Hello! I’m back writing this blog after a very long break, mainly caused by a certain pandemic. (no, not that Pandemic!). I’ve been inspired to write again by the upcoming festive season, i.e. the best time for board gaming!
A couple of years ago I wrote about some smaller ‘stocking filler’ style games, you can check that out here. In this post, and to make up for lost time, I wanted to highlight 5 more games that may not fit in a stocking, but are ideal to give as a Christmas gift and play with friends or family over the festive period or, of course, at any other time when people are gathered together. All of the games below should be able to be played by most people about 8 years old up to adults, maybe younger depending on the child.
1. Codenames
When lockdown hit here in the UK, like most people we started having a lot more contact with our family over Zoom. We ended up having weekly calls, which was great, but there’s a limit to the amount of things you can talk about! To break this up, we started playing games and quizzes, and by far the most popular game for our family was Codenames.
Codenames is a party game for two teams, and the great thing about it is it can be played with almost any number of people, so everyone in the house can get in on the game. It is a word game where you have to try and link words together with clues.
In a game, 25 random word cards are laid out in a grid on the table. A ‘clue giver’ from each team (the red team and the blue team) is selected. These two can see a randomly picked card that shows a grid similar to the grid of word cards. This grid identifies the cards/words that belong to each team among the 25. Some words also belong to neither team. In each turn, the clue giver will tell a clue to their team, trying to get their team to guess the words belonging to them, and not the words belonging to the other team. This sounds easy enough, but the clue can only be one word and one number, the word being the clue, and the number being the number of cards referred to. The teams take turns in giving clues and guessing until one team has guessed all of their words and wins!
I really like codenames. As mentioned, it is an ideal family game to play at gatherings such as Christmas. Each game doesn’t normally take too long, about 15-20 minutes, but pretty much every time I’ve played everyone always wants another game straight away. It is also really easy to do this as the word cards are double sided, so it is just a case of flipping the cards over to reveal new words, and going again! A lot of the hilarity of the game is the difficulty of picking a clue with just one word that covers several cards, and then trying to keep a straight face as your team discuss what word you are thinking of, and they are clearly thinking very differently to you! My kids never want to be on the same team as me, as we are clearly not on the same wavelength for these clues, and I sometimes deliberately guess the wrong things just for fun..
I would definitely recommend Codenames to anyone looking for a fun family game where everyone can join in. The game is available in several languages, and there is even a picture version, which adds a different spin to the clues.
2. King of Tokyo
Have you ever seen a monster movie like Godzilla and wanted to be that monster? Seen the kids fighting over something and wanted a non-violent solution? Or have you ever just really wanted to take over a Japanese city? Well if so, then King of Tokyo is for you!
King of Tokyo is a game where each player takes the role of a giant monster trying to beat all of the others. They can do this by either gaining enough victory points, or simply killing off all of the other monsters (my preferred method..).
The way the game is played is by taking turns to roll and select 5 dice up to three times in a way similar to Yahtzee, and then using them. Each die can be used to either attack others, heal yourself, receive energy (the currency for the game), or if a set of numbers is rolled the dice you can get victory points. At any time in the game there is always one monster currently ‘in Tokyo’. When using attacking dice, rather than choosing another monster to wound, if you are outside Tokyo you always attack the one who is in, but if you are inside the city you can attack all other players at once! On top of this, the energy earned can be used to buy a variety of upgrade cards, which can give you boosts such as more damage to your attacks, and extra dice to roll.
If you or your kids already think that the idea of battling monsters is fun, then this is the game for you. Even though you are just rolling dice and moving cardboard figures around, the components and artwork of the game really evoke a fun, Saturday morning cartoon monster battle vibe. It doesn’t go on too long either, at around 30-45 minutes. King of Tokyo is another one that people often finish wanting a rematch, especially if they were knocked out first!
3. Takenoko
After the giant monsters, it’s time for a much more chilled experience. Takenoko (meaning ‘Bamboo Shoot’) in Japanese, is a game all about growing bamboo in a picturesque Japanese garden.
In this game players are building a garden together made up of hexagon shaped tiles. On the tiles, bamboo can be grown by moving a gardner there, or any bamboo already grown can be eaten by a cheeky panda if he moves there! Each player has objective cards to complete in order to gain points and eventally win the game. These objectives are either growing a certain amount of bamboo in one or a combination of the three colours, placing tiles in a certain pattern, or making sure the panda eats a certain amount of bamboo. This game also has a nice mechanic present in a lot of modern board games where instead of rolling a dice and moving a piece on a board, on your turn you can choose two out of any of the actions available. Don’t worry dice fans, there is still a die to roll! This die sets the ‘weather’ for your turn and can give you a number of little bonuses to use.
