Fun with the Son

So, a couple of weeks ago, my son bounced up to me and said, “We need to play Chapter and Verse!”  It happened to be a sunday evening, and I was done with the Dutch Oven cooking for the day.  It seemed a clever Sunday night sort of activity, so I dug up the cards that I had, we shuffled them up, and started playing.

It was very exciting to me to see the excitement in him.  I love to watch as he reads an important verse he’s about to play, trying to quick-memorize it, just in case I make him quote it, or how suddenly the air is filled with words like “Faith”, “Strength”, and “Prayer” and it’s all a natural part of the fun.  We don’t even really notice it!

Well, I do.

But then, I’m a dad...

We decided that we were having so much fun that we were going to plan on playing each Sunday, a few games each time.  So far, we’ve held to that plan.  I’ve really begun to look forward to our playtesting sessions.

We’ve started noting ambiguities in the wording of the verse effects, and we’ve discovered a few combos that are a bit too powerful, and need to be tempered.  For example, “The Work of God” and “The Glory of God” should both cost 3 to play, instead of the current 2.  “Judgement Day”, by itself is really cool.  One in your hand and one in your discard is almost an infinite loop of drawing.  I’m still not sure how to fix that.

We’ve tried two different processes for closing up books.  Tonight, we talked about a third.  We’ll try them all and see which one works best.

It’s time to revise the cards, too.  With all of our notes, clarifications, revisions, and plans, we need to make a new set.  This current set has been around for two complete revisions of the rules!

I don’t know what the future holds for Chapter and Verse, but for now, it’s fun to play each week!





Mark has a lifelong testimony of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (the Mormon Church). Mark also has other sites and blogs, including MarkHansenMusic.com and his Dutch Oven blog.