I love spending time with my family at Christmas, when we are all together it is a fabulous time to relax and chill out. My eldest brother Matt loves board games and when we are all home he gets out his favourites games and we all sit and play them together.
On Christmas day my Nana and Grandad came over for lunch and after we had eaten we all had a game of “Balderdash”. It was hilarious, in the game a question is asked from a category either: Events, Words, Laws, Initials or People and you have to write down your own explanation of the answer, for example if the category was a “person” you would write down what you believe they were famous for. The person whose turn it is to read the question writes down the correct answer from the back of the card on their own slip of paper and then gathers in everyone else’s answers, the aim is to write something that the others will think is correct because you get points for that. You gain points if you guess correctly and a point for every person who incorrectly chooses the answer that you wrote down. This can lead to some really interesting answers with plenty of bluffing and game play.
Another favourite of ours is “Articulate”, we play this in teams of two and each turn one couple has to act out or explain a word given on a card. For each correctly guessed answer the team moves forward place. It helps if you are each other’s wavelength for this game as then the answer can come quite quickly and you play with a timer. Although there are some tricky ones in the pack.
Matt really enjoys strategy games and last year he got us playing “Catan” after I bought it for his birthday. Thomas bought him an expansion pack for the game this Christmas and we have been trying to get our heads around the new rules so we have a better chance of beating him. The game involves trying to outwit the other players to build up your assets expand your settlements and cities. The winner is the one who is the first to acquire 15 assets.
Last night Matt’s friend Ali came over to join us and as she knows what he is like with games she brought with her a game called “Categorically Speaking”. Each round of the game you select four subject cards e.g. Football players, things that are square, tennis players, movie stars and four letter cards e.g. A, Y, N, B. Then in the time it takes for an egg timer to empty you have to write down an item/object/person for each letter and each category. So you have a possible 16 points every go and you can play as many rounds as you have time for. Sometimes your mind just goes blank and you kick yourself when the answers are read out. You score a point for each correct answer, but nothing if two or more of you get the same answer. I would definitely recommend access to an iPad or Tablet to check some of the answers as they can sometimes be very questionable.
I could go on for hours as we do play so many but one we always come back to is “Scrabble” it is just a shame that it is only for four players as it usually means one of us sits out a round.
I hope that this has given you a taste of what we get up to whilst relaxing, especially as our weather can be very unpredictable. I would love to know what you do over the holiday season, any board games you could recommend and if you have any family traditions that are important to you?
