Games to Play with the Kids

Ice Cool – This is a dexterity one and I’m going to lean in that direction. A lot of kids games aren’t that fun for kids because they are very simple. But Ice Cool is a great dexterity game that works with kids of a lot of different ages. Who doesn’t want to make a cool shot as you try and get a penguin around a high school? Probably some people, but they’re wrong, and this one because that’s mainly what the game is, is really simple to play.

Beat the 8-Ball – Another one that works well with kids. Beat the 8-Ball is a simple game as well, most games for kids should be. But it’s also one that’s fun for adults. The game is basically a big game of chicken. There is an 8-Ball coming down a funnel, you want to be ahead of the 8-Ball but not the first person ahead of it. So how long can you wait? If you’re the first person ahead of it, no points, but if you’re after it, negative points.

Games with the Whole Group

Deception: Murder in Hong Kong – The young kids are in bed and now you want a big group game. But a lot of the big party games are not that fun, like your classic Taboo or Catch Phrase. If you want something with a bit more on it and a lot of fun, try Deception: Murder in Hong Kong.

This is a game of figuring out who the killer is. But one person is helping the murder to throw suspicion in other directions. Another knows who did it but not how but they don’t want to get caught. And someone is sending up reports to try and help point everyone in the right direction. It’s really a bit social deduction game, but with more going on because you always have a stream of real information.

Wits & Wagers – If you want a more classic party game, Wits & Wagers is a great choice. This one plays a pretty high number and is a trivia game. Now, normally I don’t recommend trivia games. But this one works. Two things that make it work are that it’s a numbers based game. So every answer is a number which everyone is guessing. So that automatically helps set a range. Then you bid on whose number you think is right. If you’re right, you win money and you want to win the most money. So even if you know nothing about, let’s say baseball, if your uncle does, you can bid on their answer.

Games with Family

Sagrada – Again, the young kids are in bed. You want to play a game, but you don’t have enough for want to break out a party game. That’s the type of game I’m looking at here. Sagrada is a good choice because it’s pretty but also it has some choices to it. You are drafting dice to make a stained glass window. But you can’t have the same number or same color next to each other, except diagonally. So can you make the best stained glass window?

The Crew – A lot of the older generation, so into their 60’s and 70’s now, or older, grew up with some of the more common games being trick-taking. Well, The Crew is going to give some trick-taking without them having that much of an advantage at it because it’s cooperative. Each round objectives are given or drawn depending on the version you have. You need to complete those, and generally a specific person needs to complete them.

So using trick taking knowledge you now need to figure out how to empty out hands the right way so that all the cards are played out. But I might need to not take a trick with pink in it. You might need to take the first trick, how can that all be set-up?

Happy Holidays from Nerdologists

With those suggestions, I just want to say a big Happy Holidays to everyone. Thank you all for reading and joining with me. There are more articles queued up and ready to go next week as I start to look ahead to 2024.

Do you find you have any family traditions that are nerdy that you love? For my family, it is board games, we generally play an evening or two around Christmas and New Years. But let me know yours.

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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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Hues and Cues

This is a pretty new game that people might not have noticed. I believe it came out in 2020 or the very end of 2019, not an ideal time for group games, This is a game that is very different than most group games that you’ve played. I think it plays really different than a lot of party games, but still has a party feel to it.

In Hues and Cues you try to get players to guess your color on a massive grid of colors. You give a one word clue, everyone guesses, and then a clue that is up to two words. The person giving the clue gets points for people being close to their color. Right on or one away. Guessers get points for being right one the color, one away, or two away. It’s fun because only one person can get it perfect but everyone else can still get points for being close.

Wits & Wagers

Using a similar concept to Hues and Cues about being close, Wits & Wagers is a trivia game where knowing the answer doesn’t matter as much. What matters is betting on the closest answer without going over. All the questions have numerical based answers so everyone writes down their answer. Then you bet on which one is correct.

This game might not work the best with complete strangers, but if you know your players you might know who to bid on. I know sports fairly well, so if a sports question comes up, then you might bet on my answer. But most of the time, the answers towards the middle tend to be right, even with people guessing. It’s a good one for playing with parents or grandparents as well.

