The shut-in makes this primetime to play card games with Clover (age 8).
I thought of getting a few decks of Pokemon, or even MTG.
I don’t really want to collect cards, but having a few options for us to switch out is nice. Also, deck-building games are neat (I have Ascension, but it’s about fighting demons in the Void, not sure I want to cover that material now).
Anyhow, I thought about games like Arcmage (https://arcmage.org/), but that specific one is about forming armies and attacking cities, great fun for knowledgeable adults, but again not the material I want to cover now).
I also know of the Pokemon-ish clone with real animals, and the card design drives me insane so that’s a no go (though I could be convinced to just roll my own…).
This is a call to know what’s out there, so I can go look and see if I like it to play with the kid. So it would be nice to be able to buy distinct playable decks for low-investment, physical card gameplay.
Im a big fan of Once Upon a Time, played it quite a bit many years ago.
Maybe look at Unstable Unicorns? Its very family friendly and fun. Got introduced to it, by my sibling in law over christmas. Players compete to get a full stable of unicorns, but many of the unicorns have magical powers which alter play, and there are a few “Neigh” cards that undo moves, that can kinda be stacked in a uno-esque way.
Maybe in that vein check out Fluxx too. Made by Looney labs. Their especially cool people. Though you may have to judge if the metaness of that game is something C will click with. ( Players win by altering the rules of the game and win condition to match their current hand.)
It’s just that, not only is our kid at an age where competition is expressing itself strongly, and it already feels like we outnumber em, and we don’t get to see other kids, any game with competition has to be extremely balanced for us to play.
We play Uno, but don’t keep score. Which makes it sooooo much less interesting (there’s no risk to keeping wilds until you want to unload on fools!).
We do the same with Set: we play as a group, and time our games. We try to find all the sets, as fast as possible, as a team.
Samantha and I quite enjoy playing Sushi Go! It’s a hand-passing game where different types of cards (stylized as “rolls” “appetizers” “specials” “entrees”, “desserts”) can be played one at a time to score points over a round.
For instance “Squid Nigiri” is pretty straightforward, playing it gains you 3 points.
“Temaki” is interesting because it’s only scored at the end of the round, whoever has the most Temaki gains 4 points, whoever has the least loses 4 points.
“Wasabi” makes the next “Nigiri”-type card worth triple
And so on.
And because after each card play everybody passes their hands in a circle, there’s the excitement of not knowing what you’re going to get combined with strategizing. “Okay, I can play “Eel” now (1x = -3 points, 2x = 7 points) but how do I know I’ll get an Eel later?”
We have the “Sushi Go! Party” version, which includes the default set of cards from the original, along with various mixins that you can play if you want a more challenging experience, or shake it up when you have more players.
