HONORABLE MENTION

The following games didnt make my  list as they are more of a party game. What I mean by this, is that I dont get to play them that often. They are all great games, but I just dont get to play them enough. You need at least 6 or more to play these games. When we do play them, everyone enjoys them and its a great time.

The games are as follows:

Snake Oil

In the Old West, the wily snake oil salesman had a special talent, getting the most skeptical customers to buy the most dubious products. Now it’s your turn! Invent your own zany two-word products – Rumor Mirror! Burp Balloon! – and sell them to all types of wacky customers. If the round’s customer buys your product, you win!

To set up Snake Oil, each player takes six purple word cards. The customer for the round draws a customer card and announces it. Inventors quickly combine two purple word cards from their hand to form a crazy new product to sell to that customer. When ready, each inventor quickly pitches his or her product directly to the customer. The customer can end any pitch that goes longer than thirty seconds. The customer decides which product to buy and gives the inventor of that product the round’s customer card as the prize. Inventors discard all used word cards and take two new word cards each. The player to the left of the customer becomes the next round’s customer. Play repeats until each player has been the customer once.

Whoever collects the most customer cards wins.

Choice Words

When you play Choice Words, recalling popular phrases is only half the battle. With two types of game play, you’ll need to match other players’ answers – either the most or the least! In “Scratch Play,” score one point for each phrase that other players haven’t thought of. In “Match Play,” score points for correctly guessing how other players will fill in the blanks. As time runs out, the phrases get more far-flung in this hilarious contest of wits and words. Fun for the whole family! Includes 200 Match Play cards, 200 Scratch Play cards, timer, phrase pad and rules. 2 or more players. Better with more players.

Say Anything

Say Anything is a light-hearted game about what you and your friends think. It gives you the chance to settle questions that have been hotly debated for centuries. For instance, “What is the most overrated band of all time?” or “Which celebrity would be the most fun to hang out with for a day?” So dig deep into your heart or just come up with something witty – this is your chance to Say Anything!

How to Play
1) Ask a question from the card you draw. Ex:
– If you could have a “BIG” anything, what would it be?
– What’s the most important invention of the last century?
– Which website would be hardest to live without?
– What’s the best activity for a first date?
– What’s the worst thing to say to a cop after getting pulled over?

2) Everyone else writes an answer and throws it face-up on the table as fast as possible. No duplicate answers are allowed!

3) Secretly choose your favorite response using a genuine state of the art SELECT-O-MATIC 5000

4) Everyone else has two betting tokens to bet on which answer you chose. They can bet both tokens on one answer or split them between two different answers .

Just missing the top 10

Piñata and Cv.

In Piñata, the players compete to collect the colored candy inside the piñatas. Playing pieces that might otherwise be “cubes” are instead wooden markers with a bow-tie shape that mimics the shape of wrapped candies, coming in five different colors. When a player has collected enough candy of a given color, he earns the medal card for that color, and the first player to earn three medal cards wins!

The players play their cards next to several mats on the table. Players usually play their cards on their side of the mats, but they may sometimes play on their opponent’s side, a move that can ruin their opponent’s plans.

CV-Have you ever wondered who you would have been if your life had gone differently? How would you direct your life if everything were up to you? Maybe you would be a magician, or travel around the world? Or maybe big business tempts you, and your goal would be to earn a million dollars?

“CV” means curriculum vitae – your resume – and in the dice and card game CV you will lead a character through his entire life, making many choices about friends, relations, jobs and activities. Everything is possible: a dream job, new relationships and skills. You can be whoever you want!

Gameplay is built around the Yahtzee-style dice rolling and re-rolling system. On their dice, players are trying to roll sets of symbols that allow them to acquire cards; each round these cards give benefits of some kind, such as new symbols and special abilities. At the end of the game, each kind of card scores points for the player.

 

#1 PANDEMIC

This is probably one of the most frustrating games as you will probably lose most of, if not, all the time.

