Games for Christmas 2010

What to do with guests over Christmas / Some Christmas Gift Ideas 

If you are thinking computers games and Wii, DON’T; Monopoly, Trivial Pursuit, Scrabble etc NO; the miriade of commercial games based on popular films or TV shows STOP !

There is whole world of great games out there waiting for you, just not in the high street stores. They are less well known because they are rarely sold by high street retailers (with the exception of specialist games shops) and so are largely unknown to the UK public. If you want to buy any games mentioned below (prices will range from under £6 to £40) then there is a list of internet retailers on the right hand side of my blog titled Where to get the games.

As we approach the festive season our minds turn inevitably to the various ideas for presents and there are a number of lists out there of games that would work for Christmas (as just a couple of examples Mark Rivera's list is here and the BoardGameGeek recommendations here), so I thought I would approach this blog from a slightly different angle and look at what games you might want in the house for others to enjoy over the festive season.

Modern board and card games come in many forms but the best ones are not designed around hackneyed old games or some cult TV program / film of the moment, but rather stand out from the aforementioned games because frankly they are better. You know the saying ‘a pet is for life not just Christmas’ well so it should be with modern games. The games talked about in this blog post and my blog generally are great fun and hopefully you will be tempted to play them at other times of the year, not just over Christmas.

To those who say 'they don't like games' or have had bad experiences in the past with games I would make the following points concerning these games:

• You don’t need to be good at spelling, general knowledge, computers or anything else to play them and have fun. I guess maths and a little logic will help but we all need a lot more of these elements to survive in the modern world than you will find required in the games listed below. 
• There is not a dice in sight, the games are about how you deal with the situations and cards you are dealt not about trying to roll a 6 or indeed any other number.. 
• The games are more about building than destruction, meaning that direct conflict between players should not be something to worry about, particularly if everybody remembers that when playing games it is more important to enjoy the journey and have fun than win at the expense of ruining the journey for the other players. 
• There are games listed below that are in all probability unlike any games you have played to date.

This blog post is divided into three elements, so you can just go to the part that interests you:

1. Quick Games for Christmas Morning
2. Fun Games for Christmas Afternoon
3. After the presents – Boxing Day
4. Conclusion

Quick Games for Christmas Morning 
With people coming and going and a focus on food preparation you may need ways of amusing and distracting people for 20/30 minutes at a time. The following are some simple games that are quick to teach and will amuse both young and old:

Board games + children + parents = FUN ?

What seems incredibly sad is that according to a recent report commissioned by Disneyland Paris and written by Professor Tanya Byron “Parents have forgotten how to play” with their children. This study interviewed 2,000 parents and 2,000 children (aged between 5 and 15) across the UK and the findings suggest that not only have a significant number of parents (21%) forgotten how to play with their children but 30% of parents think that playing with their children is

UK Games Expo - Day 2, Saturday 5th June 2010

Well after a good night’s rest (hmmm finally going to sleep at 1pm, woken up at 2pm by a friend currently in the US forgetting the time zone difference or was that getting his own back for my earlier text in the middle of the American night - so at best 4 hours) off to the show across the road with the aim of beating the rush. An idea obviously shared by a number of other keen punters as the queue went round the block. Thankfully the pre booked ticket collected the day before soon had Paul, Stewart and myself ushered through the throng.

Early purchases
After a quick look round (avoiding the Daleks and Imperial Storm Troopers) I bought the first game of the day. As Tim had indicated the night before Patrizier (the English game being Patrician) was being sold for a mere £8 (from JKLM) albeit with the rules in German (the English ones being on BoardGameGeek, I hoped!).

The participation games (in the Kniziathon & Mynd Games area) were yet to start so more browsing led me to a couple of fantasy artists (Ralph Horsley being one) and their stunning work albeit not necessarily something I would want on the wall at home. A second look at the bring-and-buy stand highlighted once again how far games had moved on since I started. At one point I suspected that my wife had arrived via the Tardis to sell off some of my older games, things like Azhantai High Lightning, Machiavelli and a number of others. Maybe when I get home I will I will box these up and archive them to some dark corner rather than waste good shelf space with games that whilst good are not the types of game either I or our group enjoy playing and whose boards and components look rudimentary and amateurish compared with today offerings.

Working with children

One of the nice things about the show was the opportunity at every corner to play new games and meet new people. In particular the effort put in by Nigel Scarfe of Imagination Games to run an area devoted to children’s games I think is worthy of note. Not surprisingly there was a huge amount of energy and a great buzz through the morning with an awards ceremony in the afternoon. Meeting Nigel was one of the highlights of the weekend for me, hearing about the work he has been undertaking in taking games into schools, libraries, old people’s homes and more and the tremendous reaction he has been getting.