Tea and a Game Review
The Ginja Ninja and I have been talking about doing this for months. We've drunk a lot of tea, but haven't had the time for a game until today, when she came to me and said 'I'm making tea and I cleaned off the table. You pick the game."
Given that we've only got 4 months until she graduates from high school and she's been trying hard to get a job, what else could I say but yes?
We've got a few games on the shelf that haven't been played yet, but I picked the one that we've had the longest unplayed. Kittens in a Blender I bought at my very first con, five six years ago, and the instructions promptly got destroyed (along with the outer box) when an incident involving coffee occurred. The game had been salvaged and put up on a shelf, and moved, and moved again, and moved again... and today I hopped online and found the rules, and we played it. It does not escape me that this family owns an awful lot of games involving grievous bodily harm toward fluffy murder muffins. Although Tem-Purr-A, which we reviewed here, does at least not kill them.
But first, a word about the tea we were drinking while we played. I'd ordered a Batman tea a while back, for another game and tea review, and I'd recently returned to Adagio Tea to place another order, this time for more of a sample they'd sent me in the last order. Adagio, if someone at your company reads this, your ploy worked! I ordered more fandom blends for my daughters, and a big thing of Chocolate Chai for myelf (and the sample they sent along this time, Apricot, will definitely be ordered in the next time because it's lovely without being too fruity). The Chocolate Chai is what we were drinking today. It's not highly spiced, nor is it as chocolaty as, say, cocoa is. But it isn't tannic like many black teas can be, so it's a really nice blend of a spice, chocolate, and black tea that marries well. We drank ours with almond milk and a little sugar. It's so fragrant! If you enjoy a good chai, this is a nice choice. I suspect it would be fantastic brewed as a Thai Iced Tea, too. I'll have to try that.
With our luscious tea at the ready, we started to play. Kittens in a Blender is a relatively quick and simple game, with some basic strategy allowed, and a lot of competitive moves! The basics are that you have extra-large cards which are the Box (because kitties love to sit in boxes, that's the safe place) and the Blender (danger zone!) and you designate a space called the Counter. Each player (there can be 2-4) selects a color, and then plays kitten cards with that background color. There are 16 kittens for each color, and they are all given names and characteristic lil' faces. It's super cute. The goal of the game is to get your own kittens into the Box, and safety, while coaxing your opponents kittens into the Blender and certain doom. Different cards can allow movement of kittens, the introduction of a Dog into the Kitchen, blend buttons, and a stop-blend (Pulse) button that saves kittens from peril. With just two of us, game play was quick (about thirty minutes) for a round. This is a game that doesn't take up a lot of space, but would definitely get you funny looks if you played it in public!
I don't think I'd recommend it for young children, or for anyone lacking a dark sense of humor, but it is fun, silly, and the graphics are cute. I'm really glad we finally got around to playing it, even if it did take a few years. (oh, and if you're curious, I played green, she played blue, and the Ginja Ninja won by quite a few points even though at one point I ruthlessly pureed my own kitten to get a few of hers off the board.) Her comment on the game was that she felt guilty killing cats, even just card ones. Didn't stop her from putting a lot of mine in the blender!
If you're looking for my post for writers about writing stuff, it's over at the Mad Genius Club. Forewarned: I was feeling rather apocalyptic today, and not just toward kittens!