Five Crowns is a card game for players 8 and older and for 2-7 players. To play you start with each player getting 3 cards and the 3s themselves are considered wild. By combining the cards in specific patterns you get rid of your cards and earn points. In the next round of the game, each person gets 4 cards and the 4s are wild but the patterns and sequences you need to form stay the same. Game continues until you get to and complete the round with the Kings wild.

When I played this game, it took a pretty long time with only 4 people and there seemed to be a lot of waiting time between turns. A couple times, the round ended before I even got a chance to play and that was a little annoying. Overall this is a game you can use to pass the time or to bond with younger kids, but I don’t highly recommend it for when you are having new company over.

In this game, three words or phrases are said and you must identify the bond between them. My sister tells me this is a wildly fun game and I have thus far just chosen to take her word for it. If, however, you have a spare copy and the time to play, throw me a group in the comments and I’ll do my best to figure it out.

My daughter really likes the game “Gobblet Gobblers”. It’s like Tic-Tac-Toe and has a grown up version called “Gobblet” that is played the same way as this one but on a 4×4 grid instead of a 3×3 grid.. This game is for ages 5 and up and for 2 players.

You put your pieces on the board one at a time, but not all pieces are the same size and lager pieces can ‘gobble’ smaller pieces by being places over them and covering them up. You can cover your pieces or the opponent’s pieces. You can also take a piece you have placed on the board and move it somewhere else.

On a scale from 1 to 10 my daughter gives this game 6. She likes that it is easy to learn, but she REALLY doen’t like it when someone else wins. You might rate it higher if you find you win more often than she does.

The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (the one distributed by Warren) has quite a grown up looking design, but my husband has deemed it a kids game. They certainly don’t mind. The game is for ages 8 and up and for 2-6 players. It usually takes them 30-60 minutes to play.

In this game, the goal is to get the most ‘good points’ before all the tasks are completed and the players have reached their end positions. Players get points by completing tasks given out on cards that are drawn during each player’s turn.

One good part of the game is the intrigue that comes with completing the tasks. Some players may get tired if you happen to play a round that takes a while and set up can be a little complicated.

On a scale from 1 to 10 my child gives this game a 8.

My son owns the Lego Harry Potter game called “Harry Potter Hogwarts” and he likes it a lot. Sometimes he has trouble getting his siblings to play it with him but he still gives it rave reviews. It is for 2-4 players and for ages 8 and up. The box says it takes 20-40 minutes.

In this game (once you have it all set up) you go from class to class collecting various supplies. The first one to make it back to their starting spot with a complete collection wins. You move by rolling a die. It’s not just a regular die, though. Sometimes this helps you move staircases, sometimes you get to move people around.

On a scale from 1 to 10 my son gives it 9. Then I asked what he doesn’t like about it and he changed his answer to 10.

My son has his first deck of playing cards and seems to have fallen in love with playing solitaire.   I figure that’s fine as long as he doesn’t start gambling on whether or not he’ll win the game.

You know, cuz he’s playing alone and will have to bet against himself.  Seems like that’d be a bad thing.

This particular game is shockingly wonderful for the whole family.  I’ve gotten used to games that look like this being very complicated and heavy on strategy but it turns out you can’t judge a game by its box.  In this game there are 13 containers in which small beads are held.  Each container holds a different number of beads from 1-13 but the number is only written on the bottom of the container and is made visible until the end each round.

One person rolls the dice and then the players shake the containers trying to come as close to the rolled number as possible without going over.  Once each person has made their choice, everyone reveals the number on the bottom at the same time.  The person with the number closest to the rolled number goes first and pieces on the board are moved in much the same way as Parcheesi.

The game goes pretty quickly and even the very young can play.

Oddly enough, my cast trove of games does not include a classic version of Scrabble. That isn’t going to keep me from telling you about it, though. There may be some people out there (the under 20 crowd) who haven’t yet played.

