being killed, hung, and interrogated in order to figure out who everyone is. The hardest part of this game was being a villager in the first game. Out of the twenty people or so playing, there were roughly four people that have no power or special ability. Those characters are the villagers. I did not like this because I had to way to determine who anyone was except by listening and determining on my own who people were.

The leadership skills in this game are unique. The werewolves have to kill everyone, but they can’t talk much strategy or they will be discovered as the werewolves. Everyone else has to determine who the werewolves are solely by their unique ability and interrogating who everyone is. The importance of this game revolves around trusting individuals off the information they give you and building relationships that will last until the end of the game. These are important traits that a leader needs. In addition, persuasion and convey why you are “good” is important in this game as well as a leader. It is especially important in the game when people are voting to hang people. Conveying a message to everyone so they will vote with you is important in order to win because you need a majority of people to vote on who to hang.

Someone that would like this game is my friend, Dylan. He really enjoys the game Mafia and this game is very similar. Ultimate Werewolf provides more unique cards that Dylan would like. He loves interrogating people and would love to figure out who everyone is. The unique cards would allow him to implement more strategy in the game, which he would love.

This week’s game was Captain Sonar. the game is a competitive team game of four people trying to sink the other team’s battleship. Each person has their own unique objective and it is all in real time. The hardest part for me was the real time aspect of the game. It goes so quickly and you are constantly having to make decisions on the spot while remaining focused and calm. I was each position at least once and each one had its own challenges. The hardest part of radio operator is when the opponents submarine goes silent. It happened to me multiple times in one game and it was so hard to navigate it once they moved silently. The other position’s hardest part was communicating the plan for the submarine.  Each person had to be on the same page at all times in order to win and that was very difficult.

The leadership skills in this game are very important. Working on a team is the most obvious skill in this game. Communicating and figuring out how to work together despite another team trying to kill you is very hard to do. In addition, critical thinking skills, and listening skills as the radio operator are both things that a leader should have. The balance of when to deploy an ability is another struggle because that can win or lose you the game based on the radio operator’s knowledge. The central skill of having a plan of “attack” is another important aspect of this game. Lastly, Timing is very critical in this game. The real time feature relies on the speed of each member while communication is flawless throughout.

Someone that would enjoy this game is my brother Reilly. He would love the real time mode of this game and how fast paced it is. He would also enjoy that each person has their role and that the team has to work together in order to achieve victory.

Today in class it was free play, so my table chose to play “Say Anything.” The hardest part about it was because I didn’t know some of the people at the table as well as they knew each other, so there were certain answers that were inside jokes which won and I didn’t get points for my answer. The ties it has to leadership is that it brings various people together and they learn new things about one another, which creates a more cohesive group. I think that my housemate, Kayla, would enjoy this game because we know each other pretty well and she would be able to think of answers that I would find funny and would choose for points.

Last week our class played a game called Captain Sonar. This game is played with 2 teams and 4 roles on either team. The two teams are separated by dividers in the middle of a table. Technically you can play with 2 players on each team (4 total), but that would be chaotic. The best case scenario is 4 players on each team (8 total). The goal of the game is to move your submarine around the map without crossing your line or without running into stuff. Within that you’re supposed to use powers to inflict damage on the other submarine. One of the roles is the captain, who decides the direction of the submarine and must say the direction (north, east, south, west) aloud so the other team can hear them. They keep track of their route on a map. The captain can also choose to use the submarines powers such as sonar, drones, torpedos, mines, as well as silencing. If a captain wants to use a power they must have everyone stop to make it happen. Another role is the radio operator who’s job is to track the enemy submarine by listening to the opposing captains directions. You will not know where they started, but you can get a general idea of where they are based on the layout of the maps. The next role is the first mate, who has to responsibility of charging up the powers of the submarine. There are white spaces to fill in next to each power, and each move the sub makes, the first mate can fill in one space. Once the spaces are all full this power is fully operational. The ability to use these powers is also controlled by the engineer. They have a sheet in which there is a column for each cardinal direction with circuits going across each. For each move the submarine makes the engineer must cross out one of the decals in the circuit. Each decal corresponds to two of the powers that the submarine has, and if one of the decals is crossed out, the power may not be used. The only way to allow the engineer to erase all of the crosses is when each piece of the circuit is crossed out, at that point, the circuit is operational again. The game we played was simultaneous, which meant players could go as fast or as slow as they wanted.

