Brick Party Board Game: LEGO My Thumbs A few weeks back my daughter wondered how you would drink water if you didn’t have thumbs. She performed an experiment that ended up with water all over her shirt. This board game rather reminds me about that. Designed by Luca Bellini, Brick Party comes with a bunch of game pieces that look like generic LEGO bricks and a bunch of cards that require you to build objects in weird ways. For example, one of the cards says you can’t use your thumbs, another says to build with your eyes closed, and there are over a hundred more. One player takes on the role of the architect, reading the task, while another plays the builder, who must follow their instructions. The game is for 2 to 9 players. It includes 36 bricks, 144 cards, and everything else you need to play. Brick Party sells for $24.99(USD) and is on ThinkGeek right now. More from Awesomer Media... The Afghan Bruce Lee General Lee Stunt Jump Kills a Charger and We Are Sort of Bummed
Honda Clarity EV Driving Range Disappoints Hot Toys GotG Vol. 2 Rocket Raccoon 1/6 Scale Action Figure Sideshow Ghost Rider 1/6 Scale Action Figure Ron: "That's Wizard's chess." — Hermione Granger and Ron Weasley during Christmas season in 1991[src] Wizard's Chess is the enchanted variant of the classic board game in which the pieces move of their own accord when commanded by the player. When a piece is taken, it is removed by the attacking piece, often in a barbaric manner where the losing piece is smashed violently by the winning piece. During the Christmas feast, in a number of Wizard Crackers, Harry obtained, among other things, his very own Wizard's Chess set. He later broke it in by losing, once again, to Ron. (Although Harry saw this more as the fault of Ron's brother, Percy Weasley, who stood over his shoulder and gave him "advice"). During 1992 an enormous Wizard's Chessboard was the third-to-last layer of security for the Philosopher's Stone.
Harry played as one of the black bishops, Hermione as a rook, and Ron as a Knight. Using his extensive knowledge of chess, Ronald Weasley managed to get himself, Harry, and Hermione Granger across, ultimately sacrificing himself to the White Queen so that Harry could checkmate the King. "Exactly the same as Muggle chess except the figures are animated and can be directed like troops." The chessboard is a type of checkerboard that consists of 64 squares (eight rows and eight columns) arranged in two alternating colours (light and dark). The coulors are called "black" and "white" (or "light" and "dark"). The Chess pieces, or chessmen consist of one king, one queen, two rooks, two bishops, two knights, and eight pawns. The chessboard and chessmen are exactly like Muggle chess except they are animated. Players move their pieces by speaking the name of the piece and the square it is to move to by algebraic notation. For example, "Knight to E5". Aside from the self-moving pieces, the rules of Wizard's Chess are exactly the same as muggle chess.
The moving pieces seem to be reasonably sentient, as seen when Harry Potter began learning how to play the game, he used Seamus Finnigan's pieces, which offered him conflicting advice because they knew that he was not a good player. Find out how powerful Scrum can be Learning by doing, and failing. Do not underestimate any Story... it may cost you a lot! The Scrum Lego City brings you right to the point: You will experience what it means to be agile. With the Scrum Lego City from agile42 you can find out how powerful Scrum can be. Scrum Lego City by agile42 is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License. LInk to buy the Material LEGO, a lot, with plans (possibly CREATIVE boxes where you can build many things with the same blocks) Product Vision: a document containing the Vision to build the LEGO city Requirements and User Stories (Cards): pre-compiled Requirements and Stories related to various building and elements of the City
Whiteboard or electrostatic sheets to write sprint outcome and velocity and make a whiteboard for the team Post-It to write tasks Pen and whiteboard markers Unexpected (Cards): some cards containing unexpected behavior to steer from outside the Game (e.g: you are ill, you leave the team for 4 min.) Cards - contain also suggestions on what people should do in particular situations (e.g: Prepare the whiteboard with 3 columns, commit first to the items which have a specification cause are less risky). Here you can download the User Stories for the Lego City Game The goal of the Game is to simulate every aspect of the Scrum process learned in theory the day before. The Team and the Scrum Master will have to put in practice everything learned during the theoretical part. The game will dedicate specific time to the various phases: 5 min. Preparation from the Product Vision for the Product Owner, includes sorting out the provided stories plus adding some own or enriching some of the
5 min. Product Owner presenting the Product Vision as well as a high level presentation of the Backlog, Teams can ask questions on stories or requirements Here you can have a release planning meeting session, where the team(s) focus in estimating as many stories as possible to have an initial idea of the Release Costs. This assumes that the Trainer guides the Product Owner in setting a reasonable Release scope (that can be adjusted anyway after every sprint). 5 min. Release Planning Meeting, teams estimating stories from top to bottom Now start with the first sprint planning meeting, and prepare to run 4 Sprints and execute as much as possible of the Backlog: 5 min. Sprint planning meeting, basically commit to some stories and make an initial task breakdown 3 min. Review Meeting (showing the Product Owner what has been build) 5 min. Team Retrospective At the end of the 4th Sprint the Product Owner should make the Release Review and together with the Teams analyze the results.
Discuss the outcome of the whole Release cycle in comparison with the initial Vision and Goals Outcome of the game What are the goals of the game from a training perspective? We expect the people to experience the following: Learn to organize a Backlog properly, prioritizing what is more important first Learn to measure the Team velocity and based on that make decisions, and re-prioritize the Product Backlog Learn to negotiate with the Team about acceptance criteria and the deliverable Experience self-organization and pressure given from the time-box Learn to communicate focused on the sprint goal Learn how to plan and organize tasks during a sprint Learn to estimate fast and precisely based on the experience Learn to measure performance and improvements Learn to deal with unexpected events Learn to moderate the meetings Learn to mediate between the Team and the Product Owner Learn how to deal with Impediments Learn how to coach and suggest improvements to the Team
Start with the product vision of the Scrum Lego City Game To understand the vision of a product is the first important step in order to develop the product in the right way. This is why you need to give the vision to the whole Scrum Team at the beginning of the game. Here is the vision we use... agile42 wants to build a website to present what can be done with LEGO bricks in only 20 min of time. You will have to use Scrum to prove that you can build a LEGO city with fully fledged buildings, cars and natural environments. The city needs to fulfill some specific criteria PO: make clear that there are already some fixed and defined requirements and stories, and that you have prepared a backlog At the end of 4 Sprint the city will be released to agile42, that will make a photo and post it on the agile42 Blog where everyone will see and vote, comment your results :-) When and how to use the Scrum Lego City Make sure that the basics of Scrum are known. Everybody needs to know e.g. relative estimation