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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Tofu Kingdom, Brewcrafters Travel Card Game, The Mind & Cthulhu Fluxx

I lumped these together. They are all smaller games, I gave them a chance, and while they aren’t bad, I have a number of smaller games that I’m going to pull off the shelf before them. And often that’s why games leave, something like Cthulhu Fluxx was a great gateway game for me, but now I have others.

I think that most people might be surprised by the Mind. My experience with that was just okay at the best. The game with it’s, you can’t share information is fine. But also leads to long chunks of time of people not talking. I wish there was more fun and funny going on for a game that is so simple. The Mind is like Cosmic Encounter for me as well, where it is very group dependent.

Gloom

Gloom is a very fun game. It has transparent cards and you are trying to kill off your family with them having the most miserable lives possible. And you tell stories as you do it. It’s a blast to play, and I haven’t played it since before I was married. I was dating now wife but we were maybe engaged. That’s over 7 years.

So, you can guess why this one is leaving. I just don’t play it often enough, or at all anymore. If someone else has it and pulls it off the shelf to play, I will play it and love it. I might even buy it again at that point. But right now, even though it’s a small game, it opens up room for other small games to try and play.

Werewords

This one came into my collection not that long ago and now it’s leaving my collection. I am always trying to find a second social deduction game that I like. I even watched on Board Game Geeks YouTube channel Werewords played and thought that it’d be it. It’s a game of twenty questions with a traitor, the concept even sounds fun.

But it’s like so many social deduction games, when it comes down to it, you are just guessing. If you don’t guess the word you will take a random stab at whom the traitor is and probably be wrong. If you’re the traitor and the word is guessed, you’ll give a random guess on the seerer unless they were extremely obvious. I want more deduction in my social deduction is what it is, I guess.

Werewords is a solid game, it’s just not for me.

Onirim

This one might surprise people. I like Onirim as a solo game. But it’s going away for three reasons. The first being Orchard: A 9 Card Solitaire Game, then A Gentle Rain – another solo game, and finally, because I own the app. I can still play Onirim, but I’ll do on the app. And there will be much less shuffling.

I know that a lot of people even like the app better because it does all the shuffling. I still think I prefer the physical game, but if I’m going to play a solo game right now, it’s going to be Orchard or A Gentle Rain. They are easier to get out and play, so sorry, Onirim, you’re leaving the collection. Again another really good game and this one is for me, but I just have others to play now.

The Siblings Trouble

This is one that I never actually played. I picked it up because when it was on Kickstarter, I had backed the companies other game, Lift Off! and wanted to back another one of their projects. It’s a kind of RPG like game that is tailored for kids. But it came out at the same time as No Thank You, Evil! A kids RPG that has more support. And I likely would just play D&D with my kid eventually.

Hex Roller

I got this game quite recently, I played it, and I’m selling it. Hex Roller is not a bad roll and write. But it isn’t a game where what you do will change much. The dice rolls will change things up, but the mechanics don’t change. So I’ve played it, and I’m passing it on to someone else.

My knock on Hex Roller is that while the scoring is simple, the teach is not. The rules are a little bit weird for how you take dice and use them. It just teaches harder then a game that doesn’t have that much going on should. I understand that they wanted the game to be clever and give you lots to think about, but it’s just a solid game. Not good enough for me to come back to.

Choose Your Own Adventure: House of Danger

This is a really fun and goofy game. It is also a story game that has limited replayability. Now, I am not done with the story, so why am I getting rid of it. It’s easy, I know two maybe three people who own it. If I want to play it again or play it the whole way through, I can.

Choose Your Own Adventure: House of Danger is a great time. It’s goofy and fun to sit around and play. If you play lighter games, I definitely recommend it. But most likely, like me, you’ll end up selling it once you’re done with the story. The downside is I won’t get much for it, the upside is, someone can play it and enjoy it again.

Blossoms

Blossoms is a two player push your luck game. You are trying to grow flowers and then harvest them at the point that it’ll give you the most points. It’s a pretty little game, though in a larger box than really needed. But it is a two player game, so the question I asked myself, how many two player only games do I need?

The answer didn’t include Blossoms. When I look at my two player games, I would pick Hanamikoji before it, Skulk Hollow, 7 Wonders Duel, Fox in the Forest, Fox in the Forest Duet. All of those I’d play before Blossoms. Blossoms is just a little bit too simple for when I want to play a two player game. But if you have a parent or grandparent who likes more classic feeling games, Blossoms would be great.