This can make you want to keep playing as you get determined to win. And another thing that is great, is that its a co-operative game. Yiu work together to try and beat this game.

In Pandemic, several virulent diseases have broken out simultaneously all over the world! The players are disease-fighting specialists whose mission is to treat disease hotspots while researching cures for each of four plagues before they get out of hand.

The game board depicts several major population centers on Earth. On each turn, a player can use up to four actions to travel between cities, treat infected populaces, discover a cure, or build a research station. A deck of cards provides the players with these abilities, but sprinkled throughout this deck are Epidemic! cards that accelerate and intensify the diseases’ activity. A second, separate deck of cards controls the “normal” spread of the infections.

Taking a unique role within the team, players must plan their strategy to mesh with their specialists’ strengths in order to conquer the diseases. For example, the Operations Expert can build research stations which are needed to find cures for the diseases and which allow for greater mobility between cities; the Scientist needs only four cards of a particular disease to cure it instead of the normal five—but the diseases are spreading quickly and time is running out. If one or more diseases spreads beyond recovery or if too much time elapses, the players all lose. If they cure the four diseases, they all win!

The 2013 edition of Pandemic includes two new characters—the Contingency Planner and the Quarantine Specialist—not available in earlier editions of the game.

pan

 

#2 KING OF TOKYO

In King of Tokyo, you play mutant monsters, gigantic robots, and strange aliens – all of whom are destroying Tokyo and whacking each other in order to become the one and only King of Tokyo.

At the start of each turn, you roll six dice. The dice show the following six symbols: 1, 2, or 3 Victory Points, Energy, Heal, and Attack. Over three successive throws, choose whether to keep or discard each die in order to win victory points, gain energy, restore health, or attack other players into understanding that Tokyo is YOUR territory.

The fiercest player will occupy Tokyo, and earn extra victory points, but that player can’t heal and must face all the other monsters alone!

Top this off with special cards purchased with energy that have a permanent or temporary effect, such as the growing of a second head which grants you an additional die, body armor, nova death ray, and more…. and it’s one of the most explosive games of the year!

In order to win the game, one must either destroy Tokyo by accumulating 20 victory points, or be the only surviving monster once the fighting has ended.

kkk

#3 SPLENDOR

This game has been flying up my chart as well as wanting to play this all the time. Its so simple but tricky at the same time.

Splendor is a game of chip-collecting and card development. Players are merchants of the Renaissance trying to buy gem mines, means of transportation, shops—all in order to acquire the most prestige points. If you’re wealthy enough, you might even receive a visit from a noble at some point, which of course will further increase your prestige.

On your turn, you may (1) collect chips (gems), or (2) buy and build a card, or (3) reserve one card. If you collect chips, you take either three different kinds of chips or two chips of the same kind. If you buy a card, you pay its price in chips and add it to your playing area. To reserve a card—in order to make sure you get it, or, why not, your opponents don’t get it—you place it in front of you face down for later building; this costs you a round, but you also get gold in the form of a joker chip, which you can use as any gem.

All of the cards you buy increase your wealth as they give you a permanent gem bonus for later buys; some of the cards also give you prestige points. In order to win the game, you must reach 15 prestige points before your opponents do.

ssss

#4 TICKET TO RIDE

Just one of those games I can always play.

With elegantly simple gameplay, Ticket to Ride can be learned in under 15 minutes, while providing players with intense strategic and tactical decisions every turn. Players collect cards of various types of train cars they then use to claim railway routes in North America. The longer the routes, the more points they earn. Additional points come to those who fulfill Destination Tickets – goal cards that connect distant cities; and to the player who builds the longest continuous route.

