Saturday, July 25, 2015

Those old 3M games

It will probably come as no surprise to you to hear that I have a copy of nearly all of the games described here: The Post-It Note company's obscure boardgames.

In fact, I have TWO copies of Acquire; not quite sure how things ended up that way, but I don't mind, because one of the copies is very worn and all the paper stock nearly crumbles in your hands from play.

Our copy of Acquire has now been played by four generations of my family: my parents bought the game, and played it with me and my brother; I later kept their copy of the game and played it with my children; more recently, my wife and I still play Acquire with my grand-daughter.

Of the other games:

  • I don't have Executive Decision, and don't know why. Perhaps it never appealed to my father (who was the one who bought these games back in the late-1960's).
  • We had Quinto once, but it disappeared.
  • We still have Ploy, Jumpin, and Twixt. They are EXTREMELY abstract and, frankly, not much fun. The best thing about any of them is that fake Leonard Nimoy on the cover of Ploy, who makes that game look like it will be much more fun than it actually is.
  • As I said, we have two copies of Acquire and still play it regularly
  • Feudal, which is the one behind the gorilla and the propeller toy, might be the best of the bunch. It has these wonderful pieces which are sort of medieval toy soldiers, and you get to set them out on this chessboard-style grid and attack your opponent(s). The biggest issue with Feudal is that you really need 4 people to play it and we could never get 4 people who were willing to play it. So I'm afraid it's gathering dust somewhere.

Ah yes, those pre-Facebook days. When people entertained each other by setting up a boardgame on the table.

Try it sometime: go get Castles of Burgundy or Carcassone or Puerto Rico.

Or maybe just go check your email again.

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