Okay, so based on initial recommendations, I placed an order for Ticket To Ride, Rummikub and Guillotine, but I'm dropping more onto the "save for later" list, so please keep these recommendations coming!
My kids (11,10, 8) LOVE Spy Alley. It takes 60-90 minutes so always try to push them towards much quicker games, usually Matt Inman card games like Exploding Kittens and Throw Throw Burrito. But if you're fill up a holiday weekend with family, you can't go wrong with this one
Came here to say Ticket to Ride (sorry, busy morning had me late to read the newsletter) but I’m just glad somebody has provided the same insight first. 10/10 highest recommendation
Those are good choices! Our family would recommend following up w/ these other "easy enough the kids can learn, complex enough the adults enjoy themselves" recs:
AZUL: pretty tile-placement game that like Catan is now sold absolutely everywhere for a reason
DIXIT: unique art-based game where players create and match clues based on cards full of surreal, fairy-tale imagery. We played when our kids were under 10 but definitely better as they get older
BOHNANZA: wheel-and-deal card game featuring a variety of amusing cartoon beans you trade to/from your opponents to grow the best bean farm. Our kids' current favorite
If you reach the point you're looking for something more complex, would strongly recommend EVERDELL, a gorgeous resource-gathering/city-building game full of charming Beatrix Pottery woodland creatures. But might be a lot going straight from Monopoly, etc.
Lastly, not surprised to see WINGSPAN mentioned. My wife and I played it for more hours than we would care to mention--the game is brilliant as a 2-player experience, esp. w/ the Oceania expansion--but we found it got exponentially weaker the more players were added, and that the gameplay w/ 4 or 5 players was just too slow as a family game.
If you want Coop games I’d second The Game and and the Fireworks Show mentioned below. I prefer card games for holidays just because they are a bit easier to deal with. And I’ll always recommend Explodibg Kittens for a larger group, think Uno but you can do up to 10 players with the right version. If you want a board game go with Pandemic.
I have a pretty serious board game addiction and I am always looking for stuff that has enough depth and decision space to be fun for both "gamers" and with my family. My wife and I really like bringing Long Shot: The Dice Game, King of Tokyo and Sushi Go. For bigger groups we like Cockroach Poker, One Night Ultimate Werewolf and Monikers and for something slightly heavier but still family friendly we like Quacks of Quedlinburg.
I buy all my board games on Steam, but a lot of them have pass and play modes. Ticket to Ride, Tsuru, Evolution, Sagrada, and Wingspan are what I've got.
I have Wingspan sitting in an unopened box in a closet because I just haven't had the energy to learn a new game with that much going on. I'll give it a try this weekend.
Yeah I have friends with the hardcopy and it's beautiful, but I like having the computer do the scorekeeping for me.
It plays the bird song/call when you play a card too, and you can set it to only play when you play a bird for the first time, so that's a nice surprise.
I love Tsuro. It's a quick tile placement game and you get to play chutes and ladders with your and your opponent's pieces. While it's winner take all game, placing the pieces is definitely a cooperative thing.
This game rules - Tsuro of the seas is even better b/c you have dragons involved and things can go more unexpected. Kids gotta be old enough to roll with that randomness tho!
+1 on Sagrada. A game that is genuinely good for every combination of 1-4 players and handles variable difficulty levels extremely well. It's simple, but not easy, and it's just pretty to look at.
We have three versions of Ticket to Ride on our shelf, because we like it so much that we actually get use out of different lengths of the game (we've got one of the mini boards, one of the standard sized games, and Rails and Sails, which is a commitment but SO FUN).
On Thanksgiving, I've been engaged in a multi-year struggle to convince folks that you don't have to make *everything* that was part of either side of the family's traditions. We don't eat all of it. And, honestly, some of it folks only eat out of habit/duty. (Looking at you, pumpkin pie.)
Also, I've somehow fallen into the pattern of having my annual physical the week after Thanksgiving. While I'll enjoy dinner (and overeat), I've always got in the back of my mind that I need to keep my blood gravy level down for the lab work.
Serious amateur hour, right? But it's also right before I find out whether I got into the NYC half marathon and/or Chicago marathon for 2024 in the entry lotteries, so perhaps the discipline is good.
"So, on a scale of one to 'Mark Mangino,' how are my lipid levels this year?"
My whole bit about listening to the Vincent Neil Emerson album in traffic proved immediately prophetic, as I had a very dumb and very long commute this morning that it helped keep me calm during.
