Best games to play with my 10, 7 and 7 year olds. ie, this list is exclusively games we enjoy together. Given that younger twin loses interest in many games, these are the ones she does stick with. The other two are happy to play anything, though if older twin has a piece taken in Frustration, she gets, well, frustrated. Unless it's her grandmother, in which case she is happy to lose.
1. Labyrinth
2. Enchanted Forest (not a difficult game, but lot of laughs and engages all three of them, which is a rarity)
3. Monopoly Olympic edition. Has ace third 'Mr Monopoly' dice which accelerates game and causes chaos.
4. Battleships. Obviously not all four play at the same time.
5. Indigo.
I am the only person I am aware of who enjoys a card/dominoes game called Mapominoes. Started with Europe edition, also have Africa, Asia and the (inferior cos too big) UK version.
1. Battlestar Galactica
Probably the best marriage of theme and design ever. A brilliantly executed co-op game with a traitor mechanic. It helps the atmosphere if you're a fan of the show, but it's completely unnecessary.
2. Twilight Struggle
I think I could play this game for ever. A wonderful two-player cold war wargame where you fight with influence rather than armies. The game just gets more rewarding the more you play it as you learn the deck better and develop strategies to mitigate the risk of dangerous cards.
3. Ticket To Ride
Probably the best family game. Very simple to learn, but enough strategy to remain interesting over repeated plays.
4. Money/High Society
Two quite similar auction games by Reiner Knizia where bidding and scoring use the same cards. Every hand played involves an opportunity cost.
A very silly, fun game about "designing" spaceships under time pressure from an assortment of tiles and then flying them on perilous cargo routes through space.
Power Grid is great, by the way, TonTon. My main tip is not to try for the long game. Early leads seem to pay off for the most part. Also don't be tempted to overbuy capacity - it's much more important to have cities connected.
Though bear in mind that's based on a grand total of three games played.
I played it a ton as a kid, because for some reason there was a copy at school, but I haven't played it for 20 years. There's a new, single-player oriented iOS version coming out soon, by the way.
Stratego, Risk and Diplomacy are all very different and all classic games.
Ticket to ride is good. Other favorites are:
-Through the Desert
-Pirate's Cove
-Who's the Boss (negotiation-based game)
If you like Risk, there is an online version started in Canada that is based on this game but is 100 times better, adding many interesting layers: 200+ different maps (many very strategic and complex), multiplayer teams where you can deploy your troops on your teammates territories, "fog" mode where you can only see opponents that are adjacent to your territories (a bit like in Stratego, adding tension and complexity) and so forth.
I've played about 500 games in the last 3 years and now rank in the top 100 out of 10,000. Here are a few representative maps:
NYC - you get bonus troops for holding subway lines as well as districts/color blocks
A labyrinth map, where you can only attack and move along the arrows
Stalingrad 1941 - airplanes, artillery, boats and snipers galore
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