I already have done 10 games that I want to play post Covid. And I am sure that there are way more. For that list, it was a lot that were focused more on board game nights. I still stand by that, but there are so many other games that I could think about as well for playing.

But let’s talk about the first game night that I’m going to be planning.

When

This was the first question that I had to ask myself. Now, like I said, Minnesota is getting to about 50%, and my friend group, probably is about at 70-75% vaccinated at this point, at least for the board game night crowd. But I wanted to give people a really good chance to get vaccinated. I really want to have as close to 100% of the group vaccinated as possible. So when thinking about it and just about schedules, I decided that July would be when I had my first one.

What also went into consideration was just people getting comfortable being in groups again. For some people, like myself who is an extrovert, getting together in groups again is going to be amazing. For other people, who are introverts, like my wife, it is going to be more stressful. So it gives people time to start getting out and doing more with family first.

Any Extra Procautions

Honestly, not really, though, I did kind of think about that with the games I have to play. I will ask that if people are planning on attending that they be vaccinated. However, I am only going to do that in July. Why, because I don’t want to be a stickler about it, against by July close if not 100% of the friend group who don’t have a medical reason not to be vaccinated should be. But also because it’s not going to be a big group either. At most one person, or two people from a family wouldn’t be vaccinated. But obviously, we do want to encourage people to get vaccinated.

Otherwise, no masks required, no bring your own food, but the games are going to encourage some distancing. Depending on the temperature, I might throw open some windows so that there is better air flow. But with our furnace setup the fan is running all the time so that should keep air circulating and keep on bringing in new area as well for ventilation purposes.

The Games

So, the games that I picked are more so because you can’t play them not in person. But I do want to think about things that will keep people more comfortable. So the two main games for the night are going to be Pitchcar and Ice Cool.

Both of these games are dexterity games. So how do these help with any extra precautions. Well, you are not just sitting at a table with the same group of people for hours. You are getting up and moving around the table. Sure, you’ll be close to people a fair amount, but it won’t be sitting across from someone breathing at them.

But really, the main reason for both of these games, I couldn’t play them otherwise. Sure, Kristen and I could play them, or the one person who has been coming over to game with me could play them, but it’s not the same. Ice Cool is best at four or more if you have the expansion. I haven’t played Pitchcar yet, so I might do that before hand just to set it up and try, but again, seems better with more. You want to have that group around so everyone is getting excited when they make a great shot or when someone else does as well. That’s what really drives those gaming experiences to the next level.

What About Food And Drink?

So that is the only thing that I haven’t mentioned. And again, since everyone is going to be vaccinated, I’m going to feel very comfortable doing the normal potluck/sharing style that we do. Now, if we have chips, maybe I’ll throw a tongs into that so people aren’t touching everything as much. I can put out some hand sanitizer for people who want it. But most of the things, you are touching one items to put it onto your plate.

What Should You Do?

I think that is the question that everyone is asking themselves. I know a lot of people who are excited to get game nights going again and what does that mean for everyone it is going to be different. For us, I know the people I game with well, we do it in a home, so I can limit and control a lot of variables. If you play at an FLGS, it is going to look different than in a house. If you have people who can’t get vaccinated for a medical reason, that is going to look different as well. So I guess the advice that I can give is start small. No need to play games with twenty people, start playing with three or four and as things improve, go from there.

When do you want plan on your first big game night?

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10. Sonora

You’ll see that a lot of these can be played two players if I wanted to. Sonora even works just fine two players, but I think it’s just more fun to play it in a bigger group. I’ve played it three players a few times, but I want to play it 4 player and really see how it works with a little more craziness of more and more discs being flicked into the middle. This is one that I should pull out solo or two player again anyways. But Sonora, I’m looking forward to being able to introduce this roll and write game with flicking to some friends.

9. Tokyo Highway

This is not going to be a list dexterity games, but it could be, if I had that many. I only have 5 really, and only three of them are on that list. Tokyo Highways is a game that looks amazing on the table. I call it a piece of artwork when it’s done or nearly done. But man, it looks so good with the roads intertwining. For obvious reasons we can’t play it in a big group and while you could probably play at two players, the game feels like it’s the best at more because you have more roads to interact with.

8. Blood Rage

Card drafting is a mechanic that I guess could work on something like TTS, but playing a physical version of a game is just more fun. Blood Rage has card drafting, it has that simultaneous card play for combat, there are just a lot of things that wouldn’t work as well digitally. And definitely wouldn’t work trying to play it over Zoom or something like that. I really love Blood Rage so it was a bummer to have picked up not that long before the pandemic shut everything down and not get it to the table. It does also require the right group, some of the more casual game night players wouldn’t be interested, and it’d take up a bunch of the game night.