You get together with you best bud or buds in front of whom you’ve been dying to flash some really stellar vocabulary and spelling skills. You pull out a few tiles and start throwing down words spelled according to the way they show up in the dictionary. None of this flim flam text spelling stuff. You have to actually include vowels. You track your score as you go along and the person who has the most at the end of the game wins.

Hint: Never play against your grandma if you want to win.

This game was a bit of fun, but I think I’ll like it better when I play it a second time. The rules can be somewhat intricate and anyone who hasn’t played it before should play with others who also haven’t played it so that the first time through can be thought of as a test game.

Anyway, everyone is on the same team and you are trying to win quests so you can earn enough white swords at the round table to beat back the dart forces. You move from quest to quest either individually or with help and play cards at each place on the board. The game goes pretty quickly but I got a little bored waiting for my turn when playing with four so it might be better to alter the number of players.

My parents were digging around in their house looking for a long lost erector set and came across a game that it seems we children had never tried.  It was still in perfect condition so I have been given the great honor of bringing home ‘Swamp Thing’ and I will let you know how it goes!

This one is a classic. You insert a bunch of sticks, criss-cross, into a tall tube with holes in the sides of the center section. Once you have a net of sticks, you pour the marbles (included) on top of the net. Each person takes turns pulling out a stick (like in Jenga). If any marbles fall out, they go to the person who just pulled a stick. After all the marbles have fallen, each person counts how many marbles they ended up with and the person with the fewest wins.

As long as you don’t have someone circling the game looking at it for 15 min each time they have a turn, this is REALLY quick and simple. Of course marbles are a choking hazard so don’t be leaving them out for tiny kids to try to eat.

I see that icket to Ride – Europe got a mention here, but the original never really did. I really only talk about the games I’ve enjoyed playing so that’s why you’re about to read me saying the same thing for the 80th time.

It’s a fun game to play, having won the 2004 “German Game of the Year” award. It works with 2-5 players (that being the number of different colored trains in the game) and for ages 8 and up (I’ve seen younger play after watching a few grown-up rounds). It takes 30-60 min according to the box.

The idea is to make as many train routes as possible given a limited number of trains. Each route is preset on a card and you get different cards than other people so you aren’t doing the exact same routes – but there may be overlap with more than one person fighting for a stretch of track! Each route that you complete scores you points and, of course, the longer the route, the more points. The game ends when someone runs out of trains and you are penalized points for any routes you have in your hand but don’t complete.

The only real controversy surrounding this game in my house is their assignment of the word ‘purple’ to pieces that are clearly pink.

If you are looking for a team oriented game to play and have a free hour or so and you can find it, you can play Betrayal at House on the Hill.  For ages 10 and up, and for 3-6 players, this starts with everyone on the same team.  You explore a house together but once ‘the haunting’ begins, someone turns traitor and the rest of you must band together to complete a final task or defeat the traitor.  Though it takes an hour, it is a pretty fast paced game and wonderfully, each time you play the ending changes as well because there are a multitude of different scenarios to play through.  Apparently, this game was out of print for some time but has recently come back out so you may be able to get it at a reasonable price.  Enjoy!

Gobblet is a fun and popular game sort of like tic tac toe. In this game, you try to get 4 in a row using nesting cylinders. This way, if your cylinder is larger than the other players cylinder, you can cover it up with your own and take over their space. It’s a super easy game to learn but may require a lot of strategy – even though you can move your pieces after you’ve placed them on the board, this is only allowed if it is exposed. If it has been ‘gobbled’ by another piece, you can’t move it unless it is uncovered at some point.

I often lost track of my pieces this way. Woops.

Fun for young and old and it is a two player game.

Cranium. I bet a bunch of you out there have played this game and loved it. I love it too so we have something in common. My husband does not like. Bummer for him!

This game is for adults and teens and needs 4 or more players, though I myself love it enough to play with only 2. You have to be having a lot of fun and not worrying about the rules for this to work.

The object is to get your piece to the end spot first and you do this by rolling the dice as well as answering trivia questions, playing charades or completing a task. One time I had to get a person to say ‘rocking chair’ using clay. You can be penalized if you don’t perform certain tasks. At one point in a game I played, all players had to stand and yell ‘Pizza Party!’ every time a door bell or phone rang lest they be moved back a space. Hilarity ensued with cell phones ringing all over the place.

The best part about this game is that you’re not always stuck doing one thing – you don’t have to answer trivia each turn if you’re not good at that. You don’t have to draw pictures every turn if you’re not good at that. There’s a ton of variety in the game play and it keeps you on your toes and not bored. I would caution not to have too many players or you spend a bunch of time waiting for your turn.

Bang is a game that can be played by 4 to 7 players and is for ages 8 and up. The object of the game is to win, according to my son. ‘But what do you need to do to win?’ you might ask. It depends upon what character you are playing. If you’re the sheriff, you have to get rid of all the outlaws and the renegade. The outlaws need to get rid of the sheriff. The deputies want to do the same thing as the sheriff. The last character, the renegade, tries to take over the sheriff’s position.

Players take turns playing one card that makes the game take an action, like shooting someone. Sometimes you hit, sometimes you miss, sometimes you don’t shoot at all.

My son likes that he doesn’t have to be the same thing each time he plays. He doesn’t like when he gets shot and can’t do anything about it. He emphatically likes the game.

Fun for the whole gosh darn family!

I recently tried out Scrabble Flash. It’s a nice little game for one or more players though you’ll probably get the most fun out of it as a single player. It has three modes and the two of them and for just one person. In the first mode, you use the 5 electronic letter generators to form 5 letter words. When the letter generators touch, they communicate so you juggle them around and push them together to get the game to confirm you’ve formed a word. In the second mode, you do the same thing but with fewer letters. In the multi-player mode, you and another person go back and forth forming 5 letter words.

I did find the mulit-player mode disappointing because it was hard to move the pieces between the players in enough time and often had the game tell me I lost even though I didn’t have time to do anything. The time gets shorter in this round with each successive turn, but when it’s my first turn, I think something is amiss.

All in all I prefer old fashioned scrabble more than this, but Scrabble Flash is a nice reinvention of the old version. This game is for players 8 and older and for as many people as you wish.

My son’s birthday came and went and with it we received a new infusion of games (yeah!!). One that I was totally skeptical of when I first saw it on the shelf at the store but which I instantly fell in love with once I played it was “7 Ate 9″. This game if for 2-4 players and the instructions say 8 and up but I think you could go down to 6 if the kid can ad and subtract up to 3 from numbers up to 10.

And that’s what this game is. A player puts down a card into a common pile. This card has a large number on it and a smaller number in the corner. The large number is the current total. The smaller number tells you how much you can add or subtract (again this can be a 1, 2 or 3) from the total. If you have a card that matches what will be the new total, you can play it. There are no turns – you play whenever you can and the first one to the pile gets to leave their card there.

It’s fast paced and, though the numbers are small and the math simple, your brain will often trip up because the problem changes each time. Totally fun for everyone who can add and subtract.

I just got a flash from the past in a game sent to me by my sister. We played it as kids and she’s had it all this time (it was her’s so that’s understandable). It’s called “Delux Checkline Game”. I like to think of it as a cross between tic-tac-toe and 3-D chess but most people don’t think it’s that fancy and describe it as 3-D tic-tac-toe.

In this game you need to get four in a row, but you can place your piece on any of 4 tiers, so you can win in more directions when you place one piece. The tiers are clear for better visualization but I usually need to look at it from different sides to make sure I’m really seeing everything.

Another plus for this game is that you can have up to 4 players, each with their own color marbles to place. I’ve never played to a tie, but I don’t see why it wouldn’t be possible to do so.

My kids fell in love with it immediately and the more people playing, the more fun it is because you need to watch out for the plans of more people. I do a little trash talking as well to spice it up.