Gaming with Bro and Co

Just to catch up, last week I played Anagrams with our resident expert, who again wiped the floor with me (and two other players). She's just amazing; she calls out a word., and as she is collecting the tiles she
s already transforming the word into another one.

This weekend I went to my brother's. His kids are still young and insatiable players. Friday night after dinner we played some Progressive Rummy. My mom won. Sat after lunch I taught two of them how to play Thunderstone; they had already played Dominion many times. They are sharper than they look, understanding all the rules immediately, except for how to add the attack values. I suspect that this was due more to laziness than from an inability to understand the rules. I won the first game handily but the second game was closer.

Thunderstone takes a ridiculously long time to set up, and the two games took a long while to play, after which I was pretty much spent. Still, I taught and played a few rounds of No Thanks ( I won the first game handily but the second game was closer), and then a hand or two of three-player Bridge. Around me, kids were playing other card games with various types of decks as well as Carcassonne: Hunters and Gatherers. I also heard calls for Cosmic Encounter, but we didn't get to it.