7. Tags

This is one that I picked up during the pandemic hoping that I could make it work via Zoom. I’m still not sure that I can’t, it does seem possible, but it also seems, with the times element that it’d be a little bit too chaotic to work that well. This is one that I’m excited to get around the table with a big group of players and just having a blast with it. I like the game for it’s speed and replayability.

6. Camel Up

Another one purchased during the pandemic, Camel Up is a big silly racing game that has you rolling dice, moving camels and betting on who you think is going to win. You control all the camels as a group so no one player is going to have their camel left behind. And all sorts of wackiness can ensue as the camels stack, and if you move a lower camel all the ones on top of them move with them as well. It’s just looks like a silly good time that I want to get to the table.

5. Draftosaurus

Draftosaurus works better with more players, but could be played at two. But you are also passing around handfuls of dinosaurs which is not very distancing. But, it’s a fun fast game that I want to play again. I really think this game, as you play it, feels like a roll and write game. There is zero writing and the rolling just determines where you can place the dino meeple you are drafting that turn. But the feeling is that of a roll and write as you place those dino meeples into pens and try and score the most points that you can. Super light, super fun and one that you should probably be vaccinated to play with people outside of your house.

4. Potion Explosion

Now, I have played this one twice not that long ago, I think it was in February. But I want to play more Potion Explosion and not just more at two players, but with a bigger number of players. The game is just a blast to play and the toy factor on it is amazing. I want to get it to the table and share the joy of this one. Plus, with one turn between your turns the board doesn’t change up that much. More people keeps more variety going in what you will be able to pull.

3. Skull

Skull is yet another one that I picked up during covid. However, I have played this one a number of times before. Skull is a bluffing game. You put down cards, eventually someone will start the bid and then whomever wins has to flip over that many cards (coasters) without hitting a skull. The trick is you have to start with your own pile and flip all of those first. So do you bluff that you don’t have a skull in your pile, push up the bid and hope that someone outbids you and then hits your skull. Just a fun game that you could probably make work via something like Zoom, but it’d be different and you need to see both the cards and the people which would be tricky.

2. Letter Jam

I’m not sure you could make this one work physically via something like Zoom. People need to see everyone’s letters but their own, which makes it a mess. For that reason, I really want to play it in person again. Beyond that, I think I’ll love this game even more the more that I play it and it is already way up there in my top 100. The concept is just so simple and fun and I like word games. Definitely one that will get to the table as quick as it can because of how much fun it is.

1. Ice Cool

The final one is my final dexterity game on the list, Ice Cool, I doubt anyone is surprised it made the list. I love this game. It is just silly fun for adults and kids. I loved playing it seriously at GenCon, I loved playing it in a nice goofy way around the table at my house. And since I can play it with 8 people, that is even more awesome. It is a great game to wrap up a game night with, or even to just play throughout most of a game night. The flicking is fun, and you get great shots sometimes and not so great shots other times.

I’m sure that most board gamers have a list of games that they want to play. Honestly, 10 is no where near enough to make my list. I have new to me games like Heroes of Land, Air, & Sea, Dwellings of Eldervale, Lost Ruins of Arnak, I could play Marvel United with more people, Forgotten Waters, The Reckoners, and oh so many more. Plus there are classic game night games, like Sushi Go Party that I haven’t played in a while and Wits & Wagers, though that one I could bring back via Zoom.

What game do you want to get to the table the most again?

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Let’s start out by talking about what a “party” game is. Party games are meant to be an activity that you can do while still being socially engaged at the table or wherever you are playing it. These games might be a little bit about keeping points, but they are mainly meant to be fun activities for people to do together so that you don’t end up spending all your time watching sporting events, movies, or being apart everyone doing their own thing.

Now, most common party games, the likes of Apples to Apples, Cards Against Humanity, What Do You Meme, etc. They have a few fatal flaws to them. One, some of them just won’t work in the wrong group, most of them in fact can have that problem. Apples to Apples might be too tame for some, while others might be too dirty. But taking that aside, they also have another issue, they are based off of what you are doing with the cards and the jokes already given to you on the cards. That means, in the most case, once you’ve played it a few times, you’ve gone through a lot of the cards and you now you know the jokes that are coming up and there are certain cards, in the meta of the group, that might always win. So eventually those games start to become stale. They also tend to be based more off of very specific types of humor and humor being the very important part to the game.

What I’m going to suggest are games that might not have the same humor, some very well might, but are a step up and provide more interesting things about them.

