Boardgames Review

An Easy & Fun Way to Ruin Friendships

It is so cold today! I am still waiting for blood to return to three of my fingertips from my walk home at 11:30... and yes mom, I have put them into hot water. I'm fine. I had one of my finals today and now I'm procrastinating studying for my last final on Wednesday (did I mention my last final EVER!?) This weekend we had some friends over to play boardgames. We own some awesome ones.....and some heartbreaking ones. Boardgames make for a nice evening in... or can lead to one of you sleeping on the couch. Either way, I thought I would review some of the games we have. 

1. Dominion 

I love this game! There are a ton of expansions to get for it too. It's for 2-4 players. The point of the game is to build yourself a deck of action cards that work off each other. Action cards can let you attack the other players, give you more actions per turn, give you more money per turn, or get more action cards for free. You want to use your action cards in a way that lets you buy coins. Once you have enough coins, you can buy victory points. Whoever has the most points at the end wins!

Pros: Easy to learn, endless card combinations to play with making each game different, and you control your own game (mostly).

Cons: Only has up to 4 players which you may not see as a con but for us it is usually not enough.

2. 7 Wonders

This game is the newest addition to our tiny collection. It is another card game. Each player is given a wonder and the goal is to build your wonder with the resources on the cards. You can also set up science cards, military, extra points, and cards that help you trade with other players. All the different cards give you points that are added up at the end. The card play is a little different in this game. Each turn you choose one card to play in your hand. You then pass your hand to the player next to you and it becomes their hand. You have to be able to build your wonder without helping others build their wonder. 

Pros: Up to 7 people can play, and there's multiple ways to rack up points.

Cons: A bit more difficult to learn, your strategy can be messed up by other players.

3. Times Up

This is a "party" board game that really has no strategy. It is a lot of fun and provides a lot of laughs. It's similar to charades but 3 times the fun (I should be a spokesperson for it). You play in teams and everyone uses the same deck of 40 cards. Once you agree on which side you're playing (we usually just do a vote) you can start the game. There are three rounds. The first round you are allowed to say anything except the word and you cannot skip cards, so if you are having difficulties you are just going to have to keep guessing. The second round you are only allowed to say one word and the third round you can not say anything. You can skip cards in both these rounds. The same deck is used for all three rounds so you want to try to remember what the cards say as they will come up again. For example:

If the card said "Captain Hook"

1st round you would say "Villain from Peter Pan"

2nd round you would say "Pirate"

3rd round you would show a hook with your hand.

Each turn your team has 30 seconds to get as many cards as you can. Points are added up after each round.

Pros: Tons of people can play because you can have however many people on a team, gets people to try and be creative (one of our friends said "Dances around like an asshole" for Frosty the Snowman), there's cards everyone will know and cards with people you have never heard of before which keeps an even playing field, and there's enough cards to play multiple times.

Cons: A lot of people won't let Jordon and I be on the same team as we are too good together :(

One con for all these boardgames is the expense. They are pretty pricey but if you are looking for something that will provide many nights of fun, I would highly suggest these three!

-Vanessa xo