Great Board Games to Go Around

We hope you had a fantastic Christmas break and are looking forward to a nice New Year’s break as well (if even for only 1 day). We had a great time with family and friends and even got to play a few board games during the festivities.

With a whole week off of work I had great plans to catch up and post a few board game reviews that we’ve filmed. But, as you can tell, that hasn’t happened. It’s just been so fun and relaxing to kick back and simply enjoy time with family. So all the editing and writing was placed on the shelf for a while.

Last weekend we spent a bunch of time together leading up to Christmas – including going with the kids as they bought presents for each other (each child getting their own 1-on-1 time at the crowded stores). The day before Christmas we started with sledding in new fallen snow and ended Christmas Eve at grandparents house decorating gingerbread trains and trees, reading new Christmas storybooks, playing chimes, playing carols with kazoos, feasting, and eating too many desserts. And Christmas day brought more fun times with the kids and extended family (and more food).

The last few days we’ve spent new toys, reading books, watching movies, and going snowshoeing. With almost 4 steady days of snow, the snowshoeing was fantastic! It’s the first time we’ve gone as a family and we had a great time. There’s a place up a canyon near our home called Donut Falls that’s a great family hike both in summer and winter (3 miles RT). So we bought a dozen donuts and hiked to Donut Falls to eat them. It was a great treat/reward for making it to the falls.

Oh – and I recall playing a board game or two this week as well.

In fact, one board game that we got for Christmas has been played daily by the boys with constant talk of playing again and again. And at 1:30 am this morning it was almost played yet again – but, we decided sleep was a good option too.

What the big board game hit this Christmas? Descent: Journeys in the Dark Second Edition.

It’s the first “dungeon crawler” game that our family has played and it has been an immediate hit. And with the amount of open-ended possibilities with the game, I think it will continue strong well into the future. With how big a hit it’s been, we’ll get a full review up as soon as we can. But to give you a quick glimpse, it’s a game with heroes venturing into dungeon-type scenarios to battle monsters and accomplish quests.

One person plays the side of the Overlord who controls the monsters and the rest are the heroes. The game is chuck-full of miniatures, cards, tokens, and double-sided board pieces to make up the dungeons. There’s 23 page Rulebook and a 43 page Quest Guide. So getting up and running took quite some time (for dad at least – going through it in preparation). But, the boys are hooked and can’t get enough. And even though we’ve only played a handful of scenarios so far, Trevor’s already wanting to create his own scenario.

Memoir ’44 – above and beyond
One of the items I had at the top of my Christmas board games with list was an expansion for Memoir ’44. And while I didn’t receive one of the expansion sets, I got something completely unexpected and fantastic from my Dice Tower Secret Santa – the Memoir ’44 Campaign Book Volume 1. The Campaign Books add a new level of fun to Memoir ’44 and the Volume 1 is out of print. So it was very sweet to get this gift and after playing it this week, I’ll agree that it’s a great addition to my Memoir ’44 fix.

The next board game gift we opened on Christmas was the 7 Wonders: Cities expansion. It hasn’t hit the table yet, but we’re looking forward to playing it soon – once we can clear the big table of Descent. 🙂

Caleb was also given the R2-D2 Star Wars game of Trouble. It’s still the same luck-driven simple game of rolling dice and moving your pieces around the board, but I have to admit that the R2-D2 sounds when you pop the dice popper adds some spice to the game.

Another gaming gift came from Jaden in the form of a coupon book. It seems he took a page out of Trevor’s gift bookfrom last year and gave me coupons for game time with him. With a book almost constantly in his hands, he’s sometimes the toughest to get to sit down to play games with. Now I have an ace up my sleeve with his game coupon book.

Thursday night we also had some of our neighbor father and sons come over for some fun and games. We didn’t introduce them to any of the new games but instead pulled out a few older ones and ended with a full 7-player game of Shadows Over Camelot – in which the knights were defeated by the traitor amongst us. Even though the 6 brave knights lost, we had a great time playing.

And that’s what board games are all about – having fun with family and friends.

So whether we play old games are new games, simple games or more involved games, many games once or one game many times, it’s all about enjoying the time together.

We hope you have a very enjoyable time with your family as you start the New Year 2013!