Holiday Gaming: Family Games

Because holidays are for family.

By now, you may be under the impression that I prefer heavy games, with lots of thinking and strategy and little wooden bits.

And you would be correct.  Love that stuff.

BUT, that's not to say less heavy games are bad.  I don't care for them for the most part, but I'll play them.
And so we come to Family Games.  These games (by my own definition which I am making up at this very moment) have pretty simple rules, play somewhat quickly, and almost always involve a reasonable amount of luck.  So while hardcore gamers like myself may not love these (I like lots of complexity, tough decisions, little to no luck), they are great for people like, say, my family who just want to have fun.  Hence, "family games."  These games are accessible to everyone and not just people who treat boardgames as a hobby/way of life instead of just a way to pass the time.

Enough background.  Every Christmas, I play boardgames with my family.  I try to get them to play heavy euros and rarely succeed.  So we play lighter games, where my chances of winning are significantly decreased.

Here's the rundown of the new games we played this holiday season:

1.  Sushi Go!

The name of this game is obviously borrowed from what the referee screams before a sushi eating contest (3...2...1...Sushi GO!!), or the intestinal effect one gets after eating bad mall sushi (never eat mall sushi!).
Sushi Go is a very simple card drafting game with very cute artwork.  Players play cards simultaneously, then pass their hand, then play another card, then pass the hand, etc.  The point of the game is to make sets of various types of tasty treats (tempura, nigiri, maki rolls, sashimi) which score points.  The rules are super simple, and though a lot of luck is involved there is plenty of decision making and room for strategy like any other card drafting game (knowing what's coming, what you've passed, what your opponents want).

Food should not have faces.

We played this one 5 times.  I won 3 and tied for first in another.  That counts as a net win for me.

Win Record: 1 for 1

2.  Splendor

MY PRECIOUS!!!

Splendor is a Spiel des Jahres (Family game of the year) nominee, and rightfully so.
It's all about collecting gems (henceforth referred to as "the shinies") and using those shinies to buy cards which are worth points and give you discounts on buying future cards.
On your turn, you have the options to take 3 different colored shinies, take 2 of the same color shinies, reserve a card to buy later along with a gold (joker shiny), or buy a card.

Shiny.

This game really shines in two regards.  One is the component quality.  The artwork is very well done and the shinies are depicted on very solid poker chips, not the plastic kind but the kind that makes the nice clicky noises that drive my sister crazy.  Normally I would call this a cop out, because individual gem-shaped shinies could be cooler.  But those could also be small and fiddly and I just like the way these turn out.
This game is also great, I think, as a gateway into heavier games.  The rules are simple and the decisions don't seem very tough, but there is some strategy and engine-building elements involved.

A light strategy game that looks nice and is a decent amount of fun.  I call Splendor a splendid game, though it's not complex enough for my taste, so I can't call it splendiferous.  

My mom is not so great at strategy games.  But she gets this one somehow.  She won both times we played.  Kudos to her.

Win Record: 1 for 2

3.  Machi Koro

Machi Koro is a tableu building game, where you buy cards to expand your city of Machi Koro.  The goal of the game is to build the 4 big buildings that every player starts with.  To do so, you need money, which you get from the smaller buildings you build throughout the game.

The game works on a Settlers of Catan type dice rolling system.  When a certain number is rolled, it triggers certain cards matching that number.  Say you roll a 3.  You may have a card that gives you money when you roll a 3.  Another player may have a card that give them money when anyone rolls a 3.  Another play may have a card that steals YOUR money when you roll a 3.  And some cards give you more money for having certain types of other buildings (like the Cheese factory gives you more money the more Ranches you own).

Let it be known that I absolutely hate Settlers of Catan.  I hate dice rolling.  I hate being at the mercy of that numbered cube.  I wish that die would die.

Machi Koro is very simple and highly luck-based, though there is a bit of engine-building here.  I'm just not into the dice-rolling.  Would play again with casual gamers and family, but I'm not too impressed, especially with the hype this game has been getting.

Also, my copy of the game came with several mis-cut cards, which just makes me angry.

