Building strategy skills

If I were wearing the hat I don 40+ hours a week at my day job, I'd tell the execs at LEGO, "Brilliant job on the brand extension." They've successfully expanded their legendary building bricks to now include a line of LEGO games.

But sitting at my dining room table for the buzzilionth night in a row, with the hat for the other 128 hours perched on my head, I can only shake my weary head and ask my beloved son, "You want to play Minotaurus again?"


Silly me for asking. The answer is always yes.

Minotaurus is a pretty basic game involving a little strategy and a lot of luck. What makes it special is that the game board is a maze made out of LEGOs. According to the box, it's geared toward kids ages 7+, but other than needing help assembling it, my 5-year-old has been playing it non-stop.

And he's pretty good at it. Not to mention, extremely lucky.

Roll the special die, four sides of which have numbers, the other two sides have colored squares. If you get a number, you move one of your playing pieces. Roll the side with a grey square and you get to move one of those grey pieces on the edge of the board to block your opponent as they weave through the maze. Roll the black square and you get to move the evil Minotaur and try to land on your opponent, sending them back to the start.

AJ is smart enough to understand the strategy of where to place the grey pieces to block Mommy's game pieces, and lucky enough to roll the grey and black squares often. So I guess that's one good thing about the game. I can honestly try to win. Because even with me trying, he's currently proving to be the Minotaur master.

But I'm fairly certain I'll get another chance at it tonight.