Holiday Gift Guide - Family Games
Welcome to part 2 of our Holiday Gift Guide series of articles. In this article we are going to focus on games you may or may not have heard of that will get your whole family around the table at the holidays to play. This list is our top 5, however this list is by no means all the games you should look at. For our complete list of family games, check out our Family Category
5. Ticket to Ride
If you haven’t heard of Ticket to Ride, we highly recommend this series of games. Each game is a bit different. Ticket to Ride is played over a series of rounds with players trying to connect cities on a map to complete routes . By discarding enough cards of a route’s color allows you to complete a route. Each route scores you points and the player with the most points wins! This is a great family game as it allows everyone an equal chance of winning the game. It really comes down to the luck of the draw of the cards and figuring out which routes you need to win. We have a more in-depth review of the gorgeous Europe 15th Anniversary edition.
Ticket To Ride: Europe 15th Anniversary Game Review
4. Azul
Azul is a great game for all those budding artists on your list. In Azul, you are mosaic pattern makers. First you need to select the tiles from the factory, then decide how you are going to place them on your wall. But be careful, any that can’t be placed will “fall to the floor” and deduct from your end of round score. This is a great game for families with children who like to draw and make collages. If you like the original, there’s also Azul: Stained Glass of Sintra which includes more involved pattern building.
3. Takenoko
Takenoko is a great family game to play when you have 30 minutes and want to get a game to the table. Kids will love the panda, bamboo and farmer miniatures. The object of the game is grow your bamboo the highest. To do this, you place tiles down that will help irrigate the land, but be careful. That panda is hungry and will eat all the bamboo if you aren’t careful. This is a great game for those people who like Carcassonne or Catan and want to introduce their children to tile placement games.
2. Mariposas
Coming to the top of our list are two games that are both educational and fun. Both Mariposas and Wingspanare designed by Elizabeth Hargrave. In Mariposas, your goal is to move your butterflies north from Mexico to pollinate flowers, reproduce and ultimately fly back to Mexico to end the game. The game takes place over three seasons and you score points after each season. The more butterflies you get back to Mexico the higher your score. This game is great for families because it shows kids the butterfly lifecycle in a new and exciting way.
1. Wingspan
Our top family game is Wingspan, we really love the way this game plays. In Wingspan, you draw cards which represent different birds and you can add them to your own personal board (or aviary). To do this you must pay the birds food cost. You gain food by rolling dice using a bird feeder dice tower. Then you can lay eggs on your birds to score even more points. This game is great for families as its easy to learn and what’s more, each card comes with amazing illustrations and facts about the birds. With it’s two expansions, Europe and Oceania there are even more birds to bring into you aviary.
We hope you like our list of Holiday Family games. We think that if you have any of these at your table over the holidays they will surely be crowd pleasers! Don’t forget we’re in the middle of our Black Friday sale and everything is 30% off MSRP until December 5th! We do carry a limited number of each game and we’ll be restocking throughout the sale!