We played once.  I had everything I needed to win.  Then I rolled a number on what should have been my final turn that let everyone else steal my money so I couldn't buy the winning building.

Win Record: 1 for 3

4.  Tokaido

Tokaido is a game about traveling across Japan, doing all the things vacationing travelers would do in Japan.  Eat good food, meet other travelers, take in the beautiful scenery, buy souvenirs, stuff like that.
Players move across the road as many spaces as they like on their turn, however whoever is farthest back on the road gets the next turn.  So you have the choice to jump far ahead of everyone and get to those hot springs before someone else can, but then players behind you can take it more slowly and get in extra turns while they mosey along a few spaces at a time.
Decisions in this game involve choosing when to jump ahead and stick behind and when to take what you want/need versus blocking spaces from other players who need them.  Kinda interesting.

Peace be the journey.

While there are decisions to make, there are few difficult ones.  Decision making becomes more important towards the end of the game, when players need that one last visit to the temple or last souvenir to complete their set, but early game consists of everyone moving as slow as possible to get as much stuff as possible which isn't too exciting.

Yet there is a very zen feel to this game.  I just enjoyed the trip.  And when I didn't have any particularly good plan, I just went shopping.  Shopping is always fun.  This game is just like real life.
Furthermore, this game is very thematic and very pretty.  I like Japanese-themed games, mostly because of the artwork that goes along with it, and this game is no exception.

I would suggest this one if you are looking for a pretty, thematic, chill game.

Oh, and I won this one.

Win Record: 2 for 4

5.  Wasabi

Hot.

I picked up Wasabi at my local game store recently, knowing it was out of print (I have a thing for having to have games that are out of print) and that it was a family game I could give as a gift to them.

Wasabi is about playing ingredient tiles on the board one at a time, trying to get ingredients in a row that match one of your recipes.  The recipes vary in length from 2 to 5, with more points awarded for completing harder recipes.  Furthermore, the ingredients for 3 to 5 length recipes don't have to be in order listed on the card, but doing so means completing the recipe "with style", awarding you green wasabi cubes which are extra points on top of the points for just completing the recipe.  Wasabi cubes get stored in little ceramic bowls, which are there for no real reason other than to look awesome.

The final complication is that completing a recipe allows you to take a special power card, like the Spicy! card which lets you play two ingredients on a turn instead of one, or the Stack! card which lets you play on top of a previously played tile, or the Wasabi! card which gets you a wasabi cube when played and is used to block spaces on the board to block other players from completing recipes there.

Very easy light game.  Lots of luck involved, tiny bit a strategy, involving a bit of planning but mostly involving being mean and blocking people.

The being mean strategy led me to the win by a landslide.

Win Record: 3 for 5


That's the final score.  Decent win rate, especially compared to my 0 for 7 last holiday season :/

Hope everyone got in some great gaming over the holidays!

Happy Holidays from the Panda Meeple!

Happy Holidays from all of us (just me) at the Panda Meeple.  May your days be merry and bright and full of games.

 

And be nice, because Panda-Claws is coming soon. 

Gen Con Special: Day 3 and 4 Finale (a.k.a The One With the Awesome Zombie Drawing)

Well it's been over 3 months since Gen Con.  I've been lazy and haven't been telling you this story in a timely fashion.  But the finale is finally here.  

Day 3:

Saturday.  The third real day of GenCon.  Was I boardgamed out yet?  Nope.

The day started like any other.  We played a few games.  I don't remember what exactly anymore.  It's all a blur.

But then...the best thing of Gen Con:

At noon, we went downstairs (it was conveniently located inside our hotel!) for "Helix and Helix: Cabin Fever."  Or, "Our Zombie LARP" as we called it.
So...LARPing.  Live Action Role Playing.  Probably would not call this my thing.  I don't really like acting as some character and whatnot.  But this seemed different.

Here's the idea for these zombie LARPs, put on by Ozarks Rising: There is a small group of players, who get to choose their specialization.  Warriors specialize in (foam) swords.  Marksmen specialize in (nerf) guns.  And Medics are good at healing people when they (inevitably) die.  Your team enters some zombie-infested scenario, played by some (scary) volunteers.  You play out the scenario, it's dark and scary,  the zombies attack you, you try to kill them before they kill you.

