While chatting with a friend the other night about what to write about as a blog post, she suggested the Train Game, which we had just played online. Full disclosure, she kicks my butt at it all the time! But it’s still fun to play. I know I’ve talked about having game nights with friends pre- pandemic, but not about the actual games we play. Fair warning, our game nights are normally with a bunch of social workers or counselors, their partners, and whoever else is brave enough to join us, so it can be a bit dark, humor wise. Here are some of my favorite games

Ticket to Ride, or the Train Game will go first as it’s a favorite among a bunch of us. The main point of the game is to make a train go from one place to another. There are a bunch of different boards, including a Nordic route, India, Pennsylvania, Europe, and a couple different US route boards. Each board has different bonus cards. We have just the original, US board. It’s set in 1913 or thereabouts, I think, so it’s got a cool vintage feel.

You can play this online too, which is how I’ve been playing it recently. The Husband is very competitive and will block people if he figures out where they are going, which has taught me to do some circular route taking to prevent it. Darn logical minded man. My friends who play online are generally nicer. Game play is typically around 45 minutes.

Carcassonne is one of my favorite games and I really should look it up online, as the Husband claims it is too complicated and refuses to play often. Mainly because I win, I think. 🙂 My friend who taught me this game in college played absolutely cutthroat and I got tired of losing, so learned all the weird little tricks to win. To win, you build the biggest castles, get the most land, and acquire the most resources. I think it isn’t as complicated as Caatan, but it does have a learning curve.

Game play can range from anywhere from 45- 90 minutes, depending on how many people you’re playing with. I have three of the expansion packs and they add some different rules and pieces. I taught it to my younger brother and he really enjoyed playing it as well.

My Mom gave my MIL and I the game Quilt Show for Christmas one year and we played it while we were at the cabin with my sewing friend K2.

In this game, you have to “make” quilts with different blocks. You can make smaller or bigger projects and then show them in a Quilt Show to get points. The person with the most points at the end wins. There are different configurations of how to set up the quilts, by pattern, color, etc.

It took a minute to see how it worked, but it was pretty fun! I would like to play it again some time. I would say plan probably an hour to play.

We have three Firefly games, but not enough of our game night friends like Firefly, so we haven’t played them often. (This would be Joss Whedon’s TV show Firefly and movie Serenity, if you didn’t know.)

The game, Firefly, is super complicated it seems, so I think we’re still a little intimidated by it. Tall Card is kind of based on poker and is a quicker game. And of course, Monopoly, can be a hit. That is if someone doesn’t flip the board out of frustration like my younger brother did one summer. I believe Monopoly was banned for a week after that.

The other games we play most frequently are card based and have essentially the same game play, just different themes and cards. I’ll start with the newest one we bought- New Phone, Who Dis?

Regular game nighters brought it with them one time and we loved it! Basically, you have a main card that you all get to see and pair it with one from your hand that you think is the funniest, most ridiculous, or in some cases hilariously offensive. Then you put them face down and the person who’s judging reads them all and picks their favorite. For example:

The first one to a certain number of agreed upon points wins. The next games follow the same format.

Cards Against Humanity probably ties with Joking Hazard as the most likely to offend people. When you’re playing against mental health workers, the gallows humor abounds. Not all the cards are terrible though. There are some innocuous ones like “Lunchables” and “Bees?”

Joking Hazard is by the author of the comic Cyanide and Happiness, which as you can probably tell by the name, is generally pretty dark. In this game, you make your own comic strip to go with the main card and the judge picks their favorite. This one is especially cool because the whole strip could be wordless. It’s fun, although sometimes cringe worthy, to see what people come up with!

Jobstacles is a pretty tame game, comparatively speaking, so I thought I should end with it. Perhaps then you won’t think we’re too terrible. 😉 In this game the judge puts down a card of a person they need to hire and you add a candidate card and a card that can either hurt or help the candidate card. This game is fun because you get to see what other people think. None of the people normally fit the job, so you’re really having to pick from the best of the worst of the combinations. It’s a very quick playing game and is best with a smaller crowd as you can run through cards pretty quickly.

So those are some of the games we like to play and hopefully will be able to play again at some point. Speaking of game playing, Piggy is currently sitting like this on the couch because I started typing and not petting her, like she thinks I should. I’d better go try and cheer her up. Can’t have the world’s most pathetic dog around the house. It’s killing the game night spirit!