Board Games!

Happy New Year everyone!!
Hope everyone had a safe and fun New Year’s Eve! I partied it up in the Schuylkill Co with some aweshome LVC besties!

  Yeahhhh twas goot times.

Also since my last blog post was Christmas!
Me and The Boyfriend showing off some goods. I scored some sweet books, socks, candy, and many new board games.
Speaking of boards games, I’ve decided to dedicate this blog post to a review of my new games!

Review of my new games!

1. Charades-in-a-Box: Celebrity Edition

I got this game from one of my LVC friends, Ben, in a Pollyanna gift exchange. Each card has three people/items/places etc to act out, with a chili pepper rating beside them. The more the chili peppers, the hard the clue is to guess. You chose one from the card to act out to your team.
Charades is always fun, and it’s nice to have it in a box rather than make up the clues. The only thing bad about this game is that some of the clues are seemingly impossible to act out. This one, for instance:

“Picking dumb names for your children.”

Hmm. Ok. How would you ever act this out?? Plz help me here.
Other than this, the game is fun! I give it a B.
2. Scrabble SLAM!
My aunt gave me this game.  It is really easy and has a playing time of no more than 10 min. If you’ve every played the card game ‘Spit’, it has a similar concept: you have cards that have a letter of the alphabet on the front and back.  You pick a four-letter word to start with, and have to build on it by changing one letter at a time from the cards in your hand. First person to use all their cards wins.  You can play this game with 2-4 people. 

I’m a big fan of word games, and this is a great, easy, portable one. Game play is really quick and it gets you thinking.  It’s really easy to get the hang of, too.  This is a new fam favorite. A!
3. Wits & Wagers
This game is a trivia game where you don’t actually have to know your trivia.  Each round starts with a question everyone answers, with usually very obscure answers that it’s unlikely to know. Everyone shows their guesses, and the players proceed to bet on which guess they think is the closest without going over.
Thus, the way to win the game is not to know all your trivia, but rather be able to bet on which answers are closest.
This game was really different and fun. Since winning doesn’t solely depend on trivia, anyone can play it and easily have an equal chance of winning. It’s a good game for players spanning a wide range of ages and is a fun game to play with family. I give it an A.
4. Party-Tini
Partini, or as it’s also known Party-Tini, is a little like Cranium—it consists of multiple little games like charades, clay sculpting, or guess-that-tune that your team has to complete in order to win. There are some added games that Cranium doesn’t have—Bouncers, which consists of mini games using little cups and 2 balls; What Not, where you have to get your team to guess the clue by saying what it is not; and Straight Up, where you write true or funny sentences about your team mates.

There is no board, but rather you collect the coasters which state the games on them. First team to collect 7 coasters wins.
I’m still not quite sure how I feel about this game. I’ve played it twice so far: once with 4 family members, and once with 10 friends. The family members game was low key but still fun, and I thought the game had a lot of potential. However, when I played it with friends, it was slow moving since the rules for each game had to be explained every time.
I think the game still has a lot of potential if everyone (or most everyone) would know how to play it.  There are a couple other flaws though, one being the “Humdinger” cards; they are by decade, so many time you have to go through a couple songs until you find one where you know the songs. This category also presents a problem when playing with different age groups, in that many times one player will know the songs but other team members won’t. I do like that it’s a lot more flexible than Cranium—if you don't like a game, you can take out the coasters for it. Overall, I think I’ll give this game a B+.
5. Smart Ass
The set-up of this game is pretty simple: a card is read describing either a person, place, or thing. The reader reads down the list of clues and whoever thinks they know what is being described chimes in with their answer. If they are right, they get to roll the die. If they lose, they can’t guess on the card anymore, and the reader continues with the clues until someone guesses it correctly.
The clues start very vague and become more specific the more you read. This game is great for the person who hates when they know the answer to another team’s question—i.e. me—but can’t answer because its’ not their turn.  In this game, anyone can guess, anytime. On top of that, the game includes game pieces of donkeys. Score.
I played this game with family and we all loved it. The clues on the cards cover a wide range of topics, so that an 18-year-old to an 80-year-old were able to play and guess cards. This is another new fam favorite. A.

Yay for new games! I think I have to say though, even with these new additions, that my all-time favorite game ever ever ever is Catchphrase.
For the comments: Do you have any great games to recommend? Also, please help me out in describing how you’d act out “Picking dumb names for your children.”