I LOVE Boardgames. And yet, I don't play them very often. But I gladly would. Sadly, CBC is not as keen as I to play them. Mainly, I believe, because I beat him! Sore loser I say.
Anyway, I thought I would share my favourites here. I'd love to hear which ones you like best!
1. The Big Taboo
The original game, Taboo, is a game where you have a limited time to describe a word/topic/item to your team without using 5 taboo/forbidden words, e.g. the word is RAINBOW and you can't use 'colours', 'spectrum', 'refraction' 'arc', 'sky' to describe it.
In the BIG Taboo, there are 4 different challenges that you might land on on the board.
The first of these is as described above but you have to describe as many cards as possible within the egg timer and you move on one space for each one.
The second challenge is 'Draw it'. Within 2 turns of the egg-timer, you must draw what is on the card and your team guess it. E.g. You might draw a saucepan with steam coming out of it to describe 'Cooking'. Every time your team get one right, you move on a space and you try to draw as many as possible within the time limit.
Challenge 3 is called 15 words. Within 2 turns of the egg timer, you must say as few words as possible to describe a topic/item/word- your team have as many guesses as possible. Within the round, you as the player are only allowed 15 words IN TOTAL to describe as many of those topics as possible. E.g. answer 1 may be 'Triangle'- I might say, "Shape" and hope my team guess it quickly- that way I have only wasted 1 word and I have 14 words left for the round to describe other words.
Challenge 4 is the funniest and is called 'Bendy Bob.' You have a purple puppet and the puppet has to act out as many of the categories on the card as possible within the time. This is hard as one of the clues I had in the past was 'Balloon modelling!'
This game is SO much fun. I absolutely adore it!
2. Party Edition Pictionary
Oh, SO many happy Christmases spent playing this game at my Godmother's house. We would always go over to her house on Christmas eve, or the 23rd December or Christmas day evening or New Year's Eve and we would play this game. It is like Pictionary but instead of drawing on paper, you have two big whiteboards hinged in the middle which slot into the box and you draw big for your team to guess the answer. So many hilarious games of this as several of the annual players were TERRIBLE at drawing!!! If you don't know the original game, 'Pictionary', then in this game, you have to draw in order to reveal what the answer is- your team have to guess it. There are different categories for this such as 'Science, Film and TV, People' etc.
3. The London Game
This is a game that I was introduced to by my original blogging inspiration, my uni friend Rach when I went to see her to get some books that she had used for her PGCE. I LOVE this game but it is incredibly frustrating! I was delighted to find this in a charity shop fairly soon after I was introduced to this game which I do think is utter serendipity!
So, the game takes place on a London Underground tube map. My edition is quite old and I am not sure if it has been updated. In my version, the Jubilee line ends at Charing Cross and Aldwych only just shut! Each player receives 6 destination cards and the aim is to visit all 6 destinations on the board, declare your destinations as you arrive and get back to the main line station that you started the game at. You can choose which mainline station you start at once you have got your destination cards and strategically plan your journey. Every time it is your go, you throw the dice and you can move any number of stops along your tube line up to number you threw. So, if you threw a 5, you can move, 1,2,3,4 or 5 stops. If you want to change tube lines, when you get to an interchange, you must declare that you are changing lines and then take a HAZARD card. These can be good or bad to either you or the other players and they can make or break a winning streak! e.g. a card might say, "Gather all the other players and go boating on the Serpentine. All go to Knightsbridge." and you may have JUST worked your way right across the board to Liverpool Street and be highly annoyed. OR, like me in the above picture, your dear husband with one Hazard card, sent you to Wembley central and with the next hazard card, trapped you with an OPEN AND CLOSE station card at Wembley Central (the only way to open a closed station is to throw a 6....). This is SUCH a strategic fun game but is incredibly frustrating at times. I am hoping CBC is feeling more benevolent towards it as he won both games we played of it this week!
When I was a little girl, at the end of each term, you were allowed to bring in your own toys/board games to play. I was always envious of the people who owned Screwball Scramble. This game was a race against the timer to get the metal balls through an obstacle course. I loved it so much and remember the year my Dad bought it for me for Christmas. It stayed at his house so I never got to take it to school but I always liked to play it at his house.
It is a race against the clock. You have a large silver ball bearing which you have to get through an obstacle course before the time runs out. I found a Youtube video of it. Watch from 1:30 to see the game in play (without timer)
5. Pass the Bomb.
I think my favourite games are to do with words. In this game, you have a BOMB. This clever device has a button you press that begins the bomb ticking. It has a clever variable timer which counts down a different amount each time. At the end of the countdown, the bomb 'explodes'.
So, what do you have to do? Each person starts off with 5 lives. Well, you throw the dice which has 3 symbols on it which appear twice on the dice. 1 symbol means 'Not allowed at the start of a word', the 2nd means, 'Not allowed at the end of a word' and the 3rd means, 'Allowed anywhere in the word'. You then pick a card which has a letter string on it, .e.g ED. Once you have revealed it, the person whose go it is starts off the bomb timer which begins ticking. You must say a word that has that letter string in that order but depending on which dice symbol you threw determines where it can go.