It's great, I think my single favourite revelation from reading this was that Chris Carrabba joined a christian rock band without knowing it was a christian band so they kept rejecting his songs for being off-theme, which is why he made Dashboard Confessional
My man, you should buy Runmikub. It’s a tile game that has become a once a week staple here for two kids under 10, it’s easy to pick up and fun to play every time, and it precipitated my 7 year old coming up with my favorite victory line two weeks ago: “I butt-smoked you”.
We’ve had it for years but got big into it on a family lake trip last summer where a four day run of three generation games broke out.
Speaking of Olaf eating rolls, I love this story of my old dog, since passed. We used to host grad school friendsgiving pretty regularly when I was in Birmingham, and my dog was a nervous idiot named Niamh. Friends came over and in the unpacking, one bag was left on the floor of the kitchen. Nothing too appetizing, but at the bottom of the bag was the _2nd_ brioche loaf Zak had made.
Biding her time, Niamh left the bag completely alone, eventually we all made our plates and and sat down to watch football. Eventually someone went into the kitchen and found Niamh head deep in the bag, _licking the loaf_. If she'd scarfed it we'd have heard something, but she had licked a divot like 3" into the loaf quietly.
PS Forgot to mention Jack Finney--love his book too. Don't know if you noticed Time After Time has a sequel, From Time to Time? Unlike many sequels, it's just as good as the first one. I read both a while back, and they are on my keep-forever shelf.
Along with Codenames, I’m here to advocate for Concept, which my game-nut sister and BIL introduced to our family a few years ago. “Give hints to get a guess” games like Taboo and Catchphrase are among my favorites, and while Codenames makes that challenging by insisting that your hint is a single unifying word, Concept uses a board full of visual cues for you to put together so your team can guess a word or phrase. We usually don’t play to win, just to see how people build their clues.
Guessing games reminds me, we play a lot of Headbanz, where you have to guess what you are but only the other players can see it. It's worth it just for hearing my kids (my daughter especially) CACKLE when Mom or Dad has a headband with a card on it that says "I am a banana" or something like that.
Go Nuts for Donuts, Sushi Go, and Trash Pandas are some fun, easy card games for kids. For board games, King or Queendomino, Ticket to Ride, Dragon Realm, and King of Tokyo are a few that are fun and not too cerebral.
We are an extremely (some might say pathologically) competitive family and have found that cooperative games are best. HANABI is our favorite. It is a Japanese game where you try to perform the perfect firework show by placing tiles in the correct sequence. The trick is that you don’t know what tiles are in your hand. The cooperative part is that the other players can give you hints (within boundaries limited by the rules) about the tiles in your hand. The rules state that if you cheat by signaling what tiles to play you “bring shame upon your family”, which of course has become a catch phrase within the family if anyone is doing something remotely shady.
Okay, so based on initial recommendations, I placed an order for Ticket To Ride, Rummikub and Guillotine, but I'm dropping more onto the "save for later" list, so please keep these recommendations coming!
My kids (11,10, 8) LOVE Spy Alley. It takes 60-90 minutes so always try to push them towards much quicker games, usually Matt Inman card games like Exploding Kittens and Throw Throw Burrito. But if you're fill up a holiday weekend with family, you can't go wrong with this one
Came here to say Ticket to Ride (sorry, busy morning had me late to read the newsletter) but I’m just glad somebody has provided the same insight first. 10/10 highest recommendation
Those are good choices! Our family would recommend following up w/ these other "easy enough the kids can learn, complex enough the adults enjoy themselves" recs:
AZUL: pretty tile-placement game that like Catan is now sold absolutely everywhere for a reason
DIXIT: unique art-based game where players create and match clues based on cards full of surreal, fairy-tale imagery. We played when our kids were under 10 but definitely better as they get older
BOHNANZA: wheel-and-deal card game featuring a variety of amusing cartoon beans you trade to/from your opponents to grow the best bean farm. Our kids' current favorite
If you reach the point you're looking for something more complex, would strongly recommend EVERDELL, a gorgeous resource-gathering/city-building game full of charming Beatrix Pottery woodland creatures. But might be a lot going straight from Monopoly, etc.
Lastly, not surprised to see WINGSPAN mentioned. My wife and I played it for more hours than we would care to mention--the game is brilliant as a 2-player experience, esp. w/ the Oceania expansion--but we found it got exponentially weaker the more players were added, and that the gameplay w/ 4 or 5 players was just too slow as a family game.
Here to cosign on AZUL and BOHNANZA!!!!!! Wingspan is gorgeous too.
