Childhood games that I am fond of... What's yours?

Alfir

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It's a really funny memory for me, so I want to share it. I was in grade 4. In my country, there was a time when playing Pogs was popular, and kids would always play for keeps. So, what are pogs? It's a game where this thick piece of paper called 'pogs' with good art style was slammed on the ground to flip the other pog. If the pog was flipped, you take them. It's basically gambling for kids. I remembered playing teks a bit younger, a similar game, but with different toys and different rules. You see, there was another way to play pogs besides slamming them on the ground, that was the rules of teks, where you make the toy fly and whirl in the air. There's a stack of three pogs: yours, the other player's, and a neutral. Sometimes, there's a third player. Basically, the rules are, you'd arrange the pogs in certain patterns, and you let them fly in the air like a frisbee, but vertically. Pogs have a front and the back. The player with Pogs, odd out of the three, wins. Either one front, the rest is back. Or one back, the rest is front. If it's the neutral that's the odd one out, it's a tie. If you lose on your turn, you let the other player change patterns and make their throw, and vice versa.

So anyways, I was playing pogs. I was playing this kid my same age with a thick stack. He would eye my plastic bag, brimming with pogs I won. Of course, the kid challenged me because he wants my Pogs. Here's the thing. I am good at gaming the system... of pogs. I tell the kid we play till the other has no more. The one who quits first is gay. And you know, kids, that worked plenty of times. Of course, he agrees because he wants my plastic bag filled with pogs. It's his turn. First game, I bet a stack of pogs about his stack after eyeing it. He wins. Now, he's happy, thinking I was a sucker. So the next turn, I bet twice the stack of my first bet. Now, he's nervous. He wins again. It's just the second turn. I bet twice the stack of my second bet and the rest was history. The kid lost his stack to me. I didn't even need a turn.

Kids could be really evil.

Just to share, I started with ten stacks of pogs earlier that summer. I won most of my pogs from my classmates in school and neigbors.

Edit: What's yours? Childhood games could be quite a riot. huh?
 
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Alfir

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Why Evil? You didn't cheat.
It's still gambling, and I am winning via capitalism. That's a bit evil, isn't it? Moreso, I repeated the same trick again and again to the point it was unfair, and I was punched in the face for it by someone's older brother. It doesn't help my case that I taunt the other gay. I even use the same trick when playing the normal way of how to play pogs, which was easier to win. Because the higher the stack, the easier to topple it with my pog. When my dad recalls that particular snippet of my childhood, he either cackles about it or have this proud look on his face, thinking I have a future as an accountant or a businessman.

It reached to the point where no one wants to play with me anymore. But I had my run. And pogs' trend died down, I switched back to my old yu-gi-oh hobby or join with the new trend of making spiders fight on a stick, which was really awesome. My spider used to have this awesome patterns in its back and was very good at flicking its limbs. Ah. Fun days.
 

RepresentingWrath

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It's still gambling, and I am winning via capitalism. That's a bit evil, isn't it? Moreso, I repeated the same trick again and again to the point it was unfair, and I was punched in the face for it by someone's older brother. It doesn't help my case that I taunt the other gay. I even use the same trick when playing the normal way of how to play pogs, which was easier to win. Because the higher the stack, the easier to topple it with my pog. When my dad recalls that particular snippet of my childhood, he either cackles about it or have this proud look on his face, thinking I have a future as an accountant or a businessman.

It reached to the point where no one wants to play with me anymore. But I had my run. And pogs' trend died down, I switched back to my old yu-gi-oh hobby or join with the new trend of making spiders fight on a stick, which was really awesome. My spider used to have this awesome patterns in its back and was very good at flicking its limbs. Ah. Fun days.
It's not gambling per se. And you don't win via capitalism, you win via brain. Other kids can do the same to you, but they didn't. Or they can collude against you.
In other words:
 

Alfir

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Marbles. I ended up with an entire 15l cooler bag of them, i could barely lift the thing :ROFLMAO:
That's a lot. I only got a big plastic bag out of it. To be fair, I sold some of them back. I still have so many of them when we changed address, but they soon got flooded by the typhoon. That's how my pogs story ended.
 

RepresentingWrath

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Speaking about games from childhood. During my childhood I didn't really play with other kids. Caps or pogs(I think those are the same) were not really a thing, marbles were not really a thing, so sticks as swords it is.

The thing I have a fond memory of is Lego, that's what I've played with the most during childhood. Now, before you say I was super rich, let me explain. I don't know the reason why, but some Lego sets here were absurdly cheap. I'm talking 2 snickers worth. Granted snickers was a 'premium' sweet back then. Anyway, if you saved up and didn't spend on sweets, chips, and soda, you could afford a small Lego set.

It's hard to find precise sets, so I will use a random pic to illustrate the size of a set.

Maybe on its own you would've been bored of this set in a day or two, but that's what makes Lego great, it adds up. You save up money, you get 4 or 5 small sets, you get a large one on your birthday, and you can now play with it forever. The fact Lego now is a premium, luxury product is so ass. The price has skyrocketed, and there are no good, original sets.
 

Supperset

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Marbles, Tash, Match-it, Jua, Coin Flip, Stack-it. There were more but I can't remember. I was more of profiteer than a horder so I sold most of my winnings to other kids then won them back. Yeah it was basically gambling just kids version.

I stopped playing anything like that after I broke my hand (kids are as innocent as they are scary.). Yes, it was during a fist fight. And yes it was my fault.
 

SwordSong

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Mancala, although that's not what we call it in our language.

I like the feel of scooping those shells/stones from the domed pits and dropping them into the cavities. But especially because the "board" designs can get really interesting.





 

3guanoff

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Destroying ships and building cities. It was a variation of Battleship.
In the beginning, depending on whether it was played on paper or in the dirt, the other player(s) would throw stones/coins on the grid to determine where your cities were.
Then you place your ships in the cities. Usually this is done by writing a number in the same dirt square as the respective city stone and then covering it with a leaf or a sock or something.
Each turn you can move ships and throw one bomb per city.
When one of your ships makes it from city 1 to city 2, that city grows and you can add a stone to its square.

Ideally, the game would end when someone reaches an agreed upon number of stones. However, I only witnessed that one time. Here is how the game usually ended:
You wonder why the other player said you did not hit any ships. You think he is cheating. You go over to his square and look at his numbers. He is angry. You are angry. You start brawling, destroying ships and cities along with the grid world. Happy days!
 

Hans.Trondheim

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Mancala, although that's not what we call it in our language.

I like the feel of scooping those shells/stones from the domed pits and dropping them into the cavities. But especially because the "board" designs can get really interesting.





Sungka in Flip.

When I was young, we often play "Agawan Base" or "Capture Base" which is just a bait-and-run game where the goal of opposing teams is to kick the 'base' (can be a stone or a rock) of the other. It is bait-and-run because you can literally whittle away the other team by capturing their members according to the 'last' to touch their base.

Tis fun, but is a source of fights later on because of cheating allegations.
 

Alfir

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kick the 'base' (can be a stone or a rock)
Doesn't really need to kick the base. Yeah, cheating allegations, lol. Used to play the game in highschool. Lots of taunting. Way more fun than tag. I remember standing right down the middle between the enemy base and ours, calling the other team to try and get me. I used to be more dexterous then, being able to swerve away and make a run for the base.
 
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