So if you threw the 'Not allowed at the start of a word' symbol, then you cannot say, EDucation, EDit, EDitor but you COULD say, callED, rEDdening. And you see what I mean?
Once the person has said a valid word, they pass the bomb on as quickly as possible to the next player in the circle who has to then say another word which obeys the same rule. Other players can challenge any repeated words or forbidden/tenuous words. The bomb will 'explode' at some point and whoever has the bomb in their hand at that point loses a life. The winner is the person left with most lives at the end of the game. Again, this becomes highly heated and frantic. Just the way I like it!
6. Junior Edition Trivial Pursuit
I really like normal Trivial Pursuit but some of the questions are tough. And the Genus edition is impossible. But the vintage Junior edition from the 80's/90's which I happily found in a charity shop but was made to get rid of when we moved from our rental house 2 houses ago (grr, regret it) is much easier and is full of answers I know. Anyone who doesn't know this game, it's basically a trivia quiz and you move around a board with a 6-space mini-pie dish. Every time you land on a colour, you must answer a question. If you get it right, you gain a piece of pie in the category colour for your pie. First player to get back to the middle with their rainbow pie complete is the winner!
7. Articulate
Articulate is actually very similar to Taboo which I described in no.1 but there aren't taboo words. You have to try and describe something to your team without saying that word and if they guess it right, you win a move.
8. Scrabble
Scrabble is a game which is a bit like Marmite. Some love it, some hate it. CBC does not like playing it with me because he always beats me. My mother-in-law always beats me but I still like it lots. If you don't know it, the premise is that you pick 7 letter tiles from a bag and try to build words on a board, strategically positioning your tiles so they garner bonus points from 'Triple word score' or 'Double letter score'. You can build words off other words.
My friends Tacye, Amy (who used to blog here- Stev/phen you remember Amy?!?) and I invited our own version of Scrabble once on a rainy afternoon. We sometimes get really frustrated because we have made great words but there is no available space on the board. So we invited 'Collaborative' Scrabble and the aim of that game is just to play together and try to build the best words you can with your letters for the sake of enjoying interesting words, not to win points. I play Scrabble by myself, against myself too if there is no one who will play with me.
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| Here's some cards I made with a Scrabble tile box. |
9. Slam
This is a simple card game which I was first taught aged 13 by my friend Liz's German penpal Johanna. You only need a pack of cards for this and you can play with a minimum of 2 players or more. The aim is to get rid of your cards as quickly by laying them on top of consecutive cards as fast as possible and SLAM the smallest pile of cards eventually ending up with cards to be overall winner. It may take me a WHILE to explain this, so I googled and discovered that the Guardian wrote a guide for how to play it which you can see here. I giggled to read about SLAM rage. Yes, I can get a bit vicious when I play this!!
10. Spoons
This is another card game and a great one for parties. You need a quantity of spoons, one less than the quantity of players. You sit in a circle and the spoons are placed in the middle. Each player is dealt 4 cards. The aim of the game is two gain 4 identical cards or a run of 4, e.g. four 5's or a 3,4,5,6 in spades. The first player or dealer picks up one card from the pile and refers to their own cards. They either swap it for one of their cards or immediately lay it down between themselves and the player next to them and then pick another from the remaining Deck (the next player does the same and then there is a constant stream of cards. The person who is last before the dealer lays down the cards into a new pile. When a player has got the 4 cards they need, then they take a spoon. As soon as the other players realise someone has grabbed a spoon, they too must grab one. The last player to grab, i.e. who ends up with no spoon is out. Each time you play, you take away one spoon until it gets to the final and there two players and one spoon. Again, this is a great fun party game and gets incredibly competitive! A variation on this is called PIG and instead of grabbing a spoon, the player who has won puts their hand on their nose. Last player to put their hand to their nose is the loser and adds a P to their name. When someone has added PIG to their name is out!
11. Boggle
Any games involving making words using a set of letters are one of my favourite things. I can tell you the exact time in my life when I realised this. My year 4 teacher, Mrs Linton used to give us challenges. One day, she put the words, HAINAULT FOREST up on the board and gave us 5 minutes to make as many words as possible out of those letters which we had to write down, e.g. 1.Fire, 2. Rain, 3. Let, 4. Rest. I made the most words and gained 5 points for my house team in class, the Yellow team. That was one of my happiest moments in year 4 and I have always loved those word building games from that point onwards.
In Boggle, you have a set of 9 letter dice which sit in a box, you shake them and they fall into position. Within the egg timer, you must try to make as many words using the letters as possible but they must be in consecutive order and you can't use a letter twice.
So let's say this was the set of letters you got
E A R
T F C
S O E
The words you could make include:
1. Tar, 2. Farce, 3. Fat, 4. Soft, 5. Race, 6. Cafe
E A R E A R E A R E A R
T F C T F C T F C T F C
S O E S O E S O E S O E
But you couldn't make CARE because the E is not next to the R. You couldn't make ACT either because the T is not next to the C.
The winner of the round is the person who gets the most points. The longer the word, the more points you get, the more words you get, the more points you get.
I've got a brilliant book by Giles Brandreth which is full of fun games to play, most of which only use paper and pencils or eyes so maybe I will share some of those at some point!
What about you? What are your favourite board or card games?
xxx