Deception: Murder in Hong Kong

This is my social deduction game for the list. Honestly, I don’t like most social deduction games, but they do work well on big groups. I do, however, like Deception: Murder in Hong Kong a lot. That’s because you start knowing information. This might sound odd, but too many social deduction games you don’t know anything.

Here, there has been a murder committed and everyone is trying to figure out the murder weapon and the clue. Well, everyone except the murder, their accomplice, and the forensic scientist. The forensic scientist is giving clues to point people in the right direction. But they can only do this off of tiles that they have which might have stuff like the age of the victim on it or different locations where the murder happened.

So, you can see how you always know something. The murder and accomplice are trying to keep people off the trail. There is a witness who knows murder is but not the weapon or clue who is trying to keep the focus on the murderer but not too much. It leads to some great moments of discussion and accusation. And it’s always interesting at the end of the game to hear the story the forensic scientist had in their head to get people to guess.

Sushi Go Party!

While it has party in the name, Sushi Go Party isn’t so much a party game. It’s a drafting and set collection game that works well with any number of players. You are drafting a card out of a hand and then playing it .You pass your hand and draft another card, but there are so many ways to score points in this game.

Sometimes you are trying to collect as many of one thing as you can. If you get a lot of dumplings that’s worth a lot of points. Or with tofu, you get the most points if you have exactly two tofu. There are deserts which score you points at the end of the game as you collect more. Or there are some where you want to be the first to a certain number of them. Plus there are specials that let you score in different ways. Wasabi gives you extra points for the next nigiri you get.

This game really works well and it doesn’t take much longer the more people you have. That’s a nice thing about drafting games is that everyone plays at the same time. And with Sushi Go Party, as compared to Sushi Go, you can change up the board between games, so the game feels different every time.

Welcome To…

This is the final game on the list. I could put in a whole lot more, but you can find some of those on your own. There are a lot of good big groups games out there. I wanted to put a roll and write on the list. I did a holiday list already for roll and write games, which you can read here. Some roll and writes just work well for large groups and Welcome To is one of them.

In this game you are building your perfect suburb. Putting up white picket fences, getting your neighborhoods all set-up. You score points for the sizes of neighborhoods you have, how many parks there are, how you advertise, how many pools there are, and more. It’s a game where everyone fills out their sheet at the same time. It works for basically an infinite number of players as long as people can see the cards.

Honorable Mention

There are a lot of games that can work well for this list. I skipped a ton of roll and writes, in fact I could have just make a list of roll and write games that an play an infinite number of players. But that’d be boring. I also didn’t do some bigger games that play up to six like Nemesis, Deep Madness or Unfathomable. They aren’t quite the games that work well for a holiday, unless your group is really into gaming.

I could have also added games like Unlock and Exit or any escape room style game. Those technically can play with an infinite number of players. I prefer them though with less than six because you need to be able to see the cards and I think four tends to be about the right number for that.

What games do you pull out with your family or friends around the holidays?

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Before we get to the list, let’s start by talking a little bit about how the list is made. You can see some of the process that I go through in this article earlier this week. But as to the games on the list, these are all games I’ve rated on Board Game Geek.

To go along with that, the games that are in my Top 100, I’ll have links to where you can buy them. I tend to do most of my board game shopping online through Miniature Market and Coolstuff Inc. I’m going to try and use their links over something like Amazon, but I do want you to be able to find these games if they look cool. Let’s get to the list.

Board Games 100-91

100. Skull

This is a great little bluffing game. Normally bluffing games aren’t my thing. I am not the best at bluffing in them, but this one works for me. It is small and it’s simple. When it comes down to it, I think the simplicity of what you are doing in the game is really what works for me. And I like the twist on it that when you bid to flip you have to flip your own stuff first. That means sometimes when you bluff you don’t have a skull in your like you’ll end up flipping our own and beat yourself.

Buy on Miniature Market

99. Takenoko

This game is just a really cute one. Takenoko has you trying to complete objectives to get the most points. The game is just maybe over a gateway game level but really good. The cute factor really sells this game for a lot of people. I like that you have three different ways that you can score points in the game. The fact you can go for panda, gardener or tile points is nice, allows for different players to have different strategies.

Buy on Miniature Market

98. Shadowrun Crossfire: Prime Runner Edition

This is one that I really need to play again. It’s a fun game where you are building out a deck of cards while trying to defeat different threats. You each also start out a different way, so like the RPG it’s based on, Shadowrun, you are building up special skills that only you have. A challenging game for sure, but I like it when my cooperative games challenge me.