Combat involved light hits with the foam swords or shots with nerf guns.  Rule number 1 was "no crotch shots."  I suppose that's fair.

I chose to be a marksman.  Marksmen have a choice of having a small sword and nerf pistol, two nerf pistols, or a heavy nerf battle rifle.  I chose the rifle because it did more damage and looked badass.  I also was wearing a lot of clothes, so I had more armor then everyone else (long pants, long sleeve shirt, hoodie, all extra bonuses over shorts and short sleeves.  I came prepared.  Forgot my totoro hat, though).

Our team also had a father-daughter pair of medics, who do this every year together.  Super cute.  And as veterans they had some nice leveled-up skills that are super handy when us noobs are dying.

Our scenario consisted of a cabin in the woods, where there was a party, but then there were zombies so there was no party and we had to kill the zombie.  Bad cliche writing, just like the best horror movies.

So we entered the first room.  Not too scary yet.  The lights were on.  Then zombies appeared.  Like, flooded the room.  I tried to shoot, but my gun was jammed.  So I basically ran around for 5 minutes dodging zombies with no means to attack back.  Luckily, these zombie were slow.

We made it out alive, I unjammed my gun, and we moved on.  Then things got really scary.  From then on, the lights in the cabin were out.  We fought in a room with a bunch of cubicle dividers which, not surprisingly, spawed zombies from behind.  With no warning.  And some of them were fast.  And some of them had giant clubs.  And one of them had a banjo.

My strategy was to run around, not get hit, and go for headshots (stand in place without moving, call out "1,2,3 headshot"  then fire and hit.  Does extra damage).  This works fine, until you over commit to the headshot and the fast zombie with the bloody club hits you and does a ton of damage. I died there, but one of the medics saved me and I was all better.
I actually felt pretty worthless.  I did kill one zombie that dropped a key.  I felt special, I had the special item.  It was supposed to open a shed we needed to get into.  But then the crazy undead tree next to the shed got a bit overzealous and knocked the shed down, so my key was worthless :(.

We all got out of there alive.  It was just awesome.  My heart was pounding the whole time.

Despite LARPing probably not being my thing, I enjoyed this immensely because

1.  I didn't have to do any acting.  It was just me, shooting the scary things with my nerf gun.  And me being terrified wasn't acting either..

2. A combat LARP seems way awesome.  It's like playing a first-person shooter for reals.

3.  Zombies.

I would do this again.  Like, next time we go to GenCon, I will sign up for multiple of these.  So much fun.  I just wrote a ton about this, because it was THE HIGHLIGHT OF GENCON for me.  Great.  Highly recommended. 

Sadly, I have no pictures.  The zombies stole the camera to take selfies.

Here's my best attempt at recreating the scene:

This is pretty accurate.  Drawn to scale.

We chilled a bit after our zombie encounter, which was pretty exhausting.  Played some more games.  Ate some snacks.  Etc.

That evening, we went to do our True Dungeon Adventure, which we were looking most forward to.  Bascially, True Dungeon is a live action Dungeons and Dragons themed dungeon walkthrough.  There is a full environment you walk through that is very dark and, honestly, pretty cool.  We did the puzzle version, meaning that we had a puzzle to solve in each room to get through, with less emphasis on combat.  Combat works by shooting a little shuffle board disk with your weapon token in it towards an outline of a monster, with the monster taking damage based on where you hit it, how strong your weapon is, and some randomness that only the dungeon master of the room knows.

Awesome starting bag of goodies. 

My shuffleboard weapon.

Thoughts:
1. The environment was cool.  It was really dark.
2.  The puzzles were lame.  There was only one good puzzle in the bunch.  The others were either solve-able but way too hard for the time limit or weren't really puzzles so much as "flip all these little switches at random until you get the result you need."  Dumb.
3.  The final boss battle against dragons had animated dragons on a video screen.  I've been told in past years they had an animatronic dragon for these types of things.  Dumb.
4.  Combat is hard.  And we, doing the "beginners" version of the dungeon, were upset that the first fight we had was against a tornado that didn't take physical damage.  Dumb.

