Two New Games We’re Loving!

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We are a game playing family.  Recently, we’ve gotten two new games that we’ve been playing–a lot– that I want to share with you.  We’ve had a tradition for years that we get a family game for Christmas.  This year, we were kind of impatient and couldn’t wait to play them. (We did buy an expansion for one of the games to wrap and put under the tree…shhhh)

If you’re looking for some new games for Christmas, maybe one of these will fit the bill.

Monikers

Monikers is a party game.  Players start the game with a stack of cards, each with a name on it of a person or character and a short description.  Players select the given number for a game (for four players it’s 10) to put in the game stack.

The game is played with teams.  There are three rounds.

In round one, players try to get team members to guess what’s on the cards.  They can describe, even read from the card, as long as they don’t say the name.

Round two gets a little harder.  The same cards (from round 1) are shuffled back together and players again try to get their teams to guess the names.  This time, however, players can only use a single word as a clue.

Once all of the cards are guessed, they’re shuffled back together for round 3.  In round three, players cannot use any words to get their teams to guess the names on the cards.  Call it charades, mime or silent acting…it is hilarious!

*Warning*

The game has one thing that was a BIG disappointment for us to discover, and I want to make sure to warn you about this:  It is not family friendly without editing.  We ended up removing about 20% of the cards because of graphic sexual content in the card descriptions.  We’ve decided that we may go through with a Sharpie in order to be able to use some of the cards.  The game is labeled for ages 17+.  But even as an adult, I’m not comfortable with some of the content.  It’s pretty bad.  Have I made this point clear enough?  And it’s too bad, because without this content, this is a game we would have given as gifts for sure!

**Update:  Someone pointed me in the direction of this game ==> Disney Charades.  Yup!  Same 3-stage concept, but it’s all Disney!  I’ve yet to play, but intend on getting my hands on this soon.

Harry Potter Hogwarts Battle

Our other new favorite is a deck-building strategy game set in the Harry Potter universe.  If you’ve played Legendary or Dominion, you are familiar with deck-building games.  If not, no worries, it’s easy to pick up!

 

 

 

The game is for 2-4 players, each player acting as one of four characters–Harry, Ron, Hermione or Neville.  There are seven levels to the game, matching to the seven books in the series.  (We’ve played through the first 3 levels so far.  After you play all seven, you can either start over or pick any level to play.)  Each level gets progressively more difficult to beat.

Butterbeer is not required, but definitely adds to the fun!

Aside from the difficulty level rising with each new ‘year’ at Hogwarts, the characters grow in their abilities, being able to do more. There are also more spells, objects, and allies added each round.

Although you have an individual character, you are also working cooperatively to defeat any number of villains before they capture various locations from you.  As such, you either all win or all lose together.

Which of these new games do you want to try?

Whether you’re looking for a light-hearted party game or a more intense strategy driven game I hope you find something new to try!

You can find lots more games we love here.