Buy on Amazon

97. Photosynthesis

This is a game about trees. It looks like it should be a nice and friendly game, it is not. Photosynthesis is an abstract game where you are planting your trees, figuring out how to maximize your sun points, and blocking your opponent from getting their own sun points. It’s a good puzzle of a game though because the sun rotates around the board. That means you can set yourself up for some really good turns, but on the flip side you might end up with some turns with no points, if you aren’t careful. Fun game, but very mean.

Buy on Coolstuff Inc

96. Mysterium

Another game I haven’t played in a while, Mysterium. This one really is because of the pandemic because I think it works better at a higher count, and I don’t own the game. But in this game one person is a ghost trying to give everyone else clues so that they try and figure a murder, weapon, and location. We don’t play it quite right but we play it in a way that I think is more fun, and it keeps the base of the game the same.

Buy on Amazon

95. First Martians: Adventures on the Red Planet

This one I think would be lower on the list for a lot of people because of a bad taste from the app for the start. But the game itself is a good time and you can get it cheap now. The app is definitely better than it was, but you’re trying to survive on Mars. You station might be breaking down, the :44supply ship might have crashed, or something like that and now you are trying to survive the scenario. It’s a challenging game but it feels good when you win. Think of this as The Martian the board game.

Buy on Coolstuff Inc

94. Pandemic Legacy: Season 2

I like my legacy games, and Pandemic Legacy Season 2 is a very good one. The Pandemic games really do a great job of giving you tons of new stuff to unlock during the game. And the story in this one is good. I will say you do need to play the first season of Pandemic Legacy first. Also that while the mechanics are similar to Pandemic they feel different and the game feels unique as you play it and explore the world.

Buy on Miniature Market

93. The Lord of the Rings

Another very challenging cooperative game. The Lord of the Rings is a good book themed Lord of the Rings game that is pretty abstracted. But the artwork is great, the challenge level is great, and you feel the pressure of trying to get the one ring delivered. There was a new edition that came out not too long ago, but I prefer the older version without the extra plastic in it. And I like that you play only as the Hobbits because that’s fun as well.

Buy on Miniature Market

92. Wits & Wagers

The first party game to hit the list. This is my preferred trivia game to play because you don’t need to be great at trivia. Every answer is number based and that means that you are just trying to bet on the right number without going over. So if it’s something about a movie and you know the most about movies, maybe bet on your own, but if you know nothing about sports, bet the other person who knows sports answer. Being close is just as good as being right and knowing who might know best.

Buy on Amazon

91. Criss Cross

This one has dropped a long ways. A lot of that is that I’ve played a lot of roll and write games since I did the list last. There are games that I’ve played which has pushed this one down. That said, Criss Cross is still a really good game. It’s pretty lucky as to what comes up on the dice, but how you put in that combination of two really matters, since everyone is using the same dice. It’s a good quick game and one I wouldn’t say no to playing, but I might not pull off my self as much anymore.

Not on Amazon, Miniature Market, or Coolstuff Inc

There we have the first 10 games on the list. I really like all of these. I think on my list as a whole that 7 or 7.5 is about the lowest that can make my list in terms of rankings and most will be 8’s or higher. Let me know which of these games you like best or which one you want to try.

The Next Ten

And if you want to catch it live, you can do so over on YouTube. Checkout the Malts and Meeples like at the top of the article. I have the next four videos scheduled. So you can subscribe and click that notification bell to know when I’m going live. But if you’re catching this later, 8 PM Central Time every Wednesday from now until the week before Thanksgiving, November 17th to see what games make the list.

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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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The Collection

Numbers

A’s – B’s – C’s – D’s – E and F’s – G and H’s – I, J and K’s – L’s – M’s – N, O, and P’s – Q and R’s – S’s – T’s

U through W’s

Unicornus Knights

I picked up Unicornus Knights a while ago because it seems like an interesting and bigger cooperative game. I like the concept of it as well where the is a character traveling around the board, the princess, which is run by the game. You then play generals who keep her path clear so that she can make it to her goal. You defeat bad guys, deploy troops, recruit more heroes, things like that. It’s one that I was able to get on sale, so I picked it up. I hope to get it to the table after it’s been on my shelf for such a long time, but I’m always interested in a cooperative game.

