Board games
Anoushka Mallik, Junior, News Editor
About Me
Hi, I’m Anoushka! When I’m not being a super dedicated Sag writer (of course), you can find me reading John Mulaney quotes, binging The Office, or listening to King Princess on repeat. I love TV shows, movies and music but love board games even more. A lot of people will say that games are for little kids, but I believe in de-stigmatizing games and allowing them to be for everyone. While there are lots of great games out there, I have picked the ones that I think are the easiest to play with about four people. Some of them do require touching tiles, so make sure you are washing your hands before you play!
Board Games
Actually legitimate and will work your mind:
Rummikub: This game is Rummy 500 (or any variation of Rummy) to the next level. There are a bunch of tiles that are all spread out (flipped over so you can’t see what number is written on it) and each player must pick 10 tiles. To play something, you must play either a set, a group of three numbers of different colors, or a run, three consecutive numbers of the same color. To start, you have to play 30 points in sets and runs, where each tile counts for the number that is written on it (i.e. a tile that says nine is worth nine points). Players go in a clockwise circle, and after you have played your 30 points you can play anywhere on the board. You can add to what other people have laid out, or steal tiles from what they have played! It basically becomes a giant puzzle and is a super fun game!!
Clue: I mean, Clue is a classic that I couldn’t not include. The goal of the game is to figure out who committed a murder, the location of the murder and the murder weapon, the trick being that everyone is competing to be the first to do so. To set up the game, a location, weapon and character is randomly drawn and placed in a highly confidential slip. Then, the rest of the cards are divided among the players. After this, each player rolls the dice and can move either horizontally or vertically. If you reach a room, you can take a guess to see what’s in the slip. The person to your left will be the first to answer if they have one of the things you guessed, and from there it goes around. If no one has it, it must be in the slip! I’ve been playing this game with my family and it gets pretty intense. After you play a few times, you can start to figure out some of the best tricks and it’s really, really fun.
Stupidly competitive:
Trouble: I always get way too competitive in Trouble, especially since it’s a game almost entirely based on luck. It’s pretty similar to Sorry, and the premise of the game is to get all your pawns from their start spaces to their home spaces. To move, you bop the die roller, very fun and also very frustrating. Yes, it’s all luck, but it’s amazing and, no matter what others will say, 100% appropriate for high schoolers.
Slapzi: Each player starts out with five cards that have a picture of some object, like a firetruck or grapes. There are two piles of cards, one pile with picture cards and a separate pile for the slapzi cards, which are the starter cards. One slapzi card will be placed in the middle and will say something like, “four or five letter food.” Then it’s a race to play one of your cards first. This game is super fun, but be prepared to have your hand slapped a bit!
Homey/fun times games:
Psych: *social distanding board game alert* This game might be my favorite party game. It’s an app made by Ellen DeGeneres where there are a bunch of different categories. Each player makes up answers to trivia questions. Once the game starts, your goal is to try and decipher between the real answer and the fake answers to each trivia question! My personal favorite category is the “The truth comes out…” deck. In this one, the game generates random questions about random players and each player puts in their answers and then players choose the funniest answer. You can play this game in the company of your friends or in separate houses and either way it’s a party.
Dance Charades: This game is pretty similar to regular charades, except it’s dancing and a board game!! Players cycle through one after the other, dancing out cards and trying to get other players to guess what they are dancing. In the center there is a circle where players can throw in tokens if they guessed correctly, or simply if they love the dancing and each token wins the dancer one point. This game is so so cute and so much fun to play with family and friends. I highly recommend it!
Overall, we’re not in the business of shaming any board games here but these are some of my personal favorites. Stay safe, and try out some of these board games for fun times with the fam!