Family Games

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Go round the board and pick up cheese pieces without getting caught in the trap. First mouse to get six cheeses wins.

Board requires adult assembly.

2 - 4 players

Age suitability: 6+

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 Play the centuries-old strategy game on this wooden board.

Comes with 48 colourful acrylic 'stones'.

Two-player game for people of almost all ages (not suitable for the under 3 year-olds - small bits - choking hazard).

34007

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Outfoxed is an excellent cooperative deduction game.  Someone has stolen Mrs Plumpert's prize pie and you and the other players have to work out which fox is the guilty one. At each roll of dice, you get a chance of finding a clue or revealing a suspect.  If you are unlucky or you make a mistake, the fox moves three steps closer to getting away.

Children like this game because it's fun.  Parents like it because it also encourages the children's logic and memory skills.

Each game takes about twenty minutes.

Age suitability: 5 +

2-4 players

Here is an excellent review on Youtube from Tom Vasel of the Dice Tower:

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This game was 'Game of the Year' in 2017. Superficially it is quite simple.  Everybody starts with a castle, around which you build your kingdom.  Then you choose your dominoes. On these are pictured the type of lands you will have in your kingdom.  So you might have a domino with a square of forest at one end and water at the other, or another with meadow at both ends. After you have chosen each domino, you lay it around the castle and, like in dominoes, you can only put a farmland domino next to another farmland and so on. At each step your kingdom gets bigger.  The aim though is to build as big an area of each type of land as you can within your kingdom. So you score more points if you have a block of five squares of farmland together than you would if those five squares were split. Once you have all placed your dominoes, that's the end of the game and you have to total the points.

Each round takes about 15 minutes.

2 - 4 players

Age suitability: 8 +

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Ticket to Ride features in so many people's top 10 lists of board games and is often recommended to people new to the board game scene.  It is a stategy game in which you compete to connect cities by claiming train routes before your competitors can.

It comes in various formats.  The original one is based on North America.  This, the European one, has routes all over the continent from Edinburgh to Ankara which, unlike the original version, involves tunnels and ferries. 

2-5 players

Age suitability: 8 (bright 8) to adult

Here's an excellent video from 'Watch It Played' on Youtube:

This is one of my son's favourite games, not least because he always beats me.

Always voted as being in the top ten family board games, Cluedo is a bit of a classic. Millionaire Samuel Black has been murdered.  One of his disfunctional guests did it so who was it, how did they do it and where?  As you move round the house and ask questions of your competitors, can you pice together the truth?  Was it Mrs Peacock, the Rev. Green or the new character, the mysterious Dr Orchid and what weapon did they use and where?

2-6 players

Age suitability: 8+

Here is an American video showing how to play (it's called Clue over there):

 

Colourful wooden board with four wooden counters and a dice.

28 cm across

Age suitability: 3 years +

BJ788

Introduce the delights of Scrabble to younger children.

For children starting to spell, one side of the board has pictures and clues for children to guess words that are already on the board (for example f--h paired with a picture of a fish).

On the other side of the board, older children can play a more conventional game of Scrabble, making up their own words but with bigger tiles and simpler scoring.

Contains : Double-sided board, 84 word tiles, 30 counters for scoring, and instructions.

2 - 4 players.

Age suitability: 6+

Here is a video from youtube with a very American voiceover:

Wooden board marked with the numbers 1 to 90.

90 wooden number discs.

48 cards

28 cm across

Age suitability: 3 years +

BJ788