Status: To Be Played

Uno

I’m not 100% sure why I have this game still. Uno was a game that I played a lot growing up, even then I knew the game wasn’t great. But we played it because it was the only thing to play. I got it when I started building my collection and it just stays because it’s a classic I guess. I don’t have a ton redeeming to say about Uno because it’s basically just a take that game that we know. And I’m not a big fan of take that games.

Status: Played

Village Attacks: Convention Exclusive Organised Play Pack

This is an expansion, I know, an exclusive one from GenCon. I’m putting it on the list because I do have the game coming from Kickstarter, fingers crossed this year. I really liked my playthrough of this, though the group I was playing with was kind of odd. It’s fun to play a tower defense game where you are the bad guys and are trying to keep the villagers, with their pitchforks at bay. I like how it has scenarios as well, but it isn’t really campaign based.

Status: Played

Welcome to New Las Vegas

I like my flip and writes, roll and writes, draft and writes, and flick and writes. When a sequel to Welcome To… came along, I knew I was going to be interested in it. This one instead of building a neighborhood, you are putting together downtown of Las Vegas, getting golf courses, hotels, and shows built, and more. This one is a step up from Welcome To… from what I’ve heard, but still really interested me because of how much I love the first one.

Status: To Be Played

Welcome To….

See above for blank and writes. Welcome To… is, as I describe it, about building your perfect stepford neighborhood, with white picket fences everywhere to meet the demand of your neighborhood. You do this by building fences, parks, pools, and more. The game is fast and plays well with any number of players because everyone is doing things at the same time. It’s one of my favorite if not my favorite of the blank and write games.

Status: Played

Western Legends

A game that I’ve wanted for a long time, Western Legends is an open world western game where you can become an outlaw and rob the bank, but watch out for the other players and the Marshall who might try and bust you. Or you can go down the good path, take cattle across the land, prospect for gold, or just play a hand of poker. And if you ever die, you can just decide to go down a different path. I love the concept of doing anything and that doing anything will get you points, which is what you need to win the game, can you just do it better and faster than everyone else?

Status: To Be Played

Wits & Wagers

A go to group game, Wits & Wagers makes trivia games fun. In this game, you don’t have to get it right, you just have to bet on the person who does, or gets it closest at least, without going over. Players put down a numerical guess to some question, they’re sorted by number and people bet on which one they think is right. If you get it right, you get a payout, if you get it wrong, you get nothing. But then you go again, and you can bet on whomever you want, so if it’s a sports question and I know more about sports than you do, bet on my answer, or maybe you know what year an album came out or would have a better idea than I would, so I’d bet on yours. Super simple but fun trivia game.

Status: Played

WWE Legends Royal Rumble Card Game

Last game starting with W is all about the WWE. The Royal Rumble is the best pro wrestling pay-per-view. This is a take that game, like Uno, but unlike Uno, this one is a silly game where you are trying to get your opponents, through card play over the top rope. When that happens a new wrestler comes in to take their place, so no player is every eliminated until the end of the game. Because the Royal Rumble is a last man in the ring event. I really want to play this one with wrestling friends who we watch the pay-per-views together, hopefully sometime in this upcoming year.

Status: To Be Played

That’s is for U through W. A number of games in there, and a handful of expansions that I didn’t mention. V is the closest letter to not having a game in it, but I’m counting Village Attacks expansion because it is there. What game should I checkout that begins with U, V, or W? What are the best games for you starting with each letter?

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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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100 to 91

90 to 81

80 to 71

70 to 61

60 to 51

Plus a few notes on how I’ve put together the list:

• These are my favorite, you want what people consider best, see the Board Game Geek Top 100
• If a game you love isn’t on the list, it might be be coming, I might not have played it, and if I have, it’s 101
• If a game looks cool, I have links to buy it from CoolStuffInc or Amazon, or you can grab most at your FLGS
• There are a few games, Destiny 2 Player versus regular Destiny where if they are basically the same thing, I only do one of them

50. Onirim

I think this is the purely solo game on the list and it’s dropped a little bit, but I’m still enjoying it a lot. The app is great for playing this game, but I do like the physical one as well. In this game you are trapped in a nightmare and trying to escape, to do this you are trying to find eight doors. This is done by playing down cards in a row where you are trying to get three cards of the same color in a row, when you do you find a door. But there are nightmares in the deck that are trying to stop you, you have a few different ways you can deal with them. I think that’s where the game really is interesting, because there are powerful key cards that can just get a door in without any hassle, but they are also be used to deal with a nightmare. Or you could discard cards off the top of the deck, but that might get rid of a key. Or you can discard your hand or put a door back into a deck. There’s a good amount of strategy in what seems like a small and random card game.

