Medium

This is s party game that you really don’t need to teach how to play the game, the game is that simple. You just start playing it. Each player has a hand of six cards, one person plays down a card and the person they are paired with plays down a card. Then you need to come up with a word between those two.

So if the words were muffin and scone, it might be breakfast. It’s not between, but it’s what links both. But then if the guessers, the people who played the cards, guessed breakfast and pastry, now they need to come up with a word linking or between those. You take points depending on how many times it takes you trying to match up. And you can try up to three rounds.

The game offers a good challenge as you try and match up with someone, but also good laughs. Plus, the number of times I pick between two words and the other person picks the other, it’s way too high. But it’s a concept so simple that everyone can play and have fun with it.

Cross Clues

If you want something more challenging, Cross Clues offers that. It is two axis of cards with words on them. So rows numbers 1 through 5 and columns A through E. Each of those is matched up with a word, and players each of a card that is one of those axis.

An example of play would be that I have A3, the word on A is stick the word on 3 is wind. I might give the clue, and only a one word clue, kite. But maybe B’s word is tail, do I want to give that clue and have people choose between those two?

It’s a clever game that can be timed, which would make it very hectic. I prefer without a timer and just enjoy it more that way. It’s a good one though, because everyone is a clue giver. No turn orders, whenever you come up with a clue, you say it and players come to a consensus and guess on it. So it’s a cooperative party game.

Wits & Wagers

Maybe the people you play with like trivia. Wits & Wagers is the best trivia game that I have found. Why, because you don’t need to know trivia. You need to know who, in your group, might know the answer. Wits & Wagers is a trivia game where everyone answer is a number. And like Price is Right you’re trying to guess the closest without going over.

But what works really well is that you guess, the numbers are sorted, and then you bet on what you think the right answer is going to be. The closer to the middle of the group the better the odds. The further the worse they are, but if it’s the closest without going over, you can make a lot of money.

The concept is very simple but it feels better. Trivial Pursuit, Dicecapdes, or Cranium, if you don’t know the answer, you fail. And that isn’t fun. But betting on what answer is closest, that means you don’t need to know. It makes it so you n ever feel like you are out of the game.

Tsuro

Maybe you want less of a party game, but a game where you can plwty it with a big group. Tsuro is a very simple game, the way of the path. You are just putting down tiles to make a path, and following that path, as you do. Your goal is to be the last one on the board and to avoid hitting any other pieces.

This game works well because you can play with up to 8 people and it plays fast. There are some interesting decisions to make, though, in the game. Do you stay away from people or try and get close to them and knock them off the board? And it’s one that even with eight, you will probably play, then shuffle up the tiles and play again.

Welcome To…

A roll and write game for the list, this is by far the heaviest of the games. But it can play an infinite number of people. You just need a way for them to be able to see everything. This game is about building your perfect town. You put down house numbers, build fences, parks, and pools, and advertise your neighborhoods to get the most points.

It is a theme that people can get into. And it’s a game that is pretty easy when you get into it. You, on every turn, put down a house number and a second card that will have another ability. There are three pairs of cards you look at each round. And it’s just a race to see who can get the most points. The game ends when you can’t put down a house number enough times, you fill in all the house numbers, or someone completes the four building goals.

This is one that I’d recommend if you have a bit more of a gamer family. Like I said, the most complex on the list, though not too bad once you get into it. There are just some minor rules that make it a little bit harder. I do have easier roll and write games that I could recommend, Second Chance can also play with a lot of people, but Welcome To… is just more engaging.

Honorable Mention Board Games

There are so many of them, but a lot of not so great games as well. If you want something more color bases, Hues and Cues is great. It is trickier, and not color blind friendly. If you want Apples or Apples or Cards Against Humanity, but with more variety, Stipulations is great. I didn’t put down any Mafia or Werewolf type games, but Deception: Murder in Hong Kong is a good big group game in that style that I really like.

Or if you have a smaller group, there are other games you can pick as well. But that’s going to be more focused on gateway games. Plus there are classic games that can still be fun. Scrabble and Clue, I like them both still. But for some you need to make sure, like Scrabble, you’re kind of on the same level of knowledge.

What are some board games you grew up playing at the holidays? What games do you bring along now?

