Of all the sessions of the game we’ve held, this one was the smoothest and most manageable. The presence of more hands to help out was as always a major plus. The demographic presence, fond of board games and therefore highly conducive and eager to take the time to pick up the rules, also worked to our favor. A system of execution that had organically emerged from our experiences with numerous past iterations, more than anything, helped set up a rhythm, a flow, that helped the long 10-5 session seem far more manageable than the past shorter sessions we’d dealt with.

To our surprise the children present themselves were also highly eager and willing to sit down and learn the rules. Some as young as four would pick up the rules and easily best a parent, one that wasn’t intentionally playing dumb. Some would grow intensely absorbed, playing for long sessions in an attempt to strategically best their opponent. All in all the crowd, in its eagerness for games of some depth, was a good fit for our primarily strategy-centric game.

Learning from the Come Out and Play fiasco, we utilized just the chocolate dragees, which work great. I believe too, that the presentation of just the dragees help to minimize focus on the candy and smashing! The dragees also resemble Go tokens, which I believe also helps to emphasize the more strategic side of the game.

There were a few rules that we found we need to make explicit, such as the fact that no diagonal rows count, and that a swap cannot be immediately undone by a player on the next turn. Apart from that this particular iteration went very smoothly.

It was a privilege and great luck to have been included as a last-minute alternate. This particular session was highly enjoyable and I find myself more conducive to the idea of future presentations of this game. To our surprise quite a few people knew of the game. I find myself wondering how many more will already know of the game in the next iteration we present.