Last Year: 36

49. Stipulations

One of my top party games, this is one that I’m glad I backed on Kickstarter, but glad that I didn’t back the “adult” version of it. In this game a person picks from four different categories, you might have a superpower, an occupation, lifetime supply of something, or a fulfilled dream, but then, everyone writes a stipulation for it, and you pick your favorite. This game works really well because you can tailor it for your group. If it’s a bunch of college friends drinking, you can make it as adult or dirty as you want, if it’s Christmas with your great aunt and 10 year old cousin, you can make it clean. And it can just get silly, like most party games and eventually people end up writing down weird stuff or reoccurring jokes. It’s really the same concept as a Cards Against Humanity or Apples to Apples, but it’s much more replayable because you aren’t using cards to answer/fulfill the prompt, which means you can change up your answer for a stipulation for the superpower of flight from “But only when you fart” to “But never more than 6 inches off the ground.” and the prompt will feel different when you play.

Last Year: 42

48. Silver

This one wasn’t ranked last year because I hadn’t played it much, it was just one time at GenCon where I kind of got the rules. But I’ve played it a lot since, I’ve probably played the physical game 10-15 times this year, and Silver Bullet expansion 3 times, and the app who knows how many times, but a lot. I am really enjoying this game now and the standalone expansion(s) – I have two, but only played one. In this game you are trying to get your village of 5 cards down to the fewest points possible. The trick is your cards are face down and you only know at the start of a round what two of them are. Cards have values from 0 to 12 and each card has a special power. You can use them for a power, or you can swap out cards with what you’ve drawn or is on top of the deck. If you have two of the same number you can trade in those two for one card, which allows you to get down in cards and lower the number of points you can possibly have. There’s some luck with the game for sure, but overall it’s a very fast and fun game that is a bit mean with a bunch of take that cards, especially in the Silver Bullet expansion, but still a lot of fun.

Last Year: Not Ranked

47. Wits & Wagers

Another party game on the list, this time it’s Wits & Wagers which is a classic party game at this point. In Wits and Wagers you are putting down a best guess or a random number, so some trivia question, it might be something like “How many goals did Pele have in his professional career?” Everyone writes down a number, you sort the numbers and then you bet on who you think was the closest without going over. If you’re right you get more chips to bet or to save because however much money you have at the end is your score. This game works well because you don’t need to know anything about soccer. I know a fair amount, so if you’re playing with me and know that, you can bet on my guess even if you guessed either 10 or 10 million for your number. So you get to play the people and think about who might know an answer, or at least have a better clue than you. The answer, by the way, is over 1,000 for goals by Pele, just in case you get that question sometime.

Last Year: 68

46. Dead of Winter: A Crossroads Game

This one has dropped a bit for me as you can see. I do really enjoy this game a lot, and I would gladly play it, the only reason I don’t play it more is because it’s a bit of a longer game. This is a game about surviving the zombie apocalypse, for a scenario, with everyone having their own goals, and potentially having a traitor in your midst. This is one of those semi-cooperative games where it tries to make everyone look guilty to help hide the traitor. That is one slightly issue that I have with the game, if you beat the scenario, and a lot of them are hard just purely cooperative, you still don’t win unless you get your secret objective. But the rest of the game works really well, and I consider it a half win if you beat the the scenario. This game also has a thing called Crossroads cards, which is why it has crossroads in the name. These cards offer you tough choices that you’ll have to make during the game and are one of the highlights of the game. We have a house rule for them where instead of drawing one and seeing if it happens on someone’s turn, you draw two and if one of them happens, you do the crossroads event. It just highlights that fun part of the game more. Overall, a really enjoyable game that is just tricky to get to the table all the time because of it’s length.