Wits & Wagers

One type of party game that I didn’t mention above, but has a similar problem, is trivia. Trivia games, while I can do okay at them, I did win $15 from work recently in a few trivia games, have one inherent flaw to them. You either know the answer or you don’t. If you don’t know your state capitols or you don’t know sports, movies, music, pop culture, you are going to get those questions wrong. I can’t tell you who is in N’Sync vs the Backstreet Boys, no matter how many guesses you give me to figure out who the bad boy in each group was. Wits & Wagers kind of solves that problem. In Wits & Wagers all of the answers are numerical. Now, that doesn’t help too much if you are asked to figure out what year the first car went over 100 MPH or how many goals Pele had in his pro career. But you don’t need to get it right, you just need to guess the best you can. Then, all the answers are placed out, and everyone bets on what they think the right answer, depending on what it is, you get a payout and you do that for seven rounds, whomever has the most money at the end wins. So if you think that I know cars, you can bet on my car date, if I think you know pop music trivia dates better, I can bet on yours, so you never need to know the correct answer.

Online: I think that this one can work online. To do it, the person with the game would need to write down peoples numbers and handle moving peoples bets around, but it wouldn’t be hard to do.

Stipulations

This game, for me, is a an upgrade from the Cards Against Humanity and Apples to Apples style game. If you want to have the game that has the jokes, this one is going to be a solid choice. The difference is, instead of getting an answer to use to the question, you have to come up with your own. How it works is that one person, the person who is it, picks from either a super power, dream job, lifetime supply, or dream fulfilled and everyone writes a Stipulation for it. Because you are coming up with your own answers, you can tailor the humor to your group. If someone picks the super power of flight, you can make it as clean or as dirty as you want for the stipulation. This also mean that the game is less likely to become stale as well because you are using your own creativity to come up with something, let’s use the flight example, one time I could say that your stipulation is that you can only fly when naked, another time I could say no more than 3″ off the ground, another time it might be only in rooms with 8′ ceilings. The joke changes every time versus some of the other games where you might see the same joke or same style of joke played in multiple games.

Online: There are two ways this one works online, the first being that everyone reads out their own answer, that’s just fine because people will just pick their favorite. If you’re worried that person X might only pick person Y’s answer or not pick person Y’s answer, you can have all the answers privately messaged in a chat window to that rounds reader as well.

Hues and Cues

This is a new one for me, but one that I had success with last game night. In Cues and Hues you have a board that is basically just a massive color palette with an insanely large number of colors. The person who is it is trying to get people to guess what color they have based off of a card. The it person picks one of the colors and gives a one word clue, everyone else then places based off of where they think that color is. Then the it person can give a two word clue and everyone guesses again. Then it’s scored, if someone gets it right on, they get 3 points. if they are in on of the surrounding spaces directly around it, they get two, and the ring further out they get one. The person who was it gets one point for each person on the spot and in the inner ring. It goes around and that continues until someone reaches the end. This game is more challenging than you’d think, mainly because there are so many colors on there and the variations in the gradients of the color. That said, a lot of fun, and has that feeling when someone takes your spot of “nooooo” but also that you might have figured out the clue better sometimes. A lot of fun and easy to play.

Online: This one works pretty well, now, only the people with the game have the card with 4 colors, but everyone else can just pick a color on their turn. I will say that everyone should be playing off of a monitor so that colors are as consistent as possible, so that’s an issue. Also, this game is by nature very not colorblind friendly.

Just One

This one was a big hit last year as it’s a cooperative party game where you are all working together to try and get the guesser to guess the one word that they have picked. The guesser picks a number between one and five without seeing the corresponding word on the card. Then everyone else writes down a one word clue for it. So, for example, if the word was Karate someone could write down the clue “Kid” or “Martial” or “Discipline”. However, if two people wrote down the word “Kid” those two clues are cancelled out. The guesser than looks at the remaining clues and tries to guess the word. This one works well because you want to be clever with your clue, but not so clever that you lead someone down the wrong path. But, the more you know the people at the table, the more you can tailor a reference or a clue to the person. I really like this one for the cooperative nature as it means that no one who is too competitive will ruin the fun, or be as likely to, because you’re all in it together.

Online: This one needs a little, but just a little bit of work to make it work. The guesser needs to say a number and then stop looking at the screen so that they don’t see the corresponding word. Then they can’t look until people have compared their words. Once you get into the rhythm of it, it’s easy, but you just have to know who should and shouldn’t be looking when.

Cross Clues

This one is a new one for me this year. After seeing the Dice Tower play it, I knew it was going to be one that would hit the table a lot for me. In Cross Clues, you have an easy 3×3 grid to a hard 5×5 grid of words out, with columns of A-E for hard and rows of 1-5 for hard. Everyone has a card in their hand, and it has coordinates on it, for example it might be E5. Now, the person who has that card needs to get the other players to guess their coordinates so that they can progress in the game. To do that, you give a one word clue. So let’s say that the word for E was “Witch” and the word for 5 was “Stick”, you might go with a clue like broom. Broom handles are wood, and witches ride on brooms. Easy enough, but maybe instead it was “Witch” and “Broom” as well as the word on 4 is “Spoon”, what clue do you give, one word, that would get people to guess E5? You can’t go with wood or stick because of wooden spoons might get confused with your answer. But you could maybe go with fly, as long as that doesn’t sound like another answer. It’s a fun and thinky game where you get a lot of really cool and clever answers.