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When I look for a party game I’m looking for a few things. First, I’m looking for a game that’s not going to be too limited by the cards. There are some games out there, Cards Against Humanity and Apples to Apples that once you’ve played them a handful of times, they lose enjoyment because you’ve seen all the cards a handful of times and heard all the jokes a handful of times, and the game just isn’t funny anymore. So, look for games that have enough cards. I think in the style of Apples to Apples and Cards Against Humanity, that style of game is never going to have enough cards, but when getting something like Balderdash versus Catch Phrase, consider the number of cards and words in those games, because Balderdash has way more options than Catch Phrase does.

Next, I’m looking for party games that won’t overstay their welcome. This is actually pretty tricky to find, so fairly often you have to be able to read the room as to not have them become boring or having people stop caring. You want to end at a point where most people are at that point where it would be fun to play more, but they aren’t chomping at the big. In the case of something like Balderdash, look for the point where what’s being written down is mainly repeated jokes from earlier in the game. That’s a sign that people are going to be wearing down. But there are some games that do give it a nice limit. Just One, for example, gives you a limit on the number of cards you do for the game, and using that as your rule for how long the game goes works really well. Normally we play it twice in one sitting, but it gives us an end point so that we can jump into other games, and keeps Just One from overstaying it’s welcome.

If it’s a trivia game or a game that someone can just be better at, be careful with what you pick. There are two big offenders of this for me, the first being Trivial Pursuit, which is just a trivia game and you know what you’re getting into and you know that someone who is good at trivia is going to be better. The other is Cranium, which has some parts that are more fun like the Pictionary with clay and Charades, but if someone is better at Trivia, they can go through that section much faster and have a run away leader. Instead, look for trivia games that are about guessing and being close or that allow people to piggyback off of the smart person’s guesses. The example that I love for this is Wits and Wagers. Yes, one person might do better at guessing the number, but everyone else then has a chance to bet on their answer and make more money.

Finally, party games are best when they give players some creative agency in the game. Something like Trivial Pursuit or Catch Phrase, it’s about what you know or how you can describe a word that’s been given to you. Those games don’t allow you to really be creative besides maybe coming up with a funny way to get people to guess a word in Catch Phrase, but because you’re going against the clock, you don’t have time to do that without hurting your team. But, there are plenty of games that give the players some creative agency. Balderdash is a good example of this because you’re writing down your guess for what an acronym stands for, or what the weird law or definition that you don’t know is. Stipulations is my favorite like this, because it has that creative piece of coming up with a good idea and takes it away from it being a definition or something dryer like that and makes the game have that goofiness that you can have in Apples to Apples or Cards Against Humanity the first time you play it. Even Just One, where you’re only writing down a single word each round, because there isn’t the time pressure, you feel like you can be more creative in giving your clues.

So, what are some good options for party games that won’t have the limited replayability and allow you to be creative, I’m sure you can guess which ones I’m going to mention, but I’ll add in a few more. Just One is my top one to mention because it’s cooperative and while team versus team is common for party games, Just One is fully cooperative so that helps balance out the feeling of stronger or weaker players, and it’s done in a way that there won’t be anyone who can alpha player the game. Stipulations is my best for that any sort of setting funny game. In Stipulations there isn’t anything inherently dirty about it, but if you wanted to make it dirty you can easily. Wits & Wagers is my trivia entry, the fact that everything is a number means that everyone is going to be a ballpark, maybe way off, but you’re not failing at trivia by thinking a tree is a type of bear or something like that. The betting also works well, because you can always bet on the person who you think is most likely to know, and hopefully it’ll work out. Scattergories, this one is pretty old compared to the others on the list, but it still works well. This also has a bit of a trivia feel as you’re in board categories where there might be a lot of answers, but like in Just One, you are trying to come up with a unique word. This is competitive, so if you have that more competitive group that wants a party game that is a bit more serious, this is a good one for them.

There are more good ones out there that I’ve heard about, just haven’t had a chance to try yet. Right now the two that I’m curious about are Medium which seems like it does a more engaging version of The Mind. I can see it going over well in some groups and being horrible in others, so I’m curious to try for myself. The other one is Wavelength, another one of those games where you’re trying to get people to read your mind, it’s a common theme, but you are given a wavelength target and you have to try and get people to guess/place the dial between best and worst type of range for something, and you’re giving them a clue to try and get it dialed in. And I’m sure there will be more cool party games coming out this year.

