Ahhh Christmas, that time of year where you once again realise you have no idea what to get the young or old gamer in your life. Questions such as ‘is it those Monopoly games you like’ will only result in rolled eyes. Never fear, LXG is here, with our twelve games of Christmas list. This list is presented in order of youngest to oldest, that is games suitable for younger gamers are listed first.
1. Connect 4
We start the list with something nice and simple. Connect 4 is easy to set up and easy to play. Not so easy to win! Two players compete to make a line of 4 colours while preventing their opponent from doing the same. When there is a winner, simple empty the colour token from the grid and play again. Each game takes 5-10 minutes to play through. A nice introduction to gaming.
2. Hey! That’s my Fish
This game of penguins and their love of fish is just as quick to play as Connect 4. The advantage of this game is that the number of players doubles to four. This leads to making for more considerations when taking your turn, and learning the all important art of patience while other people take theirs. With this game you also learn to take the fish before they do!
3. Settlers of Catan
Up to five players can take part in a game of Settlers of Catan. This game involves starting from a couple of settlements and gradually building up to a larger empire with cities and roads. The first player to 10 points wins the game. The game board is made anew in each game. Hex tiles representing brick, stone, wool, wood and wheat are placed randomly into a board shape, surrounded by water tiles.
To further change conditions in each game, counters are placed on each tile, these are numbered between 2 and 12. In each players turn, than player rolls 2D6. The score determines which tiles will produce resources each turn. The player who rolls the dice might not receive any resources depending on the score!
This game teaches some basic strategy lessons, and provides multiple paths to victory, including timely use of the thief on your opponents’ tiles to stop them producing resources at all.
4. Small World
Small World continue on the from building theme of Settlers of Catan. Unlike that game Small World comes with a fixed board, though the board you use changes depending on whether there are two, three, four, or five players in the game. With a fixed board, it is the player resources that change in each game.
Players can choose from a variety of fantasy races including orcs, skeletons, and wizards, to try and take over the board and create a greater kingdom than the other players. The bigger your kingdom, the more coins you earn. When the game ends after a fixed number of turns, the player with the most coins is the winner.
The variability in Small World comes from the races and their attributes. Each race has its innate ability, and is assigned an additional ability at random as they are drawn into the game. This could be hill dwelling, flying, berserk, diplomatic or many more, and they all change how you will play that race.