Last Year: 18

45. Ascension: Deckbuilding Game

For a lot of people Dominion is their gateway or introduction to deckbuilding, but I don’t like Dominion, so for me, Ascension is the one that I’d use. This is a pure deck building game where you are getting cards and adding them to your deck to buy more cards and fight monsters. Why I like this one so much better than Dominion is that Dominion has a fixed Market, so if someone can spot the ideal combo before the game starts, they’ve probably already won. Whereas Ascension has an ever changing market. Whenever a card is bought or a monster is killed in the market row, a new card is flipped out, and it might be the perfect card for you, or it might be another monster, or who knows what. So you have to be able to adjust a bit more on the fly and you can pick some really good strategies and just stick with them, but depending on how the cards come out, you might have to still adjust even if you have you ideal strategy started. For me, that’s what I like in a game and why I am less of a Euro gamer and more of a Amerithrash gamer, which Ascension feels like compared to Dominion.

Last Year: 46

44. Cry Havoc

Cry Havoc is an asymmetrical game where the players have different ways of building up their point totals. And it’s also a unique game with a bit of deck building and some really interesting combat. I like this game as it has some area control, some diceless combat, and really different strategies for the different factions. In this game you’re trying to control crystals which will give you points at the end of a round, to do that you need to take over areas, battling for the crystals there. The combat is diceless as I said, but it has an interesting flow to it, first the attacker will place their troops on the area majority, kill, or capture spots. Then the defender will, and it basically goes along the lines of, check majority, check kills, check captures, and if you kill someone who would capture one of your pieces that won’t happen. But you have cards in your hand that you use both to do actions, but that can influence combat as well. So maybe it’s a close fight and we’re tied for majority in area control, I could play a card to move someone up there if I’m the attacker so I can take the area, but maybe my opponent will do something to change that. The combat is different but really enjoyable.

Last Year: 52

43. Century: Golem Edition

This, for me, is a Splendor killer, though, I still have both in my collection. Century: Golem Edition, is a fun hand building game where you are trying to create an engine of cards that is going to get your gems, and trade gems in such a way that you can score golem cards. The first person to five golems triggers end game. But where the game works, besides the amazing components and artwork, is the card play. You can build up a combo that might start by giving you three yellows, which you can turn into two greens, which maybe you can turn into a pink, which can be turned into a blue and two greens, and you can really find interesting ways to manipulate the gems that you have. The game plays extremely fast with either playing a card and doing it’s action, getting a golem, or picking back up your hand of cards being all that you do on a turn. It really does have a good amount of strategy to it, but it’s still easy to teach and to score so it might be just slightly too much for a complete game novice, but someone who has something like Ticket to Ride or Catan under their belt will be able to learn it.

Last Year: 33

42. Not Alone

There have been a number of party games on the list thus far, and while Not Alone isn’t a party game, it is one that can play a larger player count. This is a one versus all game where the all are playing crew of a spaceship who have crashed onto a planet and are waiting rescue. However, the planet and the monster on the planet are not happy that they are there. So the planet is trying to take everyone out before the rescue ship can get there. It’s an interesting game of cat and mouse, because the crew can strategize amongst themselves as much as they want, but they have to do it so that the monster can listen. So do they try and send him down a false path, or can they split things up in such a way to be able to do most of what they want. This is another hand management style game for the crew as they have various locations that they can go to, but they discard it to their own, visible, discard pile and the monster has powers that it can use throughout the game. The game has basically always been close when we play it, and it’s a pretty easy game to play, but one that has a nice tension. Probably, actually, a pretty good Halloween game as it has some horror elements to it.

Last Year: 41

41. Cross Clues

This apparently was the party game section. Not ranked last year because it came out this year, Cross Clues is a fun and challenging party game where people are giving clues so that other players can determine the intersection point between two things. To put this better, you have a spread sheet that is 5 by 5, each row and column has a header of a word, so A might be stick and 1 might be wind. If I have the card that has A1 denoted on it, I have to give a clue that will get the other players to guess A1, maybe I go with something like Kite. But maybe C is tail, now kites have tails as well as sticks as structure on them, so which do I mean. So maybe that’s not the best clue, maybe for rustle, but maybe D is cattle, so wind and cattle might make sense for that. So you have to be clever with your clues, and you are trying to get as many done in five minutes as you can, or since we’ve played it across Zoom, just seeing how many out of the 25 on a 5 by 5 grid or 16 for a medium challenge, we can get and score that. It’s a clever game that works really well, and I’m not sure how many word cards there are, but depending on how they intersect the game has a ton of replayability. Definitely a party game that everyone should checkout, in my opinion, and probably one that’d be really popular now, if it wasn’t for the pandemic.