What are some of your favorite party games? Are there any that have worn out their welcome for you?

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Wits & Wagers as it’s heart is a trivia game. This is normally not a genre of game that I like, because in most trivia games, I’m looking at you Cranium and Trivial Pursuit, you either know the answer to the question or you don’t, and you don’t get anything if you don’t know. But that means that some people are inherently better at the game, because they have more of that trivia style knowledge floating around their head. Some people have the capacity for that, and I know some trivia pretty well, but generally, I’m not great at it. In Wits & Wagers, all the answers are numbers, so it could be a question such as “How many goals did Pele score in his pro career?” Now, you might know nothing about soccer, and I know some about soccer. What you know is that soccer is low scoring, so you put down 80, since a lot of soccer matches can end 1-0, so maybe he didn’t score that many goals. Knowing a bit more about soccer, I know that he is one of the best all time and was known for scoring goals, so I put down 300. Someone else puts down 800, 50, 120, and 2 (the last person really didn’t know soccer). The actual answer is 650. So we’re looking to see who is the closest without going cover, and my 300 was. Before the answer is revealed, however, we can all bet on who had the closest answer without going over. You get more money back if you guess further away from the middle, but fairly often the middle is correct. In this case, though, the middle number is 80/120, depending on which say you shift it, so by betting on 300, you could get back 3-1 odds. Then, once people have collected their winnings, you repeat as long as you want, or until the rules say stop, however you want to play, and most money wins.

That’s a lengthy explanation of a pretty simple game. You write down a number for the question, you bid, and you repeat, the person with the most money wins. But I wanted to give the example that I did, because it’s a real life example, and also because, it demonstrates a bit of a strategy of the game. Whereas in a lot of trivia games there can be that one person who knows trivia and is going to win basically no matter what, in Wits & Wagers, you have a way to keep up with them, because you could always just bet on their number. In my example above, the people in the group knew that I knew more about soccer than a number of them. So they were able to bid with me, and fairly often you can figure out who might know the most. It adds a nice strategy to what would otherwise be a fairly normal trivia game and adds in some depth. And maybe you’re very confident about what you know, but you can also play the people of the game. If I’d wanted to, I could have put down 800 for how many goals Pele scored knowing that was likely too high and let people go with my pick while hedging my bets to the number below to try and throw people off, but if you do that all the time, it wouldn’t be fun, and people would know not to bid on your answer.

I also like, and I know it’s the only way that the game can work, is that all the answers are numbers. If it’s just general knowledge trivia, you can guess and be completely wrong, and technically the same is true with numbers, but you’re always going to at least be somewhat close or in the write realm. It is possible in other trivia to completely not know it and not have any guess or have a guess that is completely wrong, like guessing something is a constellation when it’s a city in New Jersey or something like that. That’s a silly example, but when it’s a number, you always have a starting spot for you guess and fairly often can guess if it’s small, medium or large for the number so you won’t be amazingly wrong. And, in the previous paragraph I talked about how you could put down a number to throw people off if they think you know the answer, but there’s also pride in being the closest and especially if you can get really close. I’ve seen people get it dead on with a lucky guess, and I have gotten that once as well. It’s exciting to get the right answer.

One final thing that I enjoy about this game is that you can really play with any player number count without changing up the speed of the game. Everyone is answering at the same time so that doesn’t stretch out the game, and you can possibly overthink it if you want when placing your bets, but that shouldn’t happen too much because the game is just a good time party game. There’s no sitting around waiting for someone else to guess trivia, there’s no feeling stuck that way, and I appreciate that about Wits & Wagers.

Overall, this is a party game that I enjoy every time that I play. I also like the that game scales well, so that you can even play with a great number than suggested, which we do often. I’ve heard of doing team play for it as well and that can be fun. Wits & Wagers fixes a lot of issues that I have with trivia games, and even though, sure someone who knows trivia well can still do better, possibly, it has nice catch-up mechanisms where you can make big bets to get back into it as long as the leader isn’t as well. I also like that this game works well with families or basically any group.

Overall Grade: B+
Gamer Grade: C+
Casual Grade: A

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It’s something to write about because when people think of large group games they think of games like Apples to Apples or Cards Against Humanity, with a few other party games thrown in. It’s fairly repetitive games that are either based around making a few jokes or trivia knowledge. I’m going to sound fairly negative about these games, but they do have their time and place. For me, however, these games have a limited shelf life. My wife and I are actually getting rid of our copy of Cards Against Humanity because once you’ve played it a handful of times, you know the general jokes.

