Friday, August 5, 2011

Clue

I played Clue with the kids last night.  We didn't have this when I was a kid, so I never played it much growing up - only with friends.  Back then, I thought it was pretty simple, but fun.  Playing as an adult, I realized there's more to it than my 8-year-old self saw.  Where kids mostly just focus on getting the clues noted correctly and puzzled out efficiently, there's this meta-level where you analyze what others are doing with their suggestions, and then a kind of meta-meta level where you watch what other people are noting, especially in response to OTHER people's results, and then a meta-cheating level which I tried to avoid where you can sort of see what part of people's note paper they're marking and determine whether they're noting a weapon, room, or suspect.

There's still a lot of luck.  My daughter (age 14) played well and won, and was doing more fakery and strategy than I thought (is it good when you realize your kids are deceiving you?), but some of her success came from getting the room nailed down very early, which was a function of where she happened to start on the board and what cards she was dealt.  My son (age 12) also did well, and played Colonel Mustard in character as a bombastic blowhard the whole time. What a clown.

The rolling and moving mechanic has always seemed pretty stilted to me, too.  There's likely a better game trapped in there somewhere.  But it was a fun time - gotta love the classics.

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