Clash of Chaos and Confetti 16: America

The Premise and Standings

Each week we’ll face off in a best of three series playing a different board game from our collection.  The winner claims the moniker of C&C Clash Champ for the week.  The loser reveals their ignorance of sound strategy and trivia.  The lesser player also gets to choose the game for the next week.

We will maintain a record of wins and losses throughout the year to see who finishes 2022 as the ultimate board game champ in our household.

Our current C&C Champion is Confetti after winning last week’s Agility face off.

Pre-Clash Current Standings:

• Weekly Winner: 7 Chaos – 8 Confetti
• Individual game wins:  22 Chaos – 21 Confetti

After losing last week, Chaos has chosen America.

The Game – America

America: The Party Game Where Close Counts is a trivia game focusing on you guessed it… America!  Whether it’s American history or pop culture, it’s all game here.  Players will have the chance to show off how much they know, or at least have a rough idea about.

In America, getting close (adjacent) to the correct answer still earns a player points.  Each round, players will be given three questions.  One question will want a numerical answer, another will want a state, and the final will require a year.  Players will go back and forth placing their answer cubes on the board, hoping to hit on or around the correct answer.  They also shouldn’t be afraid to play off of their opponents’ knowledge, or lack of knowledge.  Yes, there is also a mechanic that allows players to bet against any players having a correct answer.

Get close enough to the right answer and the cubes return for the next round.  Any complete misses cost a cube.  Only one cube gets returned to a player each round.  Players will have to carefully choose not only where to place their cubes but how many to risk each round.

After six rounds, the player with the highest score earns the right to call themselves the winner.  This is a game of trivia, strategy, and America!  

Chaos’ Pre-Clash Thoughts:

This week, I’ve decided to shake things up a bit with a trivia game.  America offers a unique strategy of trying to play off of each other’s knowledge or lack of knowledge as opposed to simple trivia mastery.  No matter what route I take to victory, I plan on making nothing but big brain moves.  It may be Confetti’s birthday week, but she’ll be the one handing over a gift to me in the form of the C&C Clash Championship!

Confetti’s Pre-Clash Thoughts:

Uh oh, we normally play America as teams! I don’t think I’ve ever played by myself before. I enjoy Trivia games (my family loved to play Trivial Pursuit), but I’ll admit it is not my area of strength. Hopefully I’ll be able to pull out a win for my birthday!

Game 1 –

The first game included the categories of Happy Days, kickball, the Sunsphere, snowboarding, The Silence of the Lambs, and Baskin-Robbins.

While America is designed for a little as two players, without a buffer of a larger group, the game becomes much more combative and direct.  The “no exact” and “no exact or adjacent” spaces become a lot more valuable and enticing, but they also are still very vulnerable to another player’s knowledge (or good guess).

Chaos began by relying only on his own trivial knowledge and guesses, while Confetti opted to split her cubes between guesses and betting against the group.  By mid-game, Chaos had to alter his strategy because it became clear that Confetti was pulling away in points.

Even after shifting his play-style and a strong round with Silence of the Lambs, Chaos was unable to catch up to Confetti.  Six rounds provided plenty of play, but it was too short a time limit to make a large comeback.

Final Score: Chaos 58 – Confetti 65 

Game 2 –

Our second game revolved around questions on buffalo wings, the Super Bowl, True Blood, photocopiers, music synthesizers, and Desperate Housewives.

This time, both players planned to fully utilize their knowledge and the betting against knowledge spaces.  Again, both competitors had a lot of vague knowledge about the different topics, but wouldn’t consider themselves experts by any means.  Neither had watched True Blood or Desperate Housewives, but they knew a little through the pop culture grapevine.  They had thrown enough Super Bowl parties to have a general knowledge about it as well.  The rest of the categories were based on gut feelings and “if I had to guess” answers.

Chaos and Confetti stayed neck and neck this time, often trading off the lead by a point or two.  Neither entered the final round confident.  In th end, Chaos knew just a little bit more about music synthesizers to claim the win.

Final Score: Chaos 76 – Confetti 73

Game 3 –

The final game came down to trivia based around root beer, Meet the Press, the United State of America, Luden’s Cough Drops, Monopoly, and Nerf.

Chaos ended up taking a large lead in the first two rounds.  The writing was on the wall for Confetti and she knew it would take an absolute miracle and Chaos probably going brain dead for her to have any chance of recovery.  No miracles happened and as far as we can tell, for better or worse, Chaos’ brain is still functioning at its normal level.   

Confetti closed an almost twenty-five point gap to a mere fourteen points, but that’s not the kind of close that counts in America.  Like a bald eagle, Chaos soared to victory.  It may  not have been the fourth of July, but in his eyes, it was all fireworks.

Final Score: Chaos 78 – Confetti 64

Your Winner and NEW C&C Clash Champion: Chaos!!!

Chaos’ Post-Clash Thoughts:

I’ve reclaimed my title and all’s right with the world again (outside of all the terrible not right things that still exist).  I rose from the bottom to the top, achieving my goal, and isn’t that the American Dream in action right there.  Now, I just have to cement an unbeatable, neverending monopoly on the C&C Clash Championship to fully embrace the American way.  Long live Chaos!!

Confetti’s Post-Clash Thoughts:

Ugh, I hate losing, but at least I managed to win one game! On to next week! 

Next Week: A Little Wordy (one of Confetti’s new birthday games)