Dixit: My Rabbit Likes Mushrooms

Dixit is a beautiful game that if you had to compare it to other games, it would be a cross between Pictionary and Apples to Apples with rabbits mixed in for the fun of it.  I discovered Dixit by watching Table Top with Wil Wheaton. I would highly recommend you to check out the Dixit episode on Table Top if you are a visual learner, because  I am going to explain things quite horribly.  (Not intentionally horribly, but I have come to believe that I am one of those people that can over explain, and therefore half kill any interest in playing. Trust me, watch the video if the below doesn't make any sense to you.) 

Yellow Rabbit Forever!

At the beginning of the game, we picked our rabbits. They are cute little wooden rabbits painted various colors. We had a full six players playing so ever rabbit was utilized.  Part of my inner monologue wants to glue little google eyes on the rabbits, but I don't think they make google eyes that small.  The object is to get your rabbit around the board as many times as possible.  Sounds pretty easy. 

Yummy Mushrooms!

The game board is a pretty path full of flowers and mushrooms with little stepping stones to mark progress.  I think the fact that it is full of mushrooms is the key, because some of us that are not that great at the game have their rabbit sitting on a garden path, eating mushrooms. Wooden rabbits love painted mushrooms.  It is a little known board game fact. Or I just have no talent at having anyone pick my card.  I like to think that my rabbit just likes to eat the mushrooms. 

Vote for me!

The person thats turn it is will pick a card out of their hand and put it face down on the table. They give a clue as to what their card is. Every one else puts a card down for that clue. What ever clue is give, you want vague enough that not everyone will get it, but specific enough that someone will get it. You also have to gage your audience as to how literal they are going to take a clue. Once all the cards are gathered, every one but the clue giver gets to vote on which card they think it is.

Clue: Shinning Light

 For example if I gave the clue Shining Light, most people will put a card down that had to do with light.   The  cards in Dixit are beautiful complex works of art and depending on the clue, the players can put almost anything down.   Here are six random cards where put down for  Shining Light. Almost of all them have some sort of light in them and one of them has the absence of light.  The question for the voters is if the person giving the clue is being literal with the clue Shining Light.  

When playing this game, I find I do better if I don't count of my husband to guess my card.  Despite how well he knows me and I know him, we really suck at guessing each others cards. If it is supposed to be one of those old married people bonds, I might develop it in the next ten years, because these last ten years have done not accomplished it yet. He very rarely guesses my card. My suggestion is to try and model your clues to a friend. It took me half a game to figure that out and my rabbit spent a lot of time eating mushrooms on the path and not going anywhere, because I was giving clues that I thought only he would get, and he didn't and neither did anyone else.  

Literal Shining Light

My card I would have played to that clue would be the man in the clouds. I would figure that everyone would put down something that had a light in it, and putting down something the opposite would give the players a pause and would give me at least one vote, which is all I really needed to make any movement on the board. If every one voters for your card, you get no points because you were to specific. I could hope that one person would vote for my cloudy man,  while everyone else would vote for the  literal Shining Light, which a girl in a with a candle inside a light bulb or possibly hand with the torch. 

My Card

You want people to vote for your card, but not every one to vote for your card in order to get your rabbit to move.  This is a beautiful engaging game, that keeps all of the players involved to the very end.  I would highly recommend this game. It is easy to play and a lot of fun. I look forward to the next time I get to play Dixit and I have even ordered an expansion deck, so that I have more beautiful cards to work with in the future.  Until I receive the expansion deck, I will continue the mental debate on if I should glue google eyes on the rabbits. 

Descent: Journeys in the Dark

Curse you, Wil Wheaton! Curse you TableTop! Darn you for opening a door to entertainment that gets me away from the television and hanging out with my friends. If not for you I would probably not have wonderful new games to play or be willing to try new games that you haven't featured on TableTop, because they look like fun. Every time I watch TableTop I want to open my wallet and give you all the money and play all of the games. One of the games that has not been featured on TableTop that has made it into the house is Descent: Journeys in the Dark. 

Descent: Journeys in the Dark is a game that my husband researched and picked up. He spent a lot of time painting all of the game pieces. Decent is a dungeon crawler with a hundred different pieces. There is an entire story line that goes with the game and the objectives change with each twist and turn of the story. Each time you play the game the experience from previous boards follow your character to the next plot twist in the story. It sounds complicated and it is, somewhat. It is one of those games, that while it may take a while to set up the dungeon because there are different snap together boards and to set up the tokens and game markers. Once everything is set up, it is actually a pretty smooth game of strategy mixed with chance.

Today we played part of the second mission called The Fat Goblin. We enter into the town of Arhynn to trade and restock supplies when the Goblin Horde ransacks the place and is trying to make off with the harvested crops, which would leave the town destitute in the winter. Not only are there goblins scampering all over the place pillaging the once peaceful village, they brought with them a pack of ill mannered zombie dogs that have fleas and maggots and are running a muck, scaring small children in rough simple clothes. The rudeness knows no bounds.  It is not easy being a hero, when stuff like this happens. I am pretty sure that all Grisban the Thirsty wants to be doing is not wielding an axe at the scruffy mutts and would rather be raising a mug and telling drunk tales of the adventure he just came from. A heroes work is never done.

With a combination of good card play and really bad dice throws on my part, Grisban the Thirsty along with the help of his fellow hero companions, Asherian, Leoric of the Book and Avric Albright, the heroes were able to wrestle two out of the four harvest bundles from the scampering mischievous goblins with minimum damage to their health and stamina.  I am pretty sure that more villagers and crop bundles would have been lost if not for the strategic planning of Leoric of the Book.

Rescuing the bundles of harvested crops is only part of the quest, because now the fearsome foursome have to go rescue all those idiots that weren't smart enough to run and hide when a goblin horde is messing up the neighborhood. There is a farmer that believes his brother is being targeted in this, and even though Grisban thinks the blood spattered farmer in rough simple clothes has had one too many knocks to the head from fending off some maggoty zombie dogs, he has agreed to get drunk after they rescue his brother and the rest of the missing villagers, despite the fact that he fights better drunk.  Asherian thinks that is really big of him, but Grisban is pretty sure that Asherian is just being sarcastic about the whole thing.

And this is the end of part one of The Fat Goblin. The next part of the journey is where the heroes invade the Goblin Horde's home base and try to take back what is theirs, while trying to keep from dying. A lot of Goblins have been made orphans by these heroes and are probably out for revenge and farmers probably taste good in stew.

I am looking forward to the next round of this game. The more you play, the more you get into the different twists and turns of the story, and the more you come to appreciate the different aspects of the characters involved. If you are interested in seeing more of the amazing games pieces that my husband painted, here is a link to his blog on Board Game Geek.