Buy Set! plays quick, good for your kids to build pattern recognition/spatial thinking skills, and you'll probably be good at it/enjoy it given that you're an architect. I have many fond memories of playing it in gifted class as a kid, bought it to play at home, and my boyfriend (a computer engineer) who had never played it before immediately handed my ass to me. https://www.amazon.com/SET-Family-Game-Visual-Perception/dp/B00000IV34/ref=sr_1_4?crid=385J26HECVQ4W&keywords=set&qid=1700235600&s=toys-and-games&sprefix=set%2Ctoys-and-games%2C80&sr=1-4
If you want Coop games I’d second The Game and and the Fireworks Show mentioned below. I prefer card games for holidays just because they are a bit easier to deal with. And I’ll always recommend Explodibg Kittens for a larger group, think Uno but you can do up to 10 players with the right version. If you want a board game go with Pandemic.
I have a pretty serious board game addiction and I am always looking for stuff that has enough depth and decision space to be fun for both "gamers" and with my family. My wife and I really like bringing Long Shot: The Dice Game, King of Tokyo and Sushi Go. For bigger groups we like Cockroach Poker, One Night Ultimate Werewolf and Monikers and for something slightly heavier but still family friendly we like Quacks of Quedlinburg.
I buy all my board games on Steam, but a lot of them have pass and play modes. Ticket to Ride, Tsuru, Evolution, Sagrada, and Wingspan are what I've got.
Munchkin is a great card game also.
+1 for Wingspan, which is GORGEOUS, though is a little challenging to learn because of all the moving parts.
I have Wingspan sitting in an unopened box in a closet because I just haven't had the energy to learn a new game with that much going on. I'll give it a try this weekend.
Yeah I have friends with the hardcopy and it's beautiful, but I like having the computer do the scorekeeping for me.
It plays the bird song/call when you play a card too, and you can set it to only play when you play a bird for the first time, so that's a nice surprise.
I love Tsuro. It's a quick tile placement game and you get to play chutes and ladders with your and your opponent's pieces. While it's winner take all game, placing the pieces is definitely a cooperative thing.
This game rules - Tsuro of the seas is even better b/c you have dragons involved and things can go more unexpected. Kids gotta be old enough to roll with that randomness tho!
+1 on Sagrada. A game that is genuinely good for every combination of 1-4 players and handles variable difficulty levels extremely well. It's simple, but not easy, and it's just pretty to look at.
Ticket to Ride is a great game to start with the kids edition and build into the adult versions when your kids are hitting 9 or 10. Great game.
Adding another rec for Ticket to Ride! Great game and super easy to learn.
Hitching my car to the Ticket to Ride train. It's a perfect game.
I played it over zoom during the panini with my nephew and that age sounds about right, he was getting some help from his mom before 9/10.
We have three versions of Ticket to Ride on our shelf, because we like it so much that we actually get use out of different lengths of the game (we've got one of the mini boards, one of the standard sized games, and Rails and Sails, which is a commitment but SO FUN).
Oh, don't have a digital version, but Carcassonne is great fun too.
On Thanksgiving, I've been engaged in a multi-year struggle to convince folks that you don't have to make *everything* that was part of either side of the family's traditions. We don't eat all of it. And, honestly, some of it folks only eat out of habit/duty. (Looking at you, pumpkin pie.)
Also, I've somehow fallen into the pattern of having my annual physical the week after Thanksgiving. While I'll enjoy dinner (and overeat), I've always got in the back of my mind that I need to keep my blood gravy level down for the lab work.
That's just a rookie mistake, right there with the physical scheduling.
Serious amateur hour, right? But it's also right before I find out whether I got into the NYC half marathon and/or Chicago marathon for 2024 in the entry lotteries, so perhaps the discipline is good.
"So, on a scale of one to 'Mark Mangino,' how are my lipid levels this year?"
My whole bit about listening to the Vincent Neil Emerson album in traffic proved immediately prophetic, as I had a very dumb and very long commute this morning that it helped keep me calm during.
Taking Back Thursday?
"I just wanna break you down so badly/In the worst way (worst way)" but it's about the Thanksgiving turkey rather than a toxic relationship
I knew *someone* would understand what I was doing with that subject line, and I should've trusted that it'd be you.
OH ALSO ON THAT NOTE: BOOK REC FOR YOU
https://www.harpercollins.com/products/where-are-your-boys-tonight-chris-payne?variant=40797420781602
Ooh, I'll check it out. Have you read Dan Ozzi's "Sell Out"? I loved that one.
I haven't, but I will add it to my (infinitely long) list!
Very much get Sellout, even if quite a few of those bands are maybe a bit before your time.
Let’s be honest, I’m kind of underage for some of the bands in where are your boys tonight
I was a history major for a reason
I realize I'm super-late, but I can confirm that Sell Out is great.
