Playing at Teatime

Last night as my daughter and I were playing a game and trying out a new tea, I jokingly suggested that when she goes off to college, I should send her a tea every month. Mama's tea of the month club!

Her eyes lit up. "You know what we should do? We should try out teas and write down a review of them."

"I did that on Instagram for a while when I'd bought the samplers of teas you and your sister liked so much. A photo and a brief write-up about the tea flavor. It's pretty short."

"But we could do it once a month, and it would be fun. And we could drink tea."

She's right, of course. Drinking the tea is the important part. Somewhat better than the drinking of the tea is doing it in the company of my daughters, while chatting about every topic under the sun. I enjoy their intellect and insights, and sometimes have a little flash back to when they were tiny, new, and wordless. I miss cuddles and sleepytime. I don't miss diapers, and I love seeing the women they will be, slowly emerging from the teen cocoon.

Over the games we were playing, we decided that we would do the reviews of tea, but we'd add a game review to it. That makes it longer, and it gives us an excuse to play together, not that I need one. However, it's a thread she can hold onto when she gets ready to leave the nest. That's even more important than the tea.

The Otaku Princess had asked me to find 'fruity' tea, and I'd planned to buy something on Amazon, and wound up with an unexpected trip to Jungle Jim's (but that's another story). Which is, of course, the perfect place to find anything at all that is food-related. As a matter of fact, there were too many options! I know that one of the daughter-things hates peach, and another hates mango, so that helped narrow things down a little. And it was a cool weather forecast, so that helped... I wound up with a couple of options, and we reviewed one for you all and will do the other in June.

The game we're reviewing came about because I took the Otaku Princess to the comic book and game store to shop for the Junior Mad Scientist's birthday. Given that both girls are mildly obsessed with DC comics and Batman in particular, I shouldn't be surprised that what she picked out was a Batman-themed game. It's similar to Zombie Dice, being made by the same Steve Jackson's company.

Rolling the dice....

Batman: The Animated Series Dice Game was surprisingly playable. It's quick to pick up and can be a fast play. We completed a round in about fifteen minutes, while talking. The premise is that you have a set of dice that are marked with a loot bag, an alarm bell, and a Batman signal. You each get a player chip (up to 4 players) which modifies the results slightly, and you are playing as a Batvillain attempting to carry out a heist. I was playing as Catwoman, which meant my blue loot bags were worth two points, and the OP was playing as the Riddler, which meant she got a first roll of four dice rather than three. With each roll, you decide if you'll risk being discovered by Batman (three bat signals on the dice rolled) in order to gather more loot. The game ends when you accumulate 31 points. We were talking about the risk/reward curve, and the statistical probability that if you're rolling more dice, you're more likely to be caught by Batman. Which meant that while her four dice as the Riddler could be more rewarding, it was also more risky. Life can be like that...

While we played, we were sipping on the tea. She had wanted fruit flavors, so I'd picked up Wild Berry Plum Green Tea from The Republic of Tea. We both had ours with a spoonful of sugar to sweeten it. I'll have to try it again without sugar, I suspect it will be good that way, too. The flavor is more plum than berry, and not strong, but very nice. Being a green tea base, it lacks the 'bite' of tannin at the end of each sip, which I appreciated. I like black teas, but this was very mild. I don't like green teas - they taste like grass to me - so the fruity flavor here was able to shine on it's own. The OP simply said "It's nice," when I asked. She likes it, but we'd give it eight stars rather than ten. Overall it is just what she wanted, but not a deeply complex flavor at all, and sometimes that is what you want. I think if we use it to make sun tea (which the girls love to do) it will be great iced as a refreshing summery drink.