Cry Havoc

This is a tough game for me to get rid of. I really like Cry Havoc. This is another situation where I just own other games I’m going to play before it. Cry Havoc is asymmetrical area control. If I want area control that’s pretty complex, Blood Rage. If I want asymmetrical, well I own Root now. Cry Havoc is leaving because I own enough other games that do similar things. And I own enough other games that I’d play before it.

It is a bit of a casualty of my Top 100 that I just wrapped up, actually. When going through the Top 10 and seeing games like Lords of Hellas and Blood Rage, th ose will get played before Cry Havoc. So even with Cry Havoc just missing at 103 and being there last year, it’s time for it to go.

Castle Panic

This is getting bumped because of a future Kickstarter that is coming. It’s also getting bumped because it’s too easy a cooperative game. Now, some of that is that I’m older than the target audience. This is a tower defense game for 10 year old kids or younger. It’s not targeting someone like me. Village Attacks as a tower defense game is.

But this is a game that I win too often. And again, I think that’s with the target age. A 10 year old will want to win more often than they lose. I personally like to lose about 60-70% of the time when playing a cooperative game. In my Top 100 I have Say Bye to the Villains, I have yet to beat that game. I don’t think I’ve lost Castle Panic.

Lift Off!

I just talked about this one, it’s the first game that I backed on Kickstarter. I am greatly tempted to keep this one. I’ve played it a few times but it hasn’t been in years. It’s a fun little game, and I like some of their other games. I still have Skulk Hollow which won’t be leaving anytime soon.

This is one that I am tempted to keep to just play a few more times. It is also a game that isn’t going to come off my shelf all that often. It’s like Castle Panic in that it’s younger focused, not my gaming group, and there’s enough other games I’ll play before it.

Dicecapades!

For a mass market game, Dicecapades is generally a lot of fun. You get goofy things like stacking dice. Or you roll a die and need to do that many push-ups. Or you roll a die and there is trivia. Wait, there is trivia, what does that have to do with dice , the answer, nothing. And that’s why I don’t pull it out anymore.

Everything else in the game is fun, but you need to answer a trivia question on a random area that is determined by a die roll. If you get it wrong, you stay and then do it again next turn. Meanwhile, everyone else is doing goofy fun things, until they get stuck on trivia as well. And if I roll sports before you roll movies, because that’s what we know best, I get going faster just based off of luck.

It is a mass market party game, it is supposed to be lucky. But it’s just not that fun when you get to trivia. Remove the trivia from the game, I’d probably keep the game. It’s one that I can play with cousins and non-gamers. But with trivia, it’s annoying. If I want to do trivia, I own Wits & Wagers.

Star Wars: Imperial Assault

Now, this is the tricky one, and it might stay. I want to play this game. The intro scenario to teach you the game, I’ve played it twice. But it’s a campaign game, and it’s a campaign game with an app before apps were common. So the app itself isn’t great. Not bad, but not great. And I don’t have a group to play this game. So it’s a lot of work to play solo.

If I had a group, I’d play it. I might even play it solo, if I go through the introductory scenario again. But am I going to do that when I have Isofarian Guard coming sometime, Destinies coming that can be played solo, Middara, Roll Player Adventures, Solomon Kane, Deep Madness and more? I think it might leave like Lord of the Rings: Journeys in Middle-Earth did. Not because it is a bad game, it isn’t, it’s a lot of fun, but because I own so many.

16 Games of Shelf Space

It’s a tough list to cut. I look at Star Wars: Imperial Assault, Cry Havoc, Onirim, and Gloom especially, and I really enjoy all of those games. But the question is, will I play them? Or am I just keeping them on my shelf because I like the idea of getting back to them sometime?

I think it’s more the latter than I’d actually get back to the games. And some of them, Gloom in particular, that depends on the group. If you like a tell a story, it works well, if you just play the cards, the game is fine. So, all of these are leaving, probably over the weekend, to get traded into my FLGS. And I’m looking at a few games, Escape The Room and Star Wars Unlock, that I need to play to then free up more space.

Which one, if you could get one of these games I’m trading in, would you want to play most?

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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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