This was the most expensive thing we did at Gen Con (other than our steak dinner) at over $50 apeice.  It was also a huge disappointment.  I'm glad I did it in terms of getting the experience, but I wouldn't do it again.  I would do more Zombie LARP stuff.

At least we made it out alive.

Commemorative survivor pin.

I love us.

Day 4

On our last day, we played a few games in the morning.  Then we hit the dealer hall again looking for last minute deals while they tried to sell off stuff they didn't sell during the other days.  Didn't find anything worthwhile.  So after lunch, we headed home.  Made great time. 

Had a great time.

GenCon Special: Day 2

Our second night hotel stay was in the much more luxurious Hyatt in downtown Indy, rather than the dank caverns of the outer city Super 8.  Our new room was nice, clean and non-itchy.

Even cooler was that our hotel was directly connected to the convention center by a set of tunnels called the skywalk.  Easy access to the Con all day every day without ever having to set foot in the sunlight.  Quite vampire friendly.

Sadly, the hotel didn't have a waterfall.  I like waterfalls.  I stayed at a hotel in Nashville once that had a waterfall.  I liked it.

Friday morning, we played a game of Terra Mystica in the morning, a fairly heavy euro game where players start as different fantasy races trying to build up a network of buildings into cities on a crowded map.  Great game with 4 players and getting better every time I play it.

We also played a couple of games of Eight Minute Empire: Legends, a card drafting and area control game where you use your cards both for endgame points and as action cards to add troops to the board or move troops on the board in an attempt to have the majority of troops in various areas, the main way of scoring points.  It's short and simple and fun.  And the art is beautiful, from the game's designer and artist Ryan Laukat (more on him later).

After a few games, we prepped to head over to the convention center.  We decided that Friday would be our pseudo-cosplay day.  We are not cosplayers.  We did not put almost any time at all into our costumes.  Normally, we wouldn't even consider this.  But we were at a gaming convention, so why the heck not.

Group theme:  Miyazaki film characters!

Cute bunch.

I'm a totoro.  Cuz totoro so adorable.
I didn't go all out for my costume.  I wanted something comfortable and casual that still conveyed the essence of totoro.
I had the awesome hat custom made by Yako on Etsy.  She was quite friendly and did great work very quickly.  She fit it to my head size and made in blue at my request, cuz I love the blue totoro the best.  I may never have an occasion to wear the hat again, but I love it.

Our first event of the day was Artemis, a spaceship bridge simulation.  Basically, each member of your team has a different role as a starship crew member, like driving, navigating, communicating with other ships, monitoring power consumption in the ship or operating weapons.  There is also a captain who makes all the hard decisions and coordinates the whole ordeal.  No other crewmates can see info from the others, so everyone has to communicate with each other for things to run smoothly.

For our first short cruise, I manned the weapons.  Basically, the captain told me what weapon to load and when to fire.  I wasn't too excited for it.  Though if he had left me to my own devices, I probably would have just shot nukes at people at point blank range.
That's how I play first person shooters:  charge into the fray, take a couple of guys down with me, respawn.  I think I'm playing these games wrong.

Our second adventure had me navigating and researching enemy spaceships.  Nobody told me about the researching part.  People were all "what do you know about this ship?"  and I'm all like "nothing." And then people got angry before the captain came over and told me I had to scan stuff...lame.

My third shot was at driving the ship.  I crashed it into a space station.

Lastly, we had only a few minute left for our timeslot, so the guys in charge cranked out an impossibly hard scenario, with floods of enemy ships trying to kill us.  I played the engineer, trying to direct ship power where it was needed, repair broken ship sections, and keep all the systems cooled. With us getting hit constantly, it was a micromanaging nightmare.
We need more power to weapons so we can actually shoot them?  Oh, okay then, I guess we can do that, but imma take all the juice away from the thrusters so we can't move anymore.  Also, everything is overheating.  Also, all of my repair dudes are dead, nothing is getting fixed anymore.
This...was actually a lot of fun.