Online: This one works, but only kind of online. The people who aren’t there with the game can’t really give clues, because it’d be tricky to show them a coordinate card one at a time. Instead, it has worked well for my wife and myself to be the clue givers (and we can guess on the others clue) and everyone online to be a guesser. It’s less ideal, but it works.

Codenames Pictures

Now, for some people regular Codenames will do as well, I just prefer the pictures one for a few reasons that I’ve talked about before. I feel like it’s more dynamic because it isn’t language dependent. And I feel like there are way more opportunities to be clever with it. In this game there are two different teams trying to get a spy to all of their spots before the other team gets all their spies out onto the board, all while trying to avoid the one “you lose” spot. So the clue giver has to figure out how to connect abstract and absurd pictures, like dog jumping through a doughnut or a flower that is growing out of a diamond, things like that, so that their team can get as many of them as quickly as possible. And again, a one world clue. Codenames Pictures, because of the oddity of the pictures, gives you more of a chance to give interesting clues. This one can be a bit slow at times as people puzzle out what they think the clue means, but pictures is a lot more fun because you can get to guesses faster.

Online: If you have two people in the same location, it works well enough, those people are it and handle the clue giving. I know that people have found ways to make it work for the clue givers not to be in the same location, generally it involves setting up another camera and sharing that with just the players who are clue givers and is a bit more work.

Now, there are a lot more games a well that can be great. And maybe your family likes playing Apples to Apples once a year over Thanksgiving or Christmas and New Years Holidays. But if you are looking for something new, I think that all of these games offer some really interesting things, and as you can see most of them can work well online as well. I would say out of all of them, Hues and Cues and Codenames: Pictures are probably the hardest to do digitally.

What newer party games have you found that work well with your families and friends whom you get together with around the holidays?

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In this weeks episode, besides saying Thank You to everyone a lot, I do have a few bits of news. Plus, I look back at the year and some of the Marvel highlights and I look forward to what is coming in 2020 and 2021 for the second year of 10 Minute Marvel.

If you have been enjoying the podcast, please consider subscribing and leaving a rating and review. Those help more people find the podcast and join into the 10 Minute Marvel community. We’re on iTunes, Google Play Music, Spotify, and Stitcher.

And if you have any comments, you can leave them below. Or you can find me on Twitter @TheScando or use #10MinMarvel. What are you looking forward to from Marvel in the next year? Is it an MCU movie, comic book series coming out, the Disney+ shows?

I’ll see you next time.

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However, like many things in 2020, Gen Con has been cancelled. Not really surprised by it, even with Indiana having plans to slowly re-open the state as it flattens the curve on Covid-19, having so many people come from not just out of state but around the world would have been risky for not only the people attending Gen Con, but also the population of Indiana/Indianapolis just with more chances of the disease being spread.

Am I saddened that Gen Con won’t be happening this year? Yes, it saddens me, but I have been expecting it for a while. They might have figured out a way with their costs as to not go bankrupt, and they have announced the dates for Gen Con 2021 that I’m already looking forward to going to.

I think we have to ask what this means for board game companies. While sales are huge at Gen Con and a chance to get people excited about your game that is coming to Kickstarter, the cost of shipping games and paying for the space is also high. For more established game companies, they’ll be able to release their Gen Con games through their own stores and probably end up making about as much money. But it will hurt on the hype. There’s always some hot game coming out of Gen Con that does more sales because of buzz built there than it would have otherwise. Likewise, smaller or newer companies, one of the biggest benefits is brand recognition. When people walk through the dealer hall multiple times, they can run across a company that they haven’t seen before. It might be a harder year for those less established companies, just for brand recognition.

Finally, they are doing something as an online Gen Con over the same time period. To be determined what that is. But I’m glad that a lot of cons that are being cancelled, CMONExpo, Board Game Geek, Dice Tower East, and more are doing online “conventions”. This might be something as little as them playing games online or talking about upcoming games and giveaways and things of that nature, but it’s nice to have those board gaming options still show up. It won’t be the same, but hopefully it’ll be a chance for some board game companies to still get the brand recognition and game sales that they need to keep the hobby growing.

Were you planning on going to Gen Con this year? What do you want from an online version of the convention?

Share questions, ideas for articles, or comments with us!

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