Chicken Cha Cha Cha

My master plan of breeding my own gaming partners is coming to fruition. It started, as you may recall, with Simon's obsession with Star Wars, including his enjoyment of the Star Wars Lego games for the PS2. For several months earlier this year he and I played endless hours of that one together.

This was followed up by his love for actual physical Star Wars Legos. For about 3 months he saved up his $5/week allowance to buy himself the Lego Jabba the Hut Sail Barge. He and I spent the better part of a week assembling it because it was a bit complex and because we had to wait for Gwen to be asleep first. (Her ability to destroy such things is legendary.)

The latest bit of fun began a few weeks ago when he watched Barb and I play Niagara, which I'd borrowed from Steve. He really wanted to play with us, but although it is a fairly simple game, it is still a bit above his abilities.

Then, a couple of Fridays ago the guys were over for one of our regular gaming nights. Simon so enjoyed watching us play Goa that the next day he begged me to teach him how to play it too. This one is even more complex, but it inspired me to find a Euro-style game that was more his speed.

So, I did a bit of poking around on the net and found Chicken Cha Cha Cha from the ever reliable Rio Grande Games. It got great reviews and when I showed Simon the pictures of the cover and those posted on the Geek of happy children playing it he got very excited.

So, we ordered it and it arrived later that week. Over the last few days we've played a dozen or so games and I'm very pleased with it for several reasons. First, is the great production quality, including 4 large wooden chickens and very sturdy cardboard stock. No plastic here.

Most importantly, however, CCC is a simple game (rules can be learned in less than 3 minutes) but its the sort of game that kids excel at and adults don't. This means that Barb and I can play it with Simon and we can do our absolute best to try to win, but we can't. He beats us each and every time.

It plays like this: In the center of the table are 12 face down octagons with 12 different chicken related pictures on them. Around them, in a large circle, are 24 face-up egg shaped tiles with the same pictures (two face up eggs for each face down octagon). Each player puts one wooden tail feather in the back of their wooden chicken and puts them all equidistant from each other around the 24 eggs. The goal is to move clockwise around the eggs, one egg at a time. Each time you pass an opponent you take their tail feathers and add them to your own. The first player with all the tail feathers wins.

In order to move from one egg to the other, though, you have to flip over one of the octagonal shapes and correctly reveal the picture of the egg you want to move to. So at first it is just luck, but as players reveal more and more of the face down tiles you (in theory) learn where each picture is the game gets easier and easier. If you remember where they are, of course.

So, our games with Simon always go like this: Everyone starts out equally clueless and slowly turn over random tiles. Occasionally someone will remember 4-5 in a row and take an early lead, but no one gets very far ahead of anyone else. Then after about 10-15 minutes, Simon quite suddenly goes on a blitz and flips over 12-15 face down tiles in a row and passes each of us in a single turn and wins the game. It is incredibly cool to watch this process.

Our previous attempts to play board games with him were limited to the Dora version of Candy Land and other roll-and-move games, but these suffer from the evils of randomness, which plague all such games. Most kid's games are designed with a heavy handed amount of randomness so that the kids have an equal chance of winning and won't get discouraged over time. This has been our first attempt at a kids game that actually involves cognitive processing in a way that kids are just naturally good at.

So, now I'm looking around for other games we can get. I've got my eye on Blokus, as well as on Gulo Gulo, both of which appear to also be games that kids are naturally better at than adults. Blokus is a spacial relationship tile laying game and Gulo Gulo is a dexterity game where small hands and fingers prove more successful than larger ones.

Our normal rule about buying toys for the kids is this: Outside of birthdays and holidays, if you want it you have to use your allowance to buy it. This rule is exempted for books, which we buy for them freely and as often as possible. I think now we have to exempt board games as well.

Gwen is still a bit young, but I dream of the day when the whole family sits down for a 4 player game of Settlers or Puerto Rico and maybe someday, even a 12 hour game of Advanced Civilization! Civ needs at least 7 or 8 players though, so let me know ahead of time and we'll be sure to invite you. Nothing says "fun" like 12 hours of Civ!

EDIT:
Speaking of anti-randomness, I just found this cartoon on the geek: