In an effort to enjoy more unplugged family time, we’ve been playing a different game each week of 2018.
Each month, I’m planning to review these games here on the blog. Here are our March games of the week.
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Mexican Train
We purchased a Mexican Train/Chicken Foot domino set a couple of years ago, and have enjoyed playing with it ever since. Ours is a double 12 set.
The goal of each round of Mexican Train is to be the first person to get rid of all your dominoes in your hand.
At the start of the game, each player draws 14 dominoes (depending on the number of players it may be more or less). Then, each person takes turns matching their dominoes into their played hand, or train.
At the beginning, the double 12 goes into the center. This means everyone’s first domino must have a 12. The second round starts with an 11, and continues going down until you start with double zero.
What I Like About this Game
The dominoes are sturdy and it’s a fun way for younger kids to practice matching. Though they need some help with the strategy, I can have my four year old sit and be my partner. He can match the colors and numbers. My six year old can play independently, as can my older kids.
The dominoes are also fun to play with on your own. My kids enjoy trying to connect them all in a giant train. They also use them to build houses, figures, and things I can’t even identify.
What I Don’t Like About this Game
It takes a LONG time to play a full game. And most of my kids lose interest before we do wrap it up.
So, we either start at double-six and work down from there, or start at double-twelve and go down to six. Either way cuts the play time by a lot and makes it more manageable for an evening activity.
This game also takes a while to clean up. The dominoes have to go just so in the box, or they don’t all fit. Thankfully I have two kids who are REALLY good at this part and enjoy it.
CLUE
Clue is a fun detective game! We ran out of the original paper pads that come with the game long ago, so now we just keep a table template of it on the computer and print off 20 or so at a time. Then we have them available when we need them.
The goal of Clue is to figure out who killed Mr. Boddy, where they killed him at, and what weapon he used. To figure all this out, you’ve got to use logic and the process of elimination.
My seven-year-old successfully played for the first time this week, and she was thrilled!
Once you sort the cards and secretly put a person, place, and weapon in the Confidential envelope, the rest of the cards get shuffled. Each player gets some cards, but some players may have one more card than others.
Each turn you try to get into a room so you can pose a question. Then another player shows you a card if they have it.
Whoever successfully solves the mystery first is the winner. The game typically took us about thirty minutes to play. The fewer players you have, the faster it goes.
What I Like About This Game
I enjoy the logic building of this game. It’s a great way to teach kids to take careful records, analyze what they know, and use deduction.
And the weapons and character pieces are fun to play with.
What I Don’t Like About This Game
There’s not much I don’t like about this game. It’s fairly quick to play and quite a bit of fun.
Pictopia-Family Trivia Game: Disney Edition
Pictopia is a Disney trivia game. It uses picture cards for the clues, and each card has a variety of questions on the back.
We don’t play this one quite by the rules, since a lot of the questions are too difficult for most of my kids to read. We’re working on that!
In the meantime, I act as host and read all the questions. The kids answer them and have a fun time sharing what they know about Disney.
What I Like About this Game
The picture cards are really cute, and the kids are always excited to play. There’s one category of questions that asks players to think about one of the other players. So, there might be four pictures of different Disney castles on the card and the question might be:
Which one of these castles would (player name) most like to live in?
Then everyone uses their voting wheels to indicate their answer.
I also like that many of the questions are collaborative instead of competitive. It means my younger kids can play along and still get to move their pieces along the board.
What I Don’t Like About This Game
We don’t recognize all of the content. While we enjoy many of the classic Disney films, we aren’t up to date on their television shows or some of their newer material.
Thankfully, as host I can quickly screen the cards to ensure we recognize at least the majority of pictures on each one that we use.
Phase 10
Phase 10 is a fun card game. There are colorful number cards (four colors with numbers 1-12). Also included in play are wild cards and skip cards.
There are ten phases players focus on. They are:
- 2 sets of 3
- 1 set of 3 + 1 run of 4
- 1 set of 4 + 1 run of 4
- 1 run of 7
- 1 run of 8
- 1 run of 9
- 2 sets of 4
- 7 cards of 1 color
- 1 set of 5 + 1 set of 2
- 1 set of 5 + 1 set of 3
Sets are the same number (in any color), and runs are consecutive numbers (in any color).
So, you get your cards at the beginning of the game. Since you are on phase 1, you draw and discard on your turn to try and get two sets of three cards each.
When you get your sets, you play them on the table in front of you. At this point, you can play on the sets the other players have in front of them. Your goal now is to run out of cards and end the round.
When someone runs out, everyone who has finished the phase moves onto the next one. Anyone who didn’t stays there. So after a couple of rounds, it’s possible that everyone would be working on a different phase. This adds to the fun, so yu aren’t all going for the same thing all the time.
Any cards left in your hand at the end of each round are calculated. The primary goal is to be the first to finish all ten phases. But, if two people do this on the same round, the person with the lower score wins.
What I Like About This Game
I like that this card game takes a bit of strategy. As people around you start playing their phases, you’ve got to watch what you discard. If the person next to you wants, they can pick up that card instead of drawing. So your discard may help someone else run out of cards.
Each round also goes fairly quickly (well typically, we had a couple that went on forever!)
What I Don’t Like About This Game
Playing a full game takes a long time. We mostly just played a couple of phases each evening to keep it more manageable for our time limit.
Everyone’s Favorite Game from March
No one had to think very long when I asked them what their favorite games were this month. Here’s what the players said:
- Ellie: Mexican Train
- Sydney: Mexican Train
- Brynna: Pictopia
- Simon: Pictopia
- Jeffrey: Clue
- Jayme: Phase 10
- Me: Clue
- Bryan: Phase 10
April Games of the Week
We’re really enjoying playing more games together, and being more intentional with our time.
We’re already a couple of weeks into April, and we’ve played some fun games. I’ll be sharing them with you early next month.