Board games; what are your favourites? What would you like to play more of?

[ghoti_mhic_uait]

The main thing for me is that I'd like to play *more* tabletop games of all types. For this reason, I seek out games that are interesting family games (ie, at least two of the children want to play them, and they're not boring for adults). I grew up playing games after dinner, I always thought that would be how my life would go, and I get grumpy when it's not going that way. Games in this category include Carcassonne (Andreas enjoys if the game play is generally quick), Continuo (a rather nice tile/colour matching game), Pandemic (this is one for B not A :)), Ascension. I'm sure there are more but it's quite hard to tempt B out and A is really little yet. Hon. mention: I like Hey, That's My Fish but A is too young and B is not interested.

So let me talk about Ascension. Ascension is a bash-the-monsters game that has a very simply game play. The play reminds me of child-friendly card games like Qwitch: when we regularly played games with xanna, we used to open her card game book at a random page and play a game, and a lot of those games had a mechanic of 'draw a hand, play the cards, discard' which is exactly the mechanic here, so it feels comfortable and accessible, and the hit-the-monsters-buy-stuff-get-points aim is also fairly standard, but combining the two really works for me. I'm told by people who play Dominion that they two are very similar - I have never played Dominion.

I tend to choose a game for Date Night too, whereas Colin usually goes for a film (last night's choice was his, and we watched Fight Club, before that we had a few times in a row where we both wanted to watch the same thing) but two player games are good. Lord of the Rings is great for date night; we've played Keyflower for date night once and that worked, so we'll definitely do that again, Smash Up is awesome.

The prompt is quite specific, but I'd like to mention card games too. I love Bridge, which Colin introduced me to, but find it difficult to get enough practice and often muck up because of lack of familiarity. So I'd like more opportunities for that - when we were newly weds we'd semi-often have couples over for dinner and bridge. Now we have three bridge players in the house, it seems like it should be easier to just grab a fourth! Or fifth if we're playing somewhere that needs a parent to be watching the littles more closely. I'm definitely looking forward to Judith learning :) I'd like to play Mao more often, too, and have vague plans for late night Mao parties, which we managed a couple of times when away in the summer. And I miss the gin rummy which was the game I played most often as a teenager, even though my family version bears very little resemblance to the wikipedia version. We recently bought card holders but have yet to try Judith on gin rummy, which was one of the reasons I wanted them.

Comments

[ghoti.livejournal.com]

That all sounds nice. I always loved playing with my grandparents. I never have liked Monopoly, though.

[badriya.livejournal.com]

I've never been that keen. I first saw it when I was about 7 and older cousin had all his friends over to play and they said I couldn't :). I really enjoyed the whole family game because of who was there and the interactions.

[ghoti.livejournal.com]

*nod* I definitely play games just because of who else is playing often. Like, there's a game Kahuna which is about building bridges and occupying islands, and I'd never choose it to play with adults, but I play with Judith because she wants to.

[woodpijn.livejournal.com]

Oh, I love Kahuna! I don't think of it as a kid's game.

[ghoti.livejournal.com]

I bought it for Colin, but actually we just didn't like it when we played together, but for Judith (and almost Andreas) it's a good game and it's growing on me.