Overall, this wasn't my favorite event.  I probably wouldn't do it again, but it was worth the experience.

Aboard the spaceship with the Miyazaki Crew!  And another guy!

 We bounced from our space adventure to our next even: SUPER ROBO RALLY!!  This deserves full capitalization, because it was impossibly fun.
Basically each player has a giant robot made of LEGOs.  That enough is awesome.  My robot was Wall-E.

Wall-E is such a sad looking LEGO-bot.

The goal of the game is to get to the "flag" spaces on the board in a certain order.  Before a turn, everyone inputs a series of moves that they choose from a randomly generated set of possibilities. These get inputted by all players via a cell phone that communicates with the main computer off to the side.

Then the fun starts.  The moves begin to resolve, in some order determined by a priority randomly assigned to your move bank.  But maybe you don't get to go where you want, because another player moved in your way first.

And after all moves have resolve, the conveyer belts trigger and you move some more.  Watch:

Just wonderful when you end up on a belt by accident and then go completely the wrong way.

Also, if you walk off the board or fall in a hole, you die.  Don't die.  Though at one point, I was so far away from where I wanted to be I jumped off the edge of the board on purpose so I would respawn in a more reasonable place closer to the center of the board.

Spin-Bot is dead.

Anyway,  SUPER ROBO RALLY was great fun, maybe my second favorite part of the whole Con...

Rawrrrrr!!! Sock monster!

Since this was vacation, we wanted to treat ourselves to one great meal.  So we had advance reservations for St. Elmo's Steakhouse in downtown Indy.  They have world famous shrimp cocktails, they say.  And boy, were they delicious.  We also go our steaks with sides for very reasonable prices. Great meal overall and fantastic shrimp cocktails.  Nice.

Back at our hotel that night, we played City of Iron, a weird mashup of an economic game, area majority, deck-building, I don't know, read the description somewhere else.  It's fun though.  And the art is fantastic.  Why?  Because it's Ryan Laukat again.  And we still aren't through with this guy...

We made our last trip over the convention for the day for a kind of "games in development playtesting" event.  And we requested to the new Eight Minute Empires expansion from, guess who...Ryan Laukat.  He was a super nice guy, it turns out.  He signed a City of Iron box and player board.  His signature is pretty.

Went back to the hotel.  Called it a night.  Solid day.

Twonky bot.  Looks kinda like a Panda-bot.  Adorable.

GenCon Special: Travel and Day 1

GenCon.  A general gaming convention.  Lots of games.  "The Best 4 Days in Gaming" they say.  It's been over a month since we went.  The high has died down.  Here's what I remember from that 4 day blur of games and jolly good times:

Our original plan was that we were going to drive out to Indianapolis for this smorgasbord of fun on Thursday, get there Thursday night, do a small bit of fun stuff, then go on a boardgame/event rampage on Friday and Saturday with a cooldown period on Sunday before the drive home.

But we got antsy.

We booked a one night stay at a cheap hotel on the edge of Indy, then drove up Wednesday afternoon. The goal: get there early so our rampage could include ALL off Thursday. We wanted all the time we could get.

So we drove up Wednesday afternoon. All spontaneously-like.  I felt like such a rebel.

Booking a really cheap hotel turned out as you might expect.  We stayed at a super sketch Super 8.

Dramatic re-enactment of our hotel stay. And that's the guy that fixed the broken bathroom light, obviously.

Didn't even go into the bathroom.  And the bed was hard and the pillows were flat and the air was itchy.

So itchy.

But who cares.  We were at Gen Con!  Almost, at least.  We played a few games that night.  We played Fleet, a short little card game about getting fishing licenses, and Innovation, another card game where you build a civilization with a huge variety of abilities.  We also played CO2, a great game about building clean power plants and combating carbon emissions (more fun than it sounds, trust me).

We then retired for the evening.  Hard to sleep, though.  Too excited.  And I think the boogieman was under my bed.