Overall, Takenoko makes for quite a chilled out board gaming experience. It is competitive, and you can ruin the plans of others as you block their ability to complete objectives, but in general there aren’t too many problems with that. I like the style of game that this is, i.e. a tile-laying game where the game board grows and evolves over time as everyone places pieces of the garden. The artwork is quite nice and cartoony too, there is even a mini comic in the instructions to explain the ‘story’, which is a cool bonus!
4. Catan
Catan, or Settlers of Catan as it was originally known is now a classic board game. It was released in 1995 and is one of the games credited with starting the trend of ‘modern’ board games, as it introduced and popularised some mechanics that were not previously used. Catan is still very popular today, and is another ideal family board game.
In Catan, the board that you play on is randomly laid out every time you play, resulting in a slightly different game each time. The hexagonal tiles used in the board are all different types of terrain which will produce different types of resources, e.g. mountains produce stone, fields produce wheat. Numbers are placed on top of each tile to show the dice roll needed for that tile to produce resources. Each player (there must be at least three players in this game) will place a house/settlement, and eventually more and even towns, on the board on the intersection between three tiles. During gameplay when the dice are rolled, the tiles bearing the total of the dice will give resources to the players who have settlements touching that tile. Players can use these resources to buy more settlements, towns, roads, and other upgrade cards. If you end up with too many of one type of card you can trade them with other players, or at certain points on the board. You get different ‘victory points’ for different things in the game, e.g. you get one for each settlement that you build. The object of the game is to be the first to reach ten points.
I’ve been getting into board games more seriously for a few years now, but I only just got Catan as a gift recently, and after playing it I don’t know why I didn’t get it earlier! I think even though it is a bit older, it still holds up and has definitely proved itself as a classic. One good part of the game is that on each person’s turn all players are engaged, as everyone can get resources from a dice roll even if it isn’t their turn. There is also the trading aspect that involves everyone, and this can turn out to be the most fun part of the game as everyone tries to out-barter each other, and everyone may be going for different things, so you need to be careful not to give people the one card that they need to win! Catan is definitely recommended as a great family game.
5. Bandido
Ok, here’s a shorter and smaller, but equally fun game to finish with: Bandido. This one could actually have gone on my last stocking filler list, as it consists of a small box of only cards. Also, while most of this list I would say has a minimum age recommendation of around 8 or 9, Bandido can be played with younger kids too as there is no text and the game is very simple (but still fun for all ages!).
So, Bandido is a cooperative game, where the idea is to stop an imprisoned bandit (Bandido!) from tunnelling out of his jail cell. When the game starts you place the special bandido card in the centre of the table. This card has his jail cell and several exit tunnels coming out of it. Players get a few cards each that all have different patterns of tunnels on them. Some of these cards have tunnel endings, but most just have continuing tunnels that may even increase the possible exits. Each player takes turns to play one of their cards to the table, which must be next to the cards on the table, and the tunnels must match up with the tunnels the card touches. The objective is to eventually close of all of the tunnel exits and stop the bandido before all the cards run out!
Bandido is a really fun ‘filler’ game. It is very quick to learn and can be played very quickly too. I have seen a lot of variation in game length. Depending on the luck of what cards come out the game could be over in a few turns, or it could end up never being beaten with the bandido’s many tunnels overflowing over the edges of the table! It is very easy to reset if a game does end, the starting card is a bit thicker so it is just a case of grabbing all of the other cards and dealing them out again. Overall, Bandido is a really fun and accessible little game, either as a warm up for one of the first four games on this list, or just as a quick one to play with the kids while the brussells sprouts are boiling.
Bonus: Even more games!
So above are five examples of some great games or gift ideas for the festive season, but of course there are so many more to choose from! Here are a few bonus games that I have written about before, click the links to learn more about them!: Dixit – a picture guessing party game, Labyrinth – a magical moving maze game and Forbidden Island – a co-operative treasure hunting adventure! There are so many more games out there, so I will stop here for now. All that I ask of you is to please make some time for playing games together with some friends and/or family over this festive season, and I hope you have a good one!
Playing Games Together 
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