The Princess and The Pickle: Tactic Games Night

I was recently contacted by Blog-Match to ask if we fancied a family games night testing out some of Tactic’s games. They sent two games for us to play and here are our thoughts on them…

Roll for Gold is a game of chance. The aim of the game is to win 21 Guineas by rolling the dice – the first to 21 wins. It is based on the famous pirate Blackbeard. The Princess inevitably asked about Blackbeard and was enthralled by the simple story we told of him which set the mood of the game.

To be honest, the game took quite some working out to start with. The instructions were not entirely clear and we had to make a few educated guesses. However once we had worked it all out it was actually quite straightforward.

The game includes a board which is reversable. One side is a dark and stormy setting with pictures of pirates, ships and treasure. The other side is a map to enhance the story of the game. Also included are various coloured dice which are given out to each player. It also has a ‘pop-o-matic’ dome dice in the center which The Princess loved!

The game is based entirely on luck, so everyone has an equal chance of winning. - something that The Princess took great pleasure in doing when she played against her Daddy! Each game only lasted around 5 minutes, but this means that even if you do start losing, it is not long until you can start afresh. All too often The Princess has played other games where she has been losing and then got bored and given up!

Overall, it was a fun game to play (once we eventually worked it out!), though it lacks a little depth and skill in our opinion.

A unique game of skill (and sometimes luck!) that is simple yet addictive.

A brightly painted, wooden dragon is lined up in the middle of the table (head, tail and numerous body pieces). At each end of the table the player also has a head and tail, though no body pieces. The aim of the game is to flick / roll a disc down the table to knock part of the dragon over. Should you achieve this you win the piece and add it to your own dragon. Not only this, but you can also choose to aim for the opponents dragon to win theirs. The winner is the person to have the most parts when all the dragon body pieces in the middle have gone – though if you knock down a head or tail you suffer a forfeit and place a body piece from your own dragon back into the middle. You can choose how many dragon body pieces you use and so can either lengthen or shorten the game.

The Princess enjoyed playing this with Daddy. They started playing on the carpet with just 3 or 4 pieces of dragon body in the middle. Although she loved it, I think she found it hard to roll the disc accurately and with any force. They soon moved to the table (and to be fair, it was recommended to use the table in the first place in the instructions, but Daddy always knows best….!). This made a great improvement and they were soon in full swing – even The Pickle was enjoying watching from the safety of his highchair and seemed desperate to have a go himself – or to at least have a chew on one of the pieces!

Having played a couple of times, they then found to their delight that if you push down hard on the rear of the disc when launching, the disc pushes forward towards the dragon, but is spinning backwards at the same time meaning when it hits the dragon, the disc then starts to spin back towards where it came meaning they rarely had to get out of their seats to pick it up from the floor!

The only downside to the game that I can think of is the packaging. The entire contents of the game is in quite a small box, then this is packaged inside a much larger external box along with the instructions. It just seems a bit of a waste, although the outer box is bold and eyecatching and probably wouldn’t have the same appeal if it was smaller, so I can see why it has been done.

Overall, we love this game and would thoroughly recommend it. The Princess has already bombarded me with requests for more games like this and seems to be completely set on beating Daddy!