Board Games

I love to play board games...  OK, I like to play games whatever they are.   There are a few which I won't play anymore, but those are few and far between.   My husband and I have an amazing collection of games now, though we're still missing a few, like Once Upon a Time.  That's a story game.  You get card with things or events on them and a happily ever after card.  And using those cards you have to tell a story.  It can get pretty silly, and go no where...like when your hero dies for no apparent reason, and then gets resurrected, and brings plague to this city and kills everything there.  Just don't ask.

In any case, here are some of the games I like to play:

Cheapass Games
They aren't all board games, but some of them are.  This is the real name of the company, and they sell games that go from $2 to a high price of $6 or $7.   Basically, you get a simple set of cards, or a flimsy card stock board, and the directions.  You provide the dice, or playing pieces.  They assume that you have tons of little things floating around from all the other games you've bought for $30 or so, and never play anymore.  So make use of that set of Trouble pieces that's missing one.  Or that pink car from Life that no one ever wanted to play with.

Encore
I want...to...sing!!!  Well, here's your chance.  You get a word, and your team has 45 seconds to find a song with that word in it.  And if you get it, then the other team sings, and then you...and...and...and.  It's tons of fun, though it usually very time consuming, mostly because we aren't that picky about the songs.  You're supposed to have 8 words consecutively, and we are sometimes very loose with what qualifies for categories...

Iron Dragon
I love this game.  Absolutely love it...and I'm not sure why!   It's a rail game.  You have a train and a certain amount of money, and you are trying to build and connect all the cities and make the most money.  You balance the money you take in with how much it costs to build there, and go from there.  My friend Betsy and I have a variant where you start with two trains and have to get twice as much money.  It's not easy...  There are also official variants, using the real world, instead of a fantasy setting.  Nippon Rails is Japan, EuroRails is Europe (duh!), and I believe there's even one for Australia.  I haven't played that last one...yet.

Pictionary
The drawing game of Charades.  Well, at least that's how I think about it.  You have a word, and you have 60 seconds to draw that word without using letters.  It's tons of fun, and it requires no drawing ability what-so-ever.   Personally, I'm very good at the stick figure kind of drawing.  And it really tests your ingenuity to find things that rhyme with...gurney or mannequin.  You also get phrases like, "Horse...donkey...Jesus Christ!"  Thank my brother for that one...

Quickword
This is an incredibly word game.  There are four categories: blue, green, pink and grey.  For blue, you choose between two broad categories and write down everything you can think of that would fit in that category within the time limit.  It means you can come up with very interesting things you might find at a football game.  Green, you have 6 categories, and you need one thing for each starting with a specific letter.  In pink you need a letter with two other letters (as indicated on the card) in that order later in the word.  Like A followed by E and T in that order.  So you could use Alphabet.  It's really really hard.   Grey is a mishmash of pink-like options, specific numbers of letters in a word, words using the letters in another word.  It can be easy, and sometimes it's really really hard.  And I haven't played in quite a while now...

Scrabble
Make your own crossword puzzles.  Or something.  You get 7 letters.  And using those seven letters, and at least one on the board, you have to make more words.  Very entertaining, if a little nerve-racking when you have the perfect word that uses all your letters....if you had an e to connect to.  *sigh*

Trivial Pursuit
I love this game!  Even though my husband beats me at it all the time.   *sigh*  Basically, you go around a board answering trivia questions in different categories.  You pick up pie-pieces at specific spots and the first person to get a pie for each color, get to the middle and answer a question correctly is the winner.  There are all sorts of variants, from Millenium to Genus to Young Adult to Movies to Disney.  It's incredibly fun, though it can take a while.  My father once won in one turn.  We wouldn't play with him for a while after that.


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This page last updated 02/16/2000. If you have any questions/problems/comments/help, write me