The other reason I wanted to write about this topic is because people have trouble coming up with other larger group games. Now, not all of these games are going to be able to handle 20 people that I’m writing about, so I will write about what you can do with that size of a group as well. But, having games that will play 7-10 people are fairly difficult to come up with as well and often end up causing people to pull out party games again.

Before we talk specifics, let’s talk about what to do with that very large group of people. It’s tricky because part of playing board games is socializing, but sometimes you have a group that is just too large to play a single game. People don’t always want to split into smaller groups because people want to socialize with everyone. I would argue that this is something that you should push through as the host or as someone suggesting splitting into groups. When you have a large group everyone is not part of the same conversation anyways. As much as we want to think so, everyone is having their own little conversations. These can be done in smaller groups. Especially lean into splitting into smaller groups after you have played a larger game. Play a few hands of Cards Against Humanity first so that people are laughing and socializing and then before the game has gotten stale. People will likely be more up to splitting off into groups if they feel comfortable and having an ice breaker game is nice for that.

Also, adapt games as need be for larger groups. I’ve adapted Wits & Wagers for a larger group before because it’s not like there’s anything stopping you. Just add a few more ranges for betting and go from there. Or with a game like Scattergories, just have people share sheets.  You can also team people up for games that normally wouldn’t have teams. Balderdash can really handle any number, but if you think there will be too many things to read and remember, have people team up for that.

Now let’s get into some games. I’m going to start with some of my preferred party style games. While I have expressed some dislike for Cards Against Humanity, it is a game that a lot of people know how to play already, and when drinking, can be kind of funny even if you’ve played it a number of times before?

In it’s place, I would suggest Stipulations. This game might be harder to find, I got it from kickstarter, but I believe it is available. Stipulations is one of those write something down based off of what the person who is it says. However, as compared to trying to come up with a definition for a word or the meaning of an acronym, Stipulations has you writing a stipulation for a super power, dream job, lifetime supply of, or fulfilled dream. This doesn’t force you into anything dark and twisted, but if you wanted to go that way and that’s the type of group you have, you can. Unlike Cards Against Humanity, Stipulations is a game you could play with Grandma or at a college kegger.

A nerdier game than Stipulations that goes along with the same premise of writing down an answer and either picking a favorite or trying to guess the right answer is Liebrary. It’s a silly game where you roll and select and get a book title and try and write down what the first sentence is. The person who is it is hoping people will guess the right answer, but not everyone. It fits into the classic Balderdash style of game. This game suffers a little bit because of the categories of books. Romance novels are great to write a first line for because you can be as silly as possible, but other genres aren’t as entertaining.

Scattergories and Wits & Wagers are two that I put down as games that fit into that trivia category. Both of them are better than Cranium in my opinion. The reason that I like both of them is that you can have an arbitrary ending to either of them. In Scattergories you can play three lists or you can play ten, it’s up to you and the group, though, I’d never recommend playing ten in one sitting. With Wits and Wagers, you can just pull out a certain number of cards, and whomever has the most money at the end is the winner. Cranium has a board you have to get around, and if you get the wrong questions in trivia, there’s a chance the game will just stagnate. The same thing is the case with Trivial Pursuit, so pick trivia games that you can have an arbitrary ending to.

Finally, Moniker is a solid party game where you start out by describing someone to get people to guess them, then can only use a one word clue, and then can only charade it. It’s a team game, so only half the time are you really involved, but turns go fairly quickly. This game is on my list because it allows people to be active and moving. It helps build up the energy and is good for a laugh. It is a game that you don’t really need the actual game for though to make work. As long as people know the famous person you wrote down on a slip of paper it works. When they don’t, it kind of breaks the game anyways.

So this is part one of two, the conclusion will come up here shortly. It would have been a bit much to do in a single post, and this one has a nice breaking point because we’re at the point where I’m going to talk about things that aren’t just pure party games. There are a number of games, including a few different categories of games that work well with larger groups. And I’ll also talk about some pitfalls to avoid when looking at games that can have a larger player count.

To Be Continued….

What are your favorite party games?

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