Tuesday, January 7, 2014

First Day Back to School for New Year or Loot Alternate Rules

Monday was the boys first day back to school.  I got to get in some guitar practice, some reading, and a stationary cycling workout.

On the tutoring of the boys front I front loaded the fun to follow, wrestling with Dad, with homework first.  The boys love to wrestle and so they quickly did their homework and we went wrestling.  They love to tag team me and pile on for the title of World Champion.

After some rough housing we took a break and played some Loot.


The problem with Loot though is that the rules were a bit complex for my 5 year old.  Hence we came up with some adjustments to target areas my youngest needs to work on (Math) and which were easier to understand (given our other favourite games, like Uno) and to play.  I did this by enlisting their input on which rules would be good and not mentioning my ulterior motive to work on Math ;-)

So, we quickly adopted our Scourge of the High Seas rules:

  • Most gold coins on a card or pirate skulls on a card wins a round.
  • If the gold coins and pirate skulls are tied the Pirate card wins.
  • Losers have to pick up a card.
  • Adopting an Uno rule, when a player gets down to 1 card they must call "Plunder" like a Pirate or they have to pick up two cards.
  • If a Pirate captain is played they beat all other cards.
  • If two or more Pirate captains are played then you must draw 3 new card face up.  The hand with the most gold wins the round.
  • The first player with no cards wins.
  • If the deck gets exhausted then the discard pile is reshuffled and used again until someone runs out of cards to be the Scourge of the High Seas.
We then switched the rules again.  This time we played Pirate Knock Downs:
  • Line up the Gold cards against the wall.
  • Each player takes 7 pirate ship cards.
  • Each player takes turns throwing cards at the standing Gold cards.
  • If a player knocks down 1 or more gold cards they take them.
  • The knocked down cards are replaced.  Then the next player takes their turns.
  • The player with the most gold at the end is the Pirate Winner.
  • In case of a tie, a shootout is played (we did not need this rule).

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