Monthly Archives: April 2022

What Type of Gamer Am I?

On the board game quiz, I scored high in conflict and extremely high in social manipulation. If I’m playing a competitive game, I prefer to be able to directly interfere with the other players. Social manipulation games are a ton of fun and there are plenty to pick from. Most of these games have an ‘evil’ team that is outnumbered but has more knowledge than the other team. The fun of this side is tricking the other players into trusting you. The other side usually has less info and must find out who in the group is against them. The game typically helps you deduce who not to trust in the game.


For the next category I had a high strategy score and a decent score in discovery. I usually spend a lot of time planning out my turn in games, if not several turns ahead. It’s always satisfying when a plan finally pays off. For discovery I tend to have a habitat of letting others recommend what games to play. While I do have a list of favorites that I like to reply I’m always interested in learning something new. Also if I know in advance I’ll be playing a new game I try to study the rules in advance to know what to do.


One of my highest scores was immersion, compared to a low aesthetic grade. My interest in a game is heavily determined by how thematic it is. I do like games that are more mechanic focused like Azul but tend to only try them out at the recommendation of others. When a game has a well-built world, I sometimes spend time reading the lore specifically like with Sentinels of the Multiverse. For aesthetics this is largely something I ignore. While nice components in a game are a cool plus I care more about the game being affordable.


Finally, I had a very low social fun score and a considerable score in cooperation. When I’m playing games, I tend to take them seriously and strategize heavily, as indicated by my previous score. I’m not the biggest fan of ‘party games’ which are likely the most popular for this category. A lot of my favorite board games are co-op games against the game. However, the ones I like are heavy on strategy in order to win. The players usually all have different abilities emphasizing the need to work together.

Game of the Week Blog Reflection Week 11: T.I.M.E. Stories Week 1

For the last game in class we started playing T.I.M.E. Stories. Since I have already played through the first scenario my group played the second scenario, the Marcy Case, instead. In this game we are agents working to prevent changes to the timeline. To do so we control the minds of people present at that point in time, who each have their own strengths and weaknesses. Players then explore areas in different locations finding items or fighting enemies until they finish their mission.

The differing skills of the playable characters emphasize the need for teamwork. Similar to leadership teams in real life some people are more proficient at completing certain tasks than others. Having people work together makes that task finish faster, but also means the team can work on less things overall. Some of the rules for T.I.M.E. Stories also are related to leadership. Making a different player time captain each area allows everyone to experience being the leader. This also helps make sure all the players feel included throughout the game.

The main difficulty of the second case so far is how heavy a focus it has on combat. Each player has to manage a lot of tokens that represent things like ammo, on top of the usual item management. There is also a noise management that causes issues if you use guns too often during combat. This means we often resorted to using weaker melee attacks to not cause ourselves more problems later. Not only does this make us more likely to take damage during combat, but also makes it take longer in general. Since we were working under a strict time limit both in-game and in real life our careful strategies probably won’t work as well next week.

Game of the Week Blog Reflection 10: Ladies & Gentlemen

This week we played Ladies & Gentlemen during class, where I played as a lady. My goal was to buy clothing in order to score the most points, however I had to rely on my team member playing as a gentlemen to pay for all the clothes. Since our game only had 3 teams instead of 4 we managed to get through every round and have higher scores. In the end I ended up losing by only 2 points, which easily could have been a tie with just one $100 more to buy one last item. Its also interesting to note that I didn’t pay much attention to how the gentlemen side was played and switching teams would likely feel like I was playing an entirely different game.

The most difficult aspect of the game was the limited communication with your teammate. Without knowing how much money my partner had it was difficult to know which clothing I should be picking out to buy each day. I also had to be careful about what clothing I would hand to him. I couldn’t specifically say which cards were the most important to buy so I had to make assumptions about which he would pick anytime I wanted to hand over more than one card. This made me hesitant to try more complicated strategies, such as picking clothing I knew the other ladies wanted, because I wouldn’t be able to communicate to not actually buy those clothes.

Having to rely on my partner during the game reflects the importance of teamwork in leadership. One person can’t do everything so you have to trust others to help. My teammate’s role was similar to what a treasurer in a club might do, manage how the club spends it’s money. The clothing I was picking out to buy would be like scheduling events for the club in this comparison. Even as a leader all of these responsibilities would be too much for just one person. If these roles are split between different people on a team however their chance of success is much higher.