Day 1:

After a sleepless night on a slab of concrete and pillows made of what I can only assume was pudding, we made our way to the Con!!!!

This is my badge.  My 4-day badge.  My ticket to the best 4 days in gaming. My badge of honor as a board game connoisseur.   My admission to a geeky, crowded heaven.

Yes, that is totally my real name.  I didn't edit this photo or anything.

We had the whole morning before we had any scheduled events.  So we wandered around for a bit.  Checked out the scene.

Saw some cool miniatures stuff.  I'm always impressed with these things, even though I don't play myself.

Then...the dealer hall.  A giant exhibition hall filled with board game dealers selling  their newest games,  clothing dealers selling costumes and nerdy t-shirts with pikachus and other beloved characters, and artist alley filled with beautiful fantasy art.

I bought this.  I can't resist a Totoro.  Totoro so adorable.

Art by Rebekah Crowmer.  So awesome.

Jake also bought Panamax, a brand new Gen Con release.  Meaning we got to basically play the game before the rest of the public!

We later went to a couple of demo rooms where we played Harbour, a very mediocre harbor themed worker placement card game (honestly, it was pretty lame), and Concordia, a fantastic Roman Empire themed game where you develop a trade network and please the gods or something like that.  Best game we tested at the Con, in my opinion.

Later in the evening we played a rip roaring game of MAMMOTH SETTLERS OF CATAN!  It's Settlers of Catan, but giant.  Giant board, giant wooden pieces, giant foam dice.
I hate Settlers of Catan.  I really do.  But this was worth it cuz it was GIANT!  Ahh, good times.

The game is giant, but I am still giant-er.  I feel like a kaiju.

I'm orange.  I'm losing.  Both very typical of me.

Cute guy, playing his giant board games.

We played some more games.  Like Imperial Settlers, another Gen Con release.  It has pink meeples.

Imperial Settlers.  Brand new game release.  One of first to play it.  Aren't we special?

There was some more wandering around, then we went to bed.  Solid day.  Had to get geared up for an epic Day 2!

Panda's Box

So a real-life board game store moved into my neighborhood(-ish) recently, and I'm very excited.  Not so much for buying boardgames there though.  I can do online browsing and buying from home, where pants aren't required.  More like it's a nice place to meet up with people to play games occasionally.  Or to browse their game selection just for funsies (but with pants on). 
They also have, 4 different times now, had out-of-print games at non-ridiculous prices.  We picked up Strasbourg and The Ladies of Troyes off the clearance table for their less-than-MSRP-online-retailer-like prices despite their out-of-printness.  We also found Hansa Teutonica and the St. Petersburg Expansion for MSRP prices, which are still a good deal considering their out-of- printness.

They sell game acessories too. 
So there I was, browsing the store other day, wearing pants, and I stumbled upon this gem!

PANDA'S BOX!

It's a panda deck box!  It's supposed to hold your (insert collectible card game of choice here) cards, but with cute panda theme.

I don't play (insert collectible card game of choice here), but I bought it anyway.  It was only $3.50 and it was adorable.
I still put it to good use.  I don't have cards for it to hold, but I still have card sleeves that I use to protect cards for my board game that, you know, have cards.  So that's where they are stored now.

A card-protector protector.

Hello Panda!

In a couple of weeks we are heading to Indy for GenCon!  It's the biggest gaming convention in the U.S. and it's going to be awesome.  4 days of boardgames and cosplayers and boardgames and LARPers and boardgames and theme partys and GIANT BOARDGAMES!  It'll be great.  I may even post about it.  But only if you are nice to me.

PEEK-A-BOO!!!!

Go: A Game of Stones

Just FYI, my blog hit 500 page views this week.  That's a nice round number, half a millennium.

So in honor of this first milestone, I wish to tell you about my favorite game ever:

Go.  That's the name of the game.  I don't want you to go anywhere.  I want you to stay here and keep reading.
 
It is an abstract strategy game at it's finest.  Few rules, endless variability, and looks great on a coffee table.

