I brought Pandemic to my brother’s house for Xmas, but since there is usually a large group of people wanting to play games, we went with games that could accommodate a lot of players. First we played the Game of Things, then a game called New Phone Who Dis?
Phase 10 is a good one that we have played in the past.
Our family games have been…
Hand & Foot
Oh Heck
Pinochle
Cutthroat Hearts
Shanghai
My favorite is Guesstures, basically an easy and fast paced form of charades. You split everyone into two teams and it’s easy to get going. It’s a lot of laughs, very fun.
No love for Smart Ass?
We’ve also played a lot of Apples to Apples.
Quidler
Settlers of Catan, with expansion packs
Scrabble
Cards Against Humanity
ETA: My late mother got us to play Balderdash once, a decade or so ago. I no longer remember the details of how to play, but I vaguely recall it was a good game.
Several people have mentioned Sushi Go. If you’re a fan of that game, I recommend you check out Fairy Tale. It has similar game play but I feel it’s a better game.
We - two adults and two teenagers - played Suspicion for the first time today. It’s a deductive reasoning board game with some luck involved that reminds me very much of Clue. One son said it reminds him of Mafia. It was so much fun that the teenagers have already asked if we can play it again tomorrow. Players move guests around a mansion and try to steal gems and guess each other’s secret identify.
We also play Uno, BS, and both the Monopoly board game and a Monopoly card game that plays much quicker than the board game.
Players of Monopoly, go on Hulu and watch the Monopoly episode of Black-ish called Advance to Go. It is hilarious.
You have a deck of cards with obscure words with their definitions. People take turns reading just the word off the card. The other people make up fake definitions and pass them to the reader. The reader reads all of the definitions out loud, including the real one. The other players try to guess which one is the real one. You score two points if you guess the real definition and another point for every person who guesses that your fake definition is the real one. You can try to bluff other players by voting for your own definition; you lose the two points but you hope that other people will follow your lead and vote for your definition.
Cribbage.
My friends and I will play dominoes or the Abduction card game. Or Golfmania or the Illuminati card game.
Our family is very big into family games. Our favorites include:
Boggle
Bananagrams
Rummikub
Balderdash
Cranium
Settlers of Catan
Ticket to Ride
Codenames
Scrabble
I’ve not played Pandemic, but we like playing Forbidden Island. Same kind of thing, everyone wins or loses together. My youngest daughter really likes games like that and she can come up with some really good ideas.
My kids absolutely love Exploding Kittens. They like to gang up on me and try and make me get the cat. When the game starts to get that little bit tense near the end I like to randomly yell “BOOM!!!” as someone is drawing a card.
While not the greatest, and probably not for adults, Bears vs Babies my kids seem to like.
My wife and I like that one, but our daughter hates it. She prefers Point the Blame. My sister is heavily into Guilt Trip and Passive/Agressive!, but we try to avoid her as much as we can.
Serious answer: Settlers of Catan
That’s nice but we play this with a dictionary (and call the game dictionary). In turn each player chooses an obscure word from a dictionary and writes down the dictionary definition while each player, including the one who chose, puts in a made-up definition. The poser gets points if no one chooses the dictionary definition; otherwise it is much like above. We basically play it for laughs. One of the really obscure words a friend found maybe 40 years ago has become my favorite password.
Monopoly isn’t too bad if you follow the rules. Most variations I have seen allow too much money into the game and it becomes interminable.
When we visit one son, we play poker (mostly hold-em) with him, his wife and one or two older children. We play for chips; no money changes hands.
We have played Settlers of Catan (a nice game) and something called, IIRC, ticket to ride in which you build train lines across North America.
Whenever there are 4 of us, we will play. It is a family tradition.
Sometimes we will play a ‘cutthroat’ version if there are only 3 of us.
[sidetrack] As an IT guy, I just have to state that this is a very bad password strategy. As obscure as it may be, a dictionary word is almost as bad as using your name as password. You should change it. [/sidetrack]
nm, double post.
No, Monopoly really is a poorly designed game. There’s virtually no strategic choices to be made; you move according to a dice roll and events happen to you. The only choices you make have obvious answers. This wouldn’t be a problem is a short light game. But Monopoly drags this process out for an hour (or two or three hours if you add house rules).
People who like Monopoly should try Suburbia. It has all of the good parts of Monopoly without the bad.
My kids and I have been playing the whole range of “Escape Room” type games. They are pretty fun. “Santa” also brought 'Pandemic Legacy - Season 1" which is pretty cool. The game changes as you play.
Scrabble. But we don’t “play.” We go for total annihilation.