Game of the Week Blog Reflection (For Class on 4/7/2022): Ladies and Gentlemen

During this past Thursday, our class got together to play Ladies and Gentlemen, a cooperative board game where players are split into teams of two, a Lady and a Gentleman, who each have very different roles in the game. The Ladies are playing a card drafting game as they attempt to set up boutiques and create the best outfit for the upcoming ball. Meanwhile, the Gentlemen are playing a dexterity game as they race each other to try and acquire stocks in goods to sell or fulfill contracts. Once both the Ladies and Gentlemen have completed their tasks, the Ladies then pass over the garments and accessories that they picked out to buy during the day for the Gentle to either pay for, pay a much smaller amount to put them on hold until they can acquire more money, or discard them.

I personally played as a Gentleman during our session, though I could tell just from observing the other side of the table that the Ladies had a much more complex side of the game. During the entire time they were drafting their boutiques, shopping for their outfits and choosing which ones they wanted to ask their Gentleman to pay for, they had to consider how many elegance points these pieces had, whether they had a piece of that kind already, and whether they had too many designers or not. With all of those things that have to be considered at any given time, I would certainly say that drafting and choosing what cards to place in their boutique is the hardest part of this game, both due to the sheer amount of things that have to be considered for it to be accomplished successfully, and for the fact that all of that effort may end up being wasted if their Gentleman just simply wasn’t able to make enough money to pay for it. This difficulty in planning and drafting is only exasperated by the blind nature of the game, as Gentlemen are not allowed to share just how much money they have with their Lady, and Ladies are not allowed to share what clothes they are planning on trying to buy with their Gentleman until they are ready to pass them over.

However, while this planning may be the most difficult aspect of the game, it may also be an excellent window into what Ladies and Gentlemen can teach us about leadership. For one thing, Ladies and Gentlemen requires the Lady players to be able to plan out their turns without knowing exactly what resources they will have available to them, and to possibly make contingency plans by grabbing extra articles of clothing and accessories. Similarly, unexpected issues or shortages of resources may occur when working on a project, and a good leader will need to be able to plan for these possibilities. This could include contingency plans to work around those issues and shortages, or gathering more resources ahead of time to work around any shortages that may come up. Either way, a leader and their team creating plans like these ahead of time will help mitigate any issues that come up during whatever project they may be dealing with.

Overall, I very much enjoyed playing Ladies and Gentlemen as a Gentleman. The game can be quite tense if you struggle to find resources you need for contracts or if another Gentleman manages to fulfill a contract first and take your bonus. From everything I saw, the Ladies half of the game may be even more tense, and if given the opportunity I would be very interested in playing Ladies and Gentlemen again just so I can see what that  half of the game feels like to play in comparison to the Gentleman’s half. However, even if I wasn’t able to attempt the game’s other set of rules, I would still most certainly be willing to play the game again to experience the chaos of a fake stock market.

Game of the Week Blog Reflection Week 6 Mental Blocks

In week six, we formed groups of six for Mental Blocks. In the beginning, Ian introduced the rules of this game to everyone, and each of us will be assigned to different angles of graphics. Four of them will be assigned to the distribution area and range of color. The remaining two people will get the structure diagram of the figure without color, and the two people’s perspectives are different. We need to build the final graphics in a limited time, usually a minute if I recall correctly and everyone agrees. I think what makes this game more interesting is that there are different rules on each card, for example, you can only touch the triangle directly this round; you can only touch grey this round. This meant that everyone needed teamwork and communication to build the final graphics together. This effectively prevents one team member from taking on all the roles. Everyone has the opportunity to participate in the game. I think it’s a great idea to not directly state that everyone should be involved in the game, but to use additional rules to help everyone work as a team.

We started the game after a brief understanding and communication of how the game was played. I think for this game, the larger the number of people, the more difficult the game will be. Because we often hear one person say, “This graphic is the same as mine,” and then hear another person say, “But this graphic is different from me.” When everyone is actively participating in the game I often get lost in everyone’s words because everyone is talking at the same time, I try to capture everyone’s voice but I can’t. But we improved as the game progressed. We decided that the priority was that the person who got the graph structure would first build the structure using a single color graph. This reduces everyone’s arguments and increases the time to think while watching fellow builds. This method makes our next game easier and much more effective. We can complete various tasks in an orderly manner. I remember we spent a minute and a half solving puzzles in the first round of the game. Although our time was up, we decided to go ahead and see how much time we needed. But when we have a plan, we can quickly speculate on the final outcome. I remember one time when we got the card after the first two people finished building, everyone behind them agreed on the final answer. We only spent less than thirty seconds. This makes everyone happy and feels like everyone is starting to blend in as a group.

After the game, I think this game can be a great help for group activities in learning teamwork. For example, this game can be played when the work unit is holding a team building. This game allows everyone to improve their teamwork skills while having fun. And I think this method can also reduce the occurrence of conflicts among the team.