Card Games

Sleeping Queens is a card game in which the first player to wake up four of the 12 queens is the winner.  So you lay out the 12 queens face down (sleeping) on the table and deal five cards to each player. The stack of remaining cards is placed (face down) in the centre of the table.  When it's your turn, you must play one of your cards.

Playing a king means that you get to wake up a queen; a knight enables you to steal one of your opponents' queens unless they hold a dragon card which counteracts a knight; a sleeping potion card is used to send an opponent's queen back to sleep unless they can negate that with a magic wand card; jokers allow you to pick up another card from the pile number cards can be discarded singly or in multiples. At the end of your turn you pick up fresh cards so that you always have five cards in your card and of course you hope to pick the useful cards that will enable you to win more queens.  Sounds complicated but it's not really.  Each game takes about 20 minutes.

2 - 5 players

Age suitability: 8+  (although the game was invented by a six year old and many children below 8 will be able to enjoy the game)

 

 

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Two teams, the red and the blue team, try to guess the identity of their own spies.  Twenty five cards are laid out on the table.  Each card has the codename for an agent. Some of these will be red spies, some blue, some will be innocent bystanders and one will be the assassin. Each team's spymaster gives the team a single word clue.  They then have to choose which spy or spies' codename this clue relates to.  However should they choose the wrong one, they help the opponents.  Should they accidentally choose the assassin, it's game over for them.

Each game takes 15 -30 minutes.

Number one party game on Boardgame Geek, the website for avid games players.  Over 5 million copies sold.

2 - 8 players ( ideally at least 4)

Age suitability: 10+

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