This is less a set of “rules” and more like guidelines of how we hope this website will work.  Although it is true that Family Game Night RULES!

This is a brand-new endeavor for us.  We really are just a family and not a roving band of professional web designers pretending to like each other.  We hope that you will bear with us as we work out the inevitable kinks and logistical errors.

We hope to post two blogs a week reviewing games.  The Monday blog will be a review of new or relatively new games.  The Throwback Thursday post will be a review of a classic game, like Clue (an awesome game) or Monopoly (a not-so-awesome game). Between the two main families that make up our Game Night we counted over 250 games in our collective collections.  So, we should be busy for a while.

Our reviews will be our individual (and unpaid) opinion of how fun/good the game is with a focus on their suitability for playing as a family.  Obviously, these reviews are written by adults, for adults, but we will always try to have the opinions of the various age groups as well.

Now every review scoring system is completely arbitrary and ridiculous, so here is ours:  Our games will be ranked on a scale of 2-12 because that’s what you get if you roll 2 six-sided dice.  Since dice are in our logo, it seemed appropriate.  Plus, most of these dice combos have cool names.

A ranking of 2 (Snake Eyes) is not a good game, but a rank of 12 (Boxcars) is one of the very best games around.

Plus, if Nigel Tufnel can get all excited because his amps go to 11, then we’re even cooler because our scores go to 12.  If you get this reference and you like board games, then you’ve found the perfect website to fulfill your need/obsession for honest game opinions and pop-culture references.  If you don’t get it, then go buy “This Is Spinal Tap”, watch it (you’ll thank me later) and come back here.  We’ll wait for you.

In addition to the two main game reviews we will have semi-irregular postings the rest of the week.  On Tuesdays, we’ll post various Top 10 lists (or maybe Top 12, we’ll see).  We’ll also post about any other topics that come up in the game world.  So, if we were to go to a Gaming convention in our area (New England) we’d post about it here.

On Wordless Wednesday we’ll post a random picture as a sort of game within a blog.  It’ll be a prizeless contest to see who can Guess the Game first.

Fridays will be Fantasy Friday. A few months back, my sons coerced me to teach them how to play D&D.  That’s Dungeons and Dragons for all you uninformed (and popular) kids.  So, on Fantasy Friday, we’ll post a game diary of our sessions, with my tips on tweaking the published adventures and advice on playing with different age groups and maturity levels.

The basic schedule will be:

Main Game Monday – New (new-ish) game review

Topic Tuesday – Top 10 lists / Other game topics

Wordless Wednesday – Single pic / Guess the game

Throwback Thursday – Classic game review

Fantasy Friday – D&D game diary and role-playing debates

But seriously, we’ll be lucky to get in one post a week.  All this is a lot of blogging.  Just typing this thing to explain why our ranking system goes to 12 took me six hours (off & on).  We all work real full-time jobs and/or school, so we will see how consistent we can keep this schedule.

One more note, our first reviews will be for the games we love. Don’t worry, there will be negative reviews. We just feel that it’s more useful to start with games you should play rather than games you shouldn’t.

You can follow us on Twitter @gamenightblog and on Facebook at Game Night Blog.

Pretty much everything we do will go up on Instagram #gamenightblog.

As always, stay frosty and Game On!

Game over, man. Game over! – Private Hicks