I love putting together Legos.
I’m in my 30’s and yet there’s nothing better than sitting down to put together a X-Wing or Halo Warthog (that’s a Mega Bloks product – but still as cool).
My son Tyler has recently started enjoying putting Legos together for me. It’s a fun bonding experience and I love watching his brain work as he reads the directions to help Dad put things together.
With his birthday coming up I took the lad over to Toys R Us to let him pick out some early presents. He headed for the Lego aisle and picked up these Lego toys called Ninjago.
Now when you go buy Legos you think you are buying, you know, a box of Legos that you put together to form something. Like an X-Wing or Ron Weasley’s Burrow.
Ninjago does have plenty of sets to put together but they also have figures.
Like if you were going to go over to the Star Wars aisle and buy a ‘Han Solo’ – they also have Ninjago figures you can buy like ‘Sensei Wu’.
But they are just Lego figures that come with nothing in terms of stuff you can build (other then the figure itself of course). They come with a spinner which you put your figure atop of and let him spin atop of it.
It also comes with cards that you use with the figure and the spinner. The point of Ninjago is to take a guy like Jay and have him spin off against a skeleton baddie named Frakjaw. We got three figure sets, one that came with an ‘arena’ (read: little Lego pieces that keep the spinners in a small area), and sat down to play Ninjago!
So the kid gets the good guys. I get Frakjaw because what kid wants to be some skeleton guy when you can be cool Ninja guys? That’s fine – I can deal with being the bad guy. Once we put together the arena, put the figures together, get out the cards, and put the figures atop the spinner I finally get out the directions.
The directions have three languages going on at once all around the figures. Being a product of New Jersey my reading skills are meager at best so I’m trying to look around these ‘instructions’ and figure out what to do. The spinning part is easy: You take your figure, put it on the spinner, yell “GO NINJA!” and spin them at each other (yes it really does sound like that Vanilla Ice song from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II, but I don’t think the Lego execs ever saw that one). You can knock off the opponent’s weapons or even knock them off their spinner. That’s easy enough.
What I can’t figure out are the cards that come with the figures. You see each player has a player card; this card has a picture of, say, Frakjaw and his hit points. Then your cards you can play during your match and they let you do things, like pose your opponent in a stupid way easier to hit him off. Each card has hit points. If you don’t have enough hit points then you can’t use the card. Except for the fact that all the cards that come with Frakjaw he then, in turn, has enough points to use.
So do I mix up the cards now that I have four figures? Four figures + four cards a piece = 20 cards. That fourth grade math I learned (My son learned it in pre-school. Kids today.) finally paid off, right? Except that most of the cards seems specific to that character.
For instance – there is a card titled ‘Cut N Run’ where you can “Give up a skeleton arm to avoid losing.” If you are a Ninja how do you give up a skeleton arm? If you are a skeleton, how the hell can you use the card and lose an arm to “avoid losing”. What does that mean? Do you not have to spin your guy in the arena anymore? Isn’t that the whole point of the game anyway?
I didn’t grow up playing Magic The Gathering or other card games, so maybe my card game skills are very limited if I’m not killing people in Spades or Uno. The box for Ninjago says 6 to 12 years old. Am I too old (read: stupid) to play this game? Do I just not get it?
My son is already bored with me trying to figure out the cards. He just throws one down, yells “GO NINJA!”, then spins out his guy. He doesn’t do anything with the card but points at it saying, “You can’t use that one, Daddy.” Fair enough. I won’t use. I don’t know how to use it. I’m a Ninjago idiot.
There’s a Ninjago website, so once Tyler is in bed I need to take the extra time to go and figure out just what I’m doing wrong. The first thing I say are ‘Playguides’ so I figure clicking on that would lead to help me out. Except, once again, I’m wrong. The ‘Playguides’ are just online PDF directions of the directions I already have. Fail.
There’s an FAQ! That’ll solve my problem, right? First question from the get-go: “My opponent played a card that conflicts with mine – which one goes first?” The answer: “Cards are activated in the order that they were played.” So this question is for the 6 year old who ALREADY KNOWS what he’s doing. I need to skip down this FAQ to find out a question that will benefit the idiot dad who can’t figure out simple directions.
Finally I get a question that asks: “Where can I learn everything I need to know about using my spinners, my trading cards and my weapons?” The answer? “Please see the Official Spinjitzu Handbook.” What’s a Spinjitzu? Who cares! I can finally figure out what’s going on!!!
The handbook then tells me that “One card can be played at the start of the round. You can play the card if your character has equal of more power.” Then it goes on to explain the difference IN the cards. There are 4 different types of cards that I won’t even bother listing because I don’t get the cards anyway and learning the different types of cards adds MORE confusion to me.
So there’s videos. There’s a dictionary. There’s an iPad app that I can download. All this for one simple kids game. Well the word “simple” definetly does not apply in my case.
Do you know what I ended up doing the next day?
I simply took my character, yelled “GO NINJA!”, spun my guy out, and threw out random cards just like my kid did. Tyler seemed alot happier with that then me reading convultuted instructions. In the end I just realized that beyond trying to figure out what the hell I’m doing it is better just to have fun with Ninjago for the next six minutes that Tyler is actually interested in it.
Because I’m fairly sure he’ll be into something totally different by next week.