For me the most difficult part of the game is that we played with only 3 people on each team, which meant that the captain was also the first mate. This was only a problem because the game couldn’t move as quickly as with 4 people on a team. The extra responsibility also made our team get confused and mess up the rules a few times. Beyond that it was difficult to find a strategy that worked well the first time, because as the engineer I had no idea where the other team was. I think my team could’ve worked together more in order to understand what our goals were going to be. That way as the engineer, I could know which decals to cross out, so that the right powers were available. Overall it worked pretty well, but I think more communication would’ve made this game better.

The leadership ability that I found would come out well in this game is strong communication and multitasking skills. It was very important for everyone to know what was going on with the team so that you knew which strategy to take. The captain needed to know where they were trying to go in order to inflict damage on the other submarine, but they also needed to know from the first mate what powers were able to be used and with the engineer to know what decals needed to be crossed out. These are only a few examples of what you need to know, and there were so many moving parts within this game, that it’s a necessity to multitask.

I would like to play this game again with 4 people per team this time, but with my friend Pete. I think he would be really good at a few of the roles within this game, and being good friends, we work well together. I really think that this is a game that would be fun to play with  your close friends.

This past week my class played ultimate werewolf, which I have played before and really enjoyed. It’s a large hidden role game similar to that of Mafia for those who have played Mafia. There are two teams, with specific roles on each team. The werewolves goal is to kill everyone in the town until they have the same number of werewolves as townspeople. The townspeople’s goal is to use all of their roles and vote a person to kill every night, in hopes of getting rid of the werewolves. The game has 2 phases, night and day. During the night everyone “goes to sleep” and the narrator wakes the werewolves up, and they choose someone to kill by pointing. They go back to sleep and then in succession all of the special roles get to wake up and preform their actions. For example the seer can ask the moderator if someone in the group is a werewolf. There is the bodyguard, who every night gets to pick someone to save from death. So if a werewolf picks someone and the bodyguard later chooses to save them, the person is alive and no one dies that round. One of the roles which I dislike the most is the ghost. The ghost (once he is killed) may give the group a 1 letter clue each round. So essentially the ghost should get themselves killed as soon as possible to help the team. I dislike this role, because it takes over the game, and people end up ignoring the other roles and mechanics that this game has. The ghost in the case of our game, end up getting all 4 werewolves dead in 6 turns total (including killing himself). The only reason the werewolves weren’t killed all in a row is because I was somehow able to convince the group that they should kill someone other than myself. There are many more roles within the game, but they can be changed. In this game, each role has a positive or negative value, and the moderator must make sure that the cards are even so that one side doesn’t have an advantage.

The most challenging part of this game for me is finding the balance between talking and not talking. Someone who talks a lot draws attention to themselves and is a prime suspect to kill. Someone who is too silent is also someone to be worried about. For this specific game, as a werewolf it was very difficult to argue your case when the ghost was using their power. My name is Nick, and when the ghost put an N on the board, everyone figured it was me because I was the only one with a name starting with N. Luckily someone had an N on their shoes and I convinced everyone that it was him they should kill. They did, but immediately the next round they killed me because the 2nd hint was an I. It was challenging for me, because I believe people rely too much on the mechanism of the ghost and don’t work with the other roles to determine who the bad people are.

The biggest leadership characteristic that I saw in this game was that of convincing people to believe you. One of the players who was not a werewolf immediately talked a lot and was basically facilitating the game discussion and leading people to conclusions that they otherwise might not have come to. This ability is very powerful, because as a werewolf I was able to convince everyone to vote to kill an innocent person, and while it only worked for 1 turn, it worked. The ability of a leader to gain followers and have them trust you as a leader is very important. Gaining that loyalty of a group is something that I try to do anytime I’m a leader. I do this because I know that as a leader I’ll make mistakes, but if people are loyal to you, they’ll understand your mistake hopefully and bounce right back with you.

I think I’d like to play this game without the role of Ghost, because I believe it alters the game too much. Beyond that I’d like to play with my friend Derek. He’s really good at reading people and putting a lot of random pieces together to form a complete picture. This characteristic makes him really good at hidden role games.