It's great, I think my single favourite revelation from reading this was that Chris Carrabba joined a christian rock band without knowing it was a christian band so they kept rejecting his songs for being off-theme, which is why he made Dashboard Confessional
As always, I am here for all your pop-punk and emo needs.
My man, you should buy Runmikub. It’s a tile game that has become a once a week staple here for two kids under 10, it’s easy to pick up and fun to play every time, and it precipitated my 7 year old coming up with my favorite victory line two weeks ago: “I butt-smoked you”.
We’ve had it for years but got big into it on a family lake trip last summer where a four day run of three generation games broke out.
Recommendation taken-thank you!
Rummikub. Damn little keyboard and big dumb fingers.
I've been playing Rummikub for so long that I don't even remember learning it, great family game
Settlers of Catan. It's time for your children to ask you if you have wood for sheep. It's a blast, and the expansion sets are also fun.
Speaking of Olaf eating rolls, I love this story of my old dog, since passed. We used to host grad school friendsgiving pretty regularly when I was in Birmingham, and my dog was a nervous idiot named Niamh. Friends came over and in the unpacking, one bag was left on the floor of the kitchen. Nothing too appetizing, but at the bottom of the bag was the _2nd_ brioche loaf Zak had made.
Biding her time, Niamh left the bag completely alone, eventually we all made our plates and and sat down to watch football. Eventually someone went into the kitchen and found Niamh head deep in the bag, _licking the loaf_. If she'd scarfed it we'd have heard something, but she had licked a divot like 3" into the loaf quietly.
Clever girl.
PS Forgot to mention Jack Finney--love his book too. Don't know if you noticed Time After Time has a sequel, From Time to Time? Unlike many sequels, it's just as good as the first one. I read both a while back, and they are on my keep-forever shelf.
That’s great! I’m looking forward to reading it, given how great the first was!
Along with Codenames, I’m here to advocate for Concept, which my game-nut sister and BIL introduced to our family a few years ago. “Give hints to get a guess” games like Taboo and Catchphrase are among my favorites, and while Codenames makes that challenging by insisting that your hint is a single unifying word, Concept uses a board full of visual cues for you to put together so your team can guess a word or phrase. We usually don’t play to win, just to see how people build their clues.
Guessing games reminds me, we play a lot of Headbanz, where you have to guess what you are but only the other players can see it. It's worth it just for hearing my kids (my daughter especially) CACKLE when Mom or Dad has a headband with a card on it that says "I am a banana" or something like that.
Go Nuts for Donuts, Sushi Go, and Trash Pandas are some fun, easy card games for kids. For board games, King or Queendomino, Ticket to Ride, Dragon Realm, and King of Tokyo are a few that are fun and not too cerebral.
We are an extremely (some might say pathologically) competitive family and have found that cooperative games are best. HANABI is our favorite. It is a Japanese game where you try to perform the perfect firework show by placing tiles in the correct sequence. The trick is that you don’t know what tiles are in your hand. The cooperative part is that the other players can give you hints (within boundaries limited by the rules) about the tiles in your hand. The rules state that if you cheat by signaling what tiles to play you “bring shame upon your family”, which of course has become a catch phrase within the family if anyone is doing something remotely shady.
Another very simple but extremely frustrating cooperative game — The Mind. https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/244992/mind
Damn friend, your travel life looks like mine these days. Hopefully that's just a freak thing.
Thanksgiving is my favorite. Our menu this year is gonna be awesome.
Pregame all day snacking: relish tray, cream cheese/pepper jelly, charcuterie
Smoked turkey from the butcher
Cornbread dressing
Mashed potatoes and gravy
Screaming heads - my dad's Brussels sprouts casserole which is sprouts, pancetta, and like 9 different cheeses
Sweet potato casserole
NEW THIS YEAR: dad wants to make cranberry beans, and I love cranberry beans, so that's happening
Broccoli au gratin
Snow peas
Cranberry sauce from the can
Mandarin oranges
Rolls - might make them from scratch this year, but will definitely have store bought in case I get lazy
Pumpkin pie for the husband
Chocolate pecan pie for me
I’ve been following your travel posts this month and nodding in somber solidarity
SCOTT HAVE YOU HEARD ABOUT EUCHRE????
well, you see, I-- [throws deck of cards in your face, runs]
just wanted to "heart" this specific line "He’s our goon now."
It's a two player game only, but my wife and I play Patchwork all the time. It's a pretty simple concept with lot's of replay ability.
and want to add - my family has gotten a lot of 'mileage' out of Mexican Train Dominos.
The Action Cookbook Newsletter: giving me slam-dunk music recommendations for my older brother since 2021