Last Year: Not Ranked

So what from this part of the list, the beginning of the Top 50, looks most interesting to you? Any you’d put higher in your own Top 100?

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There are some games out there that are high contact games. Everyone is using the same cards, pieces, pool of resources, and things are just getting touched quite often. A couple of examples of this would be 7 Wonders or Sushi Go Party! where you are passing hands of cards for a draft. Classic games like Monopoly or Clue where you are passing dice and money or cards around, or Scrabble where you are drawing tiles out of the same bag, all of these are going to have more cross contamination potential. Now, we don’t know the precise likelihood of transmitting this disease that way, you’re definitely at more risk just sitting around the table and being in proximity. But if you’ve taken precautions, people are wearing masks, these wouldn’t be your ideal game options.

Instead lets look at games that have limited amounts of contact or potentially no contact.

The first genre of game that makes a lot of sense is roll and write games. Now, not all roll and write games work in this situation. Yahtzee has communal dice that are shared. However, Yahtzee has standard six sided dice, so, if you’re like me, you have plenty of six sided dice lying around for dice for everyone. But more so the roll and write games that are using a communal pool for placing. So games like Welcome To…, Criss Cross, and Second Chance, one person is rolling the dice or flipping the cards that everyone is using for a given round of the game. All you’ll end up with as points of contact as the player sheets and possibly writing utensils. However, I’ve laminated mine, so it’d be easy to wipe those off and the dry erase markers as people are taking them. Even if you haven’t laminated them, a pencil and a piece of paper as single points of contact isn’t bad for a game.

I’d also say that some party games work. Now, some, Catch Phrase or the likes where you are passing something around in a circle won’t work well. But there are others that have a similar roll and write amount of contact. I think that there are ways you can make something like Wits & Wagers work, where instead of having everyone sort and people grabbing random dry erase boards back, you put your own guess in the right spot, numerically and then take it back at the end of the round. Scattergories is another one that would work as you are coming up with answers. If your game is set-up well with the sheets and category lists already in the folder, there would be limited to no contact if you let a single person roll.

Finally, there are some other games that just don’t have much interaction in the game. A few that pop into my head are games like Dice Throne where each character has it’s specific deck, specific cards, and specific player board. So there is no reason to touch the other person’s cards. Skulk Hollow actually has some of that with the two asymmetric sides. While they react and interact with each other, that is only as a game play mechanic, not something that is physically done. Even something like Photosynthesis, which has a shared board, but you only are ever dealing with your own trees on that board. If you have one person who moves the sun around, and you lay out the point chips so that only one person is touching them, it’d be quite easy to have little to no interaction.

Now, the simplest way would be to play the games digitally. As I said, the proximity to people is going to be the bigger thing than the interaction of the game components for your likelihood to catch a disease. Even when there isn’t something like Covid-19 going around, it’s very often that “con-crud” will happen as big gaming conventions where a group of people get sick from being there. And that’s not because of interactions with games or anything, it’s about being around the people. But, if you are concerned about the physical interaction with the components of the game, there are certainly options out there that you can try when playing.

I think the final and best piece of advice I can give for getting games back to your table and starting up gaming after illness is going around, whether it’s the seasonal flu or something like Covid-19, if you’re worried about exposure but you still want to game in person, limit the amount of people you see. Don’t go to the game night at the local FLGS (Friendly Local Game Store), or don’t have your normal fifteen people over, instead, invite a couple or a couple of people to game with and do that a few times with the same people, then you’ve limited your points of contact to the possible infection. That, more than finding those multiplayer low component interaction games is going to make a difference, but those low interaction games won’t hurt either. And then just clean surfaces once people have left, there’s not going to be any ways to completely eliminate risk, but you can be smart about limiting it.

What ideas do you have to starting up your board game night around when people have been sick? Are there any games that don’t require component interaction that you’d play?

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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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