In Germany, we were tasked with the challenge of teaching a game to our host family and playing it with them. I taught them how to play multiple games, however, the game I wanted to highlight is a game called James Bond. Here are the rules:
- Shuffle the cards.
- Deal 48 of the cards in piles of four evenly among all the players.
- The last four cards go face up in the middle of where you are playing.
- On the count of three say, “James Bond!” And all the players pick up only one of their piles of four at a time.
- The object of the game is to be the first person to get four of the same number cards in all of their piles of four.
- If there is one ace in the middle and you have three aces in your pile, you can discard the card that is not an ace and pick up the ace in the middle. Then you put the pile of four off to the side and try to get other piles of four! Essentially, you are trading cards out of your hand in order to achieve the objective.
- When a player completes the objective, they must have all their piles face up on the table, and they have to yell “James Bond!” to win.
Teaching this to my host family was a challenge because I taught it to them in German; struggling with some translations like calling “piles” “mountains” or calling “trading” “changing”. Nevertheless, at the end of teaching, the message was received and we played the game. I won a few times and then the rest of the family won a few rounds each. The game was a hit and we would often play it after meals, whereas before, we wouldn’t have much ‘family time’ after meals. I found that it brought all of us closer together, and we ended up playing even more games like “Slap Jack” and “Speed” which were all a blast.
I took some pictures of me playing the game with my host mom:
