CrappyBirthdayCrappy Birthday
NorthStarGames, 2011
Do you like giving gifts? Like giving funny gifts? Like Apples to Apples? Then Crappy Birthday may be for you. The game consists of about 150 or so cards. Each card has a strange, weird or downright horrible gift on it.

Like Apples to Apples, each player in turn is the “judge”, or in the case of Crappy Birthday, “The Birthday Person”. Every player tries to find a gift that from their hand that they think will be the WORST gift for the Birthday Person. The cards are placed face down in front of the Birthday Person. When all cards have been played, the Birthday person unwraps their gifts (looks at the cards), and determines which, in their opinion is the worst gift. The person who gave the gift is the winner of that round. The number of wins it takes to win the game is determined by the number of players.

Crappy Birthday is a simple game, but fun in the imaginative and strange gift ideas included. I especially love that the cards have real pictures on them. That means that these things actually exist somewhere. In some cases this is cool (The Darth Vader Air Balloon, or the Monster Smart Car) others it’s frightening. Warning to families, the game does have some “adult” cards, but you can remove the ones offensive to your family and continue with normal play.

If you are looking for a light party game in the tradition of Apples to Apples, you will probably like Crappy Birthday. If you play with the same folks all the time, it could get stale as the card pool is limited. Lightweight, easy, slightly weird game, pick up Crappy Birthday. Heck, give it to a friend as a Birthday gift.

  1. Call to Order
  2. Authorization for BWW payment – board approved up to $100 for appetizers to share with general attendees
  3. Minutes from last meeting posted
  4. Treasurer’s Report: We have money, will be less once expected AI bills are paid (more…)

TetrisTetris
Milton Bradley, 1989

You are probably familiar with the video game Tetris. Blocks of various shapes fall to the bottom of a column, where you must place them in order to fill rows to make them disappear while Russian style music and artwork appear in the background. In 1989, Milton Bradley decided to capitalize on the popularity of this video game with a board game version.

In the board game, a bag or box of familiar Tetris pieces is set in the middle of the table. Players draw pieces and place them on their game board as quickly as possible, handing off to opponents ones they are unable to satisfactorily place. After all pieces have been placed, or when one player has filled their board to the top row, players count the spaces they have covered. The player who has covered the most spaces wins.

This is a simple, fast playing game. It nicely captures the feel of the video game. It is a nice addition to any game collection for the novelty. If you are looking for a good game however, I’d stick with the video game version.