Board Games
 

Do you play them? Did you as a kid? What are/were your favorites? We have so many it's nuts -the 4' wide cabinet we have for them is overflowing and they're stacked on top to the ceiling. But we all love to play. When Banana Lady (MIL) visits that pretty much all she and the kids do.

My dad used to keep a book recording the high scores in all the games we played. Until he started losing to my sister and I. Maybe this is what led to my hippy "playing-is-winning" attitude? :lol:

My families both stuck with assembling large puzzles instead. Unless you count my mom and stepdad's poker parties, but I wasn't allowed to participate in those.

My stepkids really aren't into games (they both have major problems with losing, but having figured out that we expect everyone to lose gracefully as the occasion arises, instead they just pretend they don't like to play.) Blokus is the only one that's come out with any frequency over the last couple of years, unless you count my playing Guess Who? with Minifob.

Yes, I have some that I still play when I'm in the mood and I can find players.

Usual suspects :

- Monopoly
- Scrabble (both French and English)

I used to play Trivial Pursuit but stopped when my family complained that I won all the time. Even with additionnal extensions.

I now play Scrabble mostly against a computer and sometimes online but I love to get out my wooden board and play around a table with friends or family.

Trivia games (I miss the old Trivial Pursuit with the Art and Lit category. Mom killed us in history, but we teased her that it was because she lived through it all.)

Rummikub

Husker Du with my nieces

So many others I can't think of. I love games. When my family and I play a new game, we decide first if it's a "blurter" game or not. For example, you can't just keep blurting out answers in Trivial Pursuit until someone goes "THAT'S IT" you have to settle on one answer or shut up. Some games are all about the blurt.

As much as I love wordplay (like cryptic [british] crosswords) I've never been very good at scrabble or boggle...anything with making words out of a set of letters. Weird.

monster: my friends and I play yahtzee a lot and I make them put their name and the date at the tops of their score cards so we can look back at scores and who won when. I'm competitive too. ;) Well, also, we can see how badly we mess up the cards after so many beers.

What Would Hüsker Dü?

Growing up we played most of the usual: Shoots & Ladders, Candyland, then Monopoly, Clue, Chess, Stratego. As a late teen, I played a lot of Risk (even triple-board Risk), and a (I think) little known game called Careers. As an adult we usually got the new games and played with family and friends: Trivial Pursuit, Pictionary, Blurt, Taboo. BTW, drunk and stoned Memory (ages 3 and up) is a challenging blast. But mostly we were and are a card playing family. I was playing Pinochle and six-handed Canasta when I was about 10 years old. We still play Hearts and Oh Pshaw Bridge fairly regularly. In our early teens, my brother and I would go through Hoyles and learn new games. Learned Cribbage that way.

Corn cobs.

parcheesi

We have several shelves of a large bookcase devoted to the ones we still play. Once they are outgrown, they get freecycled. Current favorite is probably Ticket To Ride, which is a railroad building game. It's a good balance between strategy, luck, risk taking, and paying attention to everyone around you. Young grade schoolers can play against adults with success and fun for both.

OH, as a kid my friend had Go For Broke. Opposite of monopoly, you tried to SPEND all your money.

pssst Spexx: Chutes and Ladders. Unless your version you shot at people as they ascended ladders. ;)

When we were kids, someone gave us anti-monopoly, which was a really cheaply made game and was basically about breaking up monopolies. I don't remember the details of the game but it was basically monopoly in reverse. A real commie game.

This was Go For Broke:

The game I was the best at and so had the most fun playing was Pictionary. My family also played a version of Balderdash before it was a board game, and although I didn't rank as a top player it was tons of fun. I currently love Cranium because it has a little bit of everything. Of course all the 'blurters' are great too. I used to play Risk regularly with a group of friends and the winner kept the little guy on a horse piece as a trophy until the next game. I miss that one a lot.

I can't remember the game we just played at bro and sis-in-law's house. Some kind of category game. Played guys vs girls and had ALL age groups represented and the men kicked our butts. We surmised that women are more likely to be like "you know, schnauzer is one answer but maybe even better would be collie, what do YOU think?" while the men blurted us out of the water! :lol:

monopoly is a sucky game. http://www.thesimpledollar.com/2010/...aming-evening/