Gaming with Kids

Started by Bison, November 06, 2016, 11:24:19 PM

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Bison

5 year old twin boys if I recall correctly?  They are getting close to opening up a world of strategy games!  The following are just a few, inexpensive ($10-15) games that are fun and play in 15 minutes or so.  I always found shorter games to be more enjoyable.  The kids attention spans and my sanity being the critical factors.  :)

Outfoxed - Cooperative deduction game.  Players collect clues to pick out which fox stole the pie. 


Rhino Hero - Dexterity, hand management.  Build a card tower, but you need to match shape of walls to what is on your cards in hand to place a roof cards.


Coloretto - Hand management, set collecting.  This is a fun one with a subtle depth of decision making as you build up the piles of cards to draft. 




bayonetbrant

Quote from: Con on December 11, 2016, 12:20:14 AM
Looking for some other games to play with brand new 5 year olds.

Any suggestions (candyland snakes and ladders etc are killing me).  Sneaky Squirrel/Labyrinth/trouble are good but I need some more variety and something to start them thinking on strategy.

Con

My First Carcassonne - got my son started on boardgaming
Monster Factory - got my daughter started on boardgaming (and she's still only 6, so all over it)
Pounce - both kids loved this one

The key to surviving this site is to not say something which ends up as someone's tag line - Steelgrave

"their citizens (all of them counted as such) glorified their mythology of 'rights'...and lost track of their duties. No nation, so constituted, can endure." Robert Heinlein, Starship Troopers

jamus34

Well I say upfront that the wife and I are extremely strict on screen time not school based. No TV during the week except for special occasions and they can watch / play about 45 min each during weekend days.

Obviously if they need to do school work that is not counted.
Insert witty comment here.

Bison

Had a bunch of people over today for a get together and the girls broke out Apples to Apples Jr. to play with the other kids.  I personally dislike the game, but man it makes me happy to think that they grabbed a game to play without any prompting.  The board gaming indoctrination is coming along nicely.  :D

Bison

Spent the morning playing King of Tokyo, which always devolves into a 2 against 1 affair.  The game is fun, but I think its a better with more players.

Bison

We played a 2 1/2 hour game session of Basic Fantasy Role Playing game this morning.  My 9 year old daughter created and game mastered the dungeon and it was really well done and thought out.  She even designed her own monster called a Cave Jelly which she based off of the green slime for a lower level slime/ooze monster.  The best was a fake door trap that pelted the wife's magic user with a magic ice ball doing 4 points of damage knocking her character out.  I had a good laugh as it was an ingenious trap.

Bison

Played some Love Letter and Alhambra with the kids this weekend. 

bayonetbrant

How are the Love Letter games?  I keep seeing them at the store, but haven't pulled the trigger yet.
The key to surviving this site is to not say something which ends up as someone's tag line - Steelgrave

"their citizens (all of them counted as such) glorified their mythology of 'rights'...and lost track of their duties. No nation, so constituted, can endure." Robert Heinlein, Starship Troopers

Bison

We only have the original, but its actually a fun, quick little game.  A round takes maybe 5 minutes at most.  Simple rules and plenty of luck to keep the field level. 

JasonPratt

Quote from: bayonetbrant on February 06, 2017, 12:55:51 PM
How are the Love Letter games?  I keep seeing them at the store, but haven't pulled the trigger yet.

My pre-10 nieces love it. (I got them the Five Rings variant.) Less than 48 hours after giving it, they had almost worn the cards out! -- they took it to play while going to eat (and impressed the waitress who evidently though it was anime.) One of their aunts liked it so much that she and my sister-in-law both got a set for her!

(They like the card version of Alhambra, too, but the older one has only played one game of the walled version yet. They want to, just need some more training with the new wall rules.)


Quote from: Bison on January 14, 2017, 05:19:30 PM
I had a good laugh as it was an ingenious trap.

My dad still jokes (in an affronted way) about spending two hours thirty years ago, rolling up a character for The Keep on the Borderlands and learning the rules, and then being insta-killed by the spike pit just inside the front door.
ICEBREAKER THESIS CHRONOLOGY! -- Victor Suvorov's Stalin Grand Strategy theory, in lots and lots of chronological order...
Dawn of Armageddon -- narrative AAR for Dawn of War: Soulstorm: Ultimate Apocalypse
Survive Harder! -- Two season narrative AAR, an Amazon Blood Bowl career.
PanzOrc Corpz Generals -- Fantasy Wars narrative AAR, half a combined campaign.
Khazâd du-bekâr! -- narrative dwarf AAR for LotR BfME2 RotWK campaign.
RobO Q Campaign Generator -- archived classic CMBB/CMAK tool!

