Family Christmas Games

tlchimera

I used to work in a board game shop (they do exist!) and teach kids how to play board games (it was a fun job..)

Some of the most popular games were:

Ages 4+:
Feed the Woozle (made by Peaceable Kingdom)
Hey that's my fish!
Labyrinth
The Magic Labyrinth

Age 7+:
Ticket to Ride
King of Tokyo
Carcassonne
Survive: Escape from Atlantis (send sharks to eat dad and try to get off an island safely!)
Forbidden Island

Age 10+:
Pandemic
Takenoko (pandas!)
Settlers of Catan
Last Night on Earth (zombies!)
Dominion (bit more serious but a very clever interesting game. Great for those who like lots of strategy.)

Some good social games for large groups of people:
Dixit (or Dixit Odyssey to play up to 12)
The Resistance
Fluxx (little card game, lots of different versions: zombie, star (science fiction: Doctor Who, Star Wars, Star Trek etc), eco, oz (wizard of Oz.)

There's plenty of crossover as well - 6 year olds enjoy Survive, and I know many adults who play the games listed in the 7/10+ categories (including me!)

For the more traditional games: you can never go wrong with Scrabble or a nice Cribbage set.

Hope this helps!

SavingMoney_z

tlchimera wrote: »

I used to work in a board game shop (they do exist!) and teach kids how to play board games (it was a fun job..)

Some of the most popular games were:

Ages 4+:
Feed the Woozle (made by Peaceable Kingdom)
Hey that's my fish!
Labyrinth
The Magic Labyrinth

Age 7+:
Ticket to Ride
King of Tokyo
Carcassonne
Survive: Escape from Atlantis (send sharks to eat dad and try to get off an island safely!)
Forbidden Island

Age 10+:
Pandemic
Takenoko (pandas!)
Settlers of Catan
Last Night on Earth (zombies!)
Dominion (bit more serious but a very clever interesting game. Great for those who like lots of strategy.)

Some good social games for large groups of people:
Dixit (or Dixit Odyssey to play up to 12)
The Resistance
Fluxx (little card game, lots of different versions: zombie, star (science fiction: Doctor Who, Star Wars, Star Trek etc), eco, oz (wizard of Oz.)

There's plenty of crossover as well - 6 year olds enjoy Survive, and I know many adults who play the games listed in the 7/10+ categories (including me!)

For the more traditional games: you can never go wrong with Scrabble or a nice Cribbage set.

Hope this helps!

Great list, found a few new ones that I might try over Christmas

DigForVictory

Board games? Monopoly very popular (So much so we have a timer & cash up at 3 hours.) Ludo for a change, Snakes & ladders (then redraw the board & customise it for the year we've had - smashing reminder of previous years even if the spelling is dire!)

We play Beetle with scouts - paper, pen & dice. Great fun & you'd be amazed/appalled/weeping with laughter at how comeptitive granny & toddler can be. (Yikes if they team up!)
Same tackle for consequences (more pens needed, but not dice) - and the stories those tell can get sillier & sillier.

Cribbage? Must give that a try when we have a senior relative who knows it to teach us.

Extended family & we play Mah Jongg - 4 players but each player "guided" by at least 1 other! The real thing with tiles not the computer-ma-bob mischief

moromir

We like a game called Qwixx - its quite hard to find with English instructions (popular in Germany)

This is a version with English instructions -

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/271607088326

LannieDuck

tlchimera wrote: »

I used to work in a board game shop (they do exist!) and teach kids how to play board games (it was a fun job..)

Some of the most popular games were:

Ages 4+:
Feed the Woozle (made by Peaceable Kingdom)
Hey that's my fish!
Labyrinth
The Magic Labyrinth

Age 7+:
Ticket to Ride
King of Tokyo
Carcassonne
Survive: Escape from Atlantis (send sharks to eat dad and try to get off an island safely!)
Forbidden Island

Age 10+:
Pandemic
Takenoko (pandas!)
Settlers of Catan
Last Night on Earth (zombies!)
Dominion (bit more serious but a very clever interesting game. Great for those who like lots of strategy.)

Some good social games for large groups of people:
Dixit (or Dixit Odyssey to play up to 12)
The Resistance
Fluxx (little card game, lots of different versions: zombie, star (science fiction: Doctor Who, Star Wars, Star Trek etc), eco, oz (wizard of Oz.)

There's plenty of crossover as well - 6 year olds enjoy Survive, and I know many adults who play the games listed in the 7/10+ categories (including me!)

For the more traditional games: you can never go wrong with Scrabble or a nice Cribbage set.

Hope this helps!

I was just coming along as a boardgame enthusiast to suggest some of the lesser known ones that are brill, and tlchimera has beaten me to it!

Also: Quirkle, Guillotine, Citadels, Settlers of Catan... and if you're up for a more complex game, Arkham Horror is brill once you figure out the rules!

MrsChristmas

We played 5 second rule & Hedbanz last year around the table, all ages & we were crying with laughter.
This year we've added draw something & battleships.