Citadels

I mentioned last week that Bang! is great for atmosphere and is a decent way to pass the time with a mid-sized group. My main gripe is with player elimination, which generally is not fun and can ruin an otherwise good game night. This is why I prefer Citadels for a large-group game.

Bang! Bang! You're Dead!

Finding a game to play with a group is easy. Finding a good game to play with a group is hard. When many people think "board game," I'm sure Monopoly, Life, Sorry, etc., come to mind. But when stores think of "game," if we can judge their thoughts by what they stock, they must think "party game." That's the bulk of what's sold at Target, at any rate. Party game after party game. Games for large groups of people. The ubiquitous (and insufferable) Apples to Apples. Trivial Pursuit. Pictionary. Guesstures. Scattergories. On and on. These games all have their place, and in their own way they are fun, but these are mostly specific skill based games. (We all, I'm sure, know what it's like to play with the know-it-all in Trivial Pursuit. Or the artist in Pictionary. Or the actor in Guesstures. Or the wordsmith in Scattergories.) Cranium seemed so revolutionary because it balanced these skills against each other...but it's still very much a specific skill based game. If you have the skill outside the game, you have a heavy advantage within the game. What's often missing in party games is strategy and atmosphere. This is where a game like Bang!, the Wild West card game, fills a gap.

Corner on Wheat!

One of my fondest memories of college is family game night. I didn't have any actual family at college, but that didn't stop a group of us from gathering every Saturday night to play games. There were many family game night staples (including Kill Doctor Lucky and Bang!), but one that I was introduced to there and that remains one of my favorite party games is Pit.

Quest for Riches in the Ruins

Playing games with kids can be a drag sometimes. You have to put up with the tantrums. You have to spend lots of time explaining and correcting. And, worst of all, most games for kids are just not fun for adults to play. Uno? Life? Even Clue? No thanks. This was primarily my reasoning behind trying Incan Gold, a 3-8 player party game based on Diamant (and this video review was what convinced me--those kids are great salespeople). I wanted a game to play with my niece and nephew that the adults would enjoy, too. I just wasn't expecting to play it so much when only adults are present.

Apples to Oranges

I have an unfashionable confession to make: I do not enjoy the game Apples to Apples. I will play it, sure, if such is the will of the people, and I will try to be gracious and make the game fun for others, but in terms of ways to while away an evening with a game, I would choose almost anything else.

The rules for Apples to Apples are simple: one person reads an adjective (a green card), and each other player has a set number of nouns (red cards) in their hand. The other players choose a red card that they think the person who read the green card will think is the most fitting noun for that adjective. Players can lobby for any option they choose, but at the end, only the judge--the reader--has the power to decide which player will be awarded the green card. Five green cards collected in this way wins the game.