Bison

Card sleeves man!  Card sleeves!

JasonPratt

Quote from: Bison on November 06, 2016, 11:57:42 PM
My youngest daughter loves Sleeping Queens.  Plays in 10 minutes and she loves the princess art.  I'll admit that I enjoy the game too.  The best part is she knows the rules and can explain them to me.

My nieces three-ish years ago tore Sleeping Queens to pieces playing them so much!

I got the Mice and Mystics game for them long ago, but I've never tried to get them to play it. (I got the 1st expansion new at the time; haven't gotten the 2nd, wasn't out at the time.) I think it would be a little too violent for them, and maybe too creepy/magical for their Mom.


Quote from: Bison on February 06, 2017, 01:14:07 PM
Card sleeves man!  Card sleeves!

That is a solution I should more strongly consider for Love Letter!
ICEBREAKER THESIS CHRONOLOGY! -- Victor Suvorov's Stalin Grand Strategy theory, in lots and lots of chronological order...
Dawn of Armageddon -- narrative AAR for Dawn of War: Soulstorm: Ultimate Apocalypse
Survive Harder! -- Two season narrative AAR, an Amazon Blood Bowl career.
PanzOrc Corpz Generals -- Fantasy Wars narrative AAR, half a combined campaign.
Khazâd du-bekâr! -- narrative dwarf AAR for LotR BfME2 RotWK campaign.
RobO Q Campaign Generator -- archived classic CMBB/CMAK tool!

JasonPratt

Carcassonne my older niece doesn't understand the scoring really, but likes playing it on my phone. They both like the tile-laying Tsuro of the Seas. Niecemus Prime also can play Stone Age relatively well, as long as the phone is doing the rule-work for her. Microniece hasn't gone to that yet, but is starting to pick up Medici (also on the phone) -- in fact she doesn't want NPrime to learn it, so that she can have a game to herself!  ::)

I should look up Castle Keep, but I have a huge backlog of board games they haven't gotten into yet already.

I would love to get them into Dominions, but they need a bit more seasoning I think. Also I have to keep a weather-eye on their Mom (and on Bro by extension though he's more permissive -- but I don't want him to get into trouble with the wife. She's antsy even about them watching Disney's Zorro.  :o ) Still it's hard to bet on what she will and won't like. I was astonished that she's more than okay with Five Rings Love Letter.

I've had King of Tokyo on the scope for a while, but I'm worried it's too fantastic (and combatative) for their Mom.

I picked up Once Upon a Time for Microniece two Christmases ago, with all the expansions -- a real collector's set in total -- which I thought would go over like gangbusters, including in helping her reading comprehension; but as far as I know she hasn't cracked it once. If I'm not there to help them learn how to play, the parents just focus on something else.  :-\

I've had Takenoko for them for a couple of years, but they haven't gotten into it as well as I thought they would.

They've almost figured out how to play Sushi (which goes by another name, too, the green spice sauce forget what it's called).

ICEBREAKER THESIS CHRONOLOGY! -- Victor Suvorov's Stalin Grand Strategy theory, in lots and lots of chronological order...
Dawn of Armageddon -- narrative AAR for Dawn of War: Soulstorm: Ultimate Apocalypse
Survive Harder! -- Two season narrative AAR, an Amazon Blood Bowl career.
PanzOrc Corpz Generals -- Fantasy Wars narrative AAR, half a combined campaign.
Khazâd du-bekâr! -- narrative dwarf AAR for LotR BfME2 RotWK campaign.
RobO Q Campaign Generator -- archived classic CMBB/CMAK tool!

Bison

The base set of Dominion is very simple and doesn't involve any combat at all.  The only card I could think might be questionable is the witch, but even that isn't anything beyond giving a curse card.  Anyway all parents are different so defer to them obviously. 

bayonetbrant

There is a second edition base set out for Dominion now. It's even simpler than the old one was
The key to surviving this site is to not say something which ends up as someone's tag line - Steelgrave

"their citizens (all of them counted as such) glorified their mythology of 'rights'...and lost track of their duties. No nation, so constituted, can endure." Robert Heinlein, Starship Troopers