“The rules are simple enough to write on a train ticket – each turn you either draw more cards, claim a route, or get additional Destination Tickets,” says Ticket to Ride author, Alan R. Moon. “The tension comes from being forced to balance greed – adding more cards to your hand, and fear – losing a critical route to a competitor.”

ttt

#5 MACHI KORO

Welcome to the city of Machi Koro. You’ve just been elected Mayor. Congrats! Unfortunately the citizens have some pretty big demands: jobs, a theme park, a couple of cheese factories and maybe even a radio tower. A tough proposition since the city currently consists of a wheat field, a bakery and a single die.

Armed only with your trusty die and a dream, you must grow Machi Koro into the largest city in the region. You will need to collect income from developments, build public works, and steal from your neighbors’ coffers. Just make sure they aren’t doing the same to you!

Machi Koro is a fast-paced game for 2-4 players. Each player wants to develop the city on his own terms in order to complete all of the landmarks under construction faster than his rivals. On his turn, each player rolls one or two dice. If the sum of the dice rolled matches the number of a building that a player owns, he gets the effect of that building; in some cases opponents will also benefit from your die (just as you can benefit from theirs). Then, with money in hand a player can build a landmark or a new building, ideally adding to the wealth of his city on future turns. The first player to construct all of his landmarks wins!

machi

#6 PAPERBACK

This is a newer game for us. The reason we like it so much is that it combines deck-building mechanics with a word game. Robin loves word games and I love deck building games. Its a great combination for the two of us.

You are a paperback author trying to finish novels for your editor. Complete Westerns, Science Fiction, Romance or even the rare Best-Seller. Live the dream — and maybe pay the bills.

Word-building meets deck-building in the unique game Paperback. Players start with a deck of letter cards and wild cards. Each hand they form words, and purchase more powerful letters based on how well their word scored. Most letters have abilities that activate when they are used in a word, such as drawing more cards or double letter score. Players buy wilds to gain victory points. Variant included for cooperative play.

ppp

#7 DIXIT

You really just need to play this one to get a great feel for it.

One player is the storyteller for the turn and looks at the images on the 6 cards in her hand. From one of these, she makes up a sentence and says it out loud (without showing the card to the other players).

Each other player selects the card in their hands which best matches the sentence and gives the selected card to the storyteller, without showing it to the others.

The storyteller shuffles her card with all the received cards. All pictures are shown face up and every player has to bet upon which picture was the storyteller’s.

If nobody or everybody finds the correct card, the storyteller scores 0, and each of the other players scores 2. Otherwise the storyteller and whoever found the correct answer score 3. Players score 1 point for every vote for their own card.

The game ends when the deck is empty or if a player scores 30 points. In either case, the player with the most points wins the game.dixit

#8 TSURO OF THE SEAS

The basic game play of Tsuro of the Seas resembles that of Tom McMurchie’s Tsuro: Players each have a ship that they want to sail — that is, keep on the game board — as long as possible. Whoever stays on the board the longest wins the game.

Each turn players add “wake” tiles to the 7×7 game board; each tile has two “wake connections” on each edge, and as the tiles are placed on the board, they create a connected network of paths. If a wake is placed in front of a ship, that ship then sails to the end of the wake. If the ship goes off the board, that player is out of the game.

What’s new in Tsuro of the Seas are daikaiju tiles, representing sea monsters and other creatures of the deep. Notably, daikaiju can move: each tile has five arrows, four for moving in each of the cardinal directions and another one for rotation. On the active player’s turn, he rolls two six-sided dice; on a sum of 6, 7, or 8, the daikaiju will move, while on any other sum they’ll stay in place. To determine which direction the daikaiju tiles move, the player then makes a second roll, this time with a single die. On 1-5 in the second roll, each daikaiju moves according to its matching arrow. On a 6 in the second roll, a new daikaiju tile is added to the board.

If a daikaiju tile hits a wake tile, a ship, or another daikaiju tile, the object hit is removed from the game. Another way to be ousted! The more daikaiju tiles on the game board, the faster players will find themselves trying to breathe water…

sea

YIKES, HADLEY!

ENGLISH IS HARD.

littlehannie

My brain. Simple as that.

I Need A Game Night!

All games All The Time