I've been playing Go for almost 8 years now, long before I got really into designer boardgames as a hobby.  It is the only game I have rated a solid 10/10 on my boardgamegeek profile.  Every other great game can only get at best a 9.5, because that is a rule I set for myself.  Go is my favorite and that will never change.  It is so great, I made sure it was the inaugural game on my game table.

But enough about me.  You come here to hear about the games.  Or maybe you come here for me.  That would be quite flattering.

Go requires only a few components: A board and some stones.

The board consists of a 19x19 grid of lines.  That's it.

Here's mine:

My precious.

My board is made of bamboo, 3/4" thick.  It's a pretty good looking board for pretty cheap.  And it's a favorite of pandas.
Boards come in a variety of woods and thicknesses.  Thicker boards and nicer woods cost more.  The one I have is a table board, but you can get ones with feet on them that are meant for placing on the floor.  The fanciest boards are floor boards made from 700 year old Kaya trees grown in a particular region of Japan and are like 8 inches thick or something.  They can run several hundred thousand dollars. *Sigh*...I can dream.

You also needs stones.  Here are my Go stones (not to be confused with my gall stones).

A bowl of stones.

These are the black stones.  There are also white ones.  They come in fancy wooden bowls.  Everything about this game screams fine craftsmanship.
These stones are made out of Yunzi.  Few know what they are actually made of; it's a secret Chinese recipe.  Yunzi stones are relatively inexpensive but still look and feel very nice.  And the black ones are known for the strange green glow when held up to the light.
Probably the most well known/ fancy stones are shell and slate (the white ones are from shells, and the black from slate).  The shells are from polished shells of a particular Japanese clam, and they have just lovely lovely patterns on them.  They are also expensive. *Sigh*...I can dream.

The game starts with 2 players, each with a set of stones, and an empty board.

My blank canvas.

Starting with black, the players take turns placing stones of the intersections of lines of the board.  The goal of the game is to secure territory by enclosing areas with your stones.  This is complicated by the fact that there are capturing rules that "kill" stones if they get surrounded by an opponent's stones in certain ways.  Those rules are hard to explain quickly.  I'll refer you to the Wikipedia page for that.

But when you capture an opponent's stone, you get to clink it into the lid of your stone bowl for safe keeping.

My captures

 These are my skinny fingers placing a stone on the board.  That weird grip is the proper way to hold a stone.  To place the stone, your index finger slides out and your middle finger presses the stone onto the board with a satisfying 'clack,' or 'thwak' if you really get into it.  I save my 'thwak' for moves that say "sorry, but you probably just lost."

Throughout the game, you make all sorts of pretty shapes.  Some of them are common enough to have names.  Like this one:

Bamboo joints!!

This shape is called bamboo joints!!  Yay panda!! 
Ahem...excuse me.

Once both players decide there is nothing useful left to do and pass, the game ends.  You then count the spaces that you have enclosed by your stones plus the number of stones you have captured to get a final score.  Since black went first in the game, a slight advantage, white is award an extra few points to compensate called komi.  There are several different sets of scoring rules, but I usually play by Japanese scoring rules which award a 6.5 point komi to white.  The 0.5 point ensures that there are no ties.  Good games can be won by only that half a point. 
This is how a game with my brother turned out.  I played white, he played black.  It was not a good game for me.

This is a disaster for white.

He won by an embarrassingly large margin.  Maybe you can see it, but black owns a lot more spaces than white.  It's disgusting.

Anyway, I like Go a lot.  It has simple rules, but is actually a very complicated, deep game.  If you want to learn a lot, I would suggest checking out Sensei's Library.  It has everything from beginner's tips to advanced strategies and position analysis.  It's great. 

You can also find several Go servers that let you play with people online.  KGS is nice for live games, and is especially accepting of beginning players.  Dragon Go Server (DGS) is my favorite, and is a faster modern equivalent of playing by mail.  That is, you have a time limit of like 30 days or something and the players don't have to be online at the same time, it's all done turn by turn at your leisure.  I like this style actually.  And I also like dragons.

So I would of course recommend that you try Go.  All the cool people are playing it.

 

I'm allowed to reuse this panda picture from a previous post because it is way too adorable to use only once.