Board game holiday gift guide 2019

December has started again and that means it's almost time for the holidays, the perfect period of the year to play lots of board games with your family and friends. For this reason, every year we make a list of the best games of the year to play or to gift to the people you are going to enjoy the holidays with. These are our picks for 2019.

Quoridor is a simple, but very thought out abstract strategy game that can be taken out and played immediately. Each player takes a side of the 9 by 9 grid on the board and gets ten fences and a pawn. The goal of the game is straightforward, the first player who gets their pawn to the other side of the board is the winner of the game. On your turn, you either move your pawn one space horizontal or vertical, or you place one of your fences on the board. pawns cannot move through fences, so this is a way of making it hard on your opponent, or on yourself!

For bigger groups, Perudo is a great and fun game to play. The game plays a bit like poker dice, but in this game, each player has his own five dice hidden from other players. One by one, each player now has to guess how many dice there are of one value in the entire game. The next player has to do the same thing for the same value or any other value, but the amount has to be higher than the last player. This goes on until one player is called out to be a liar, at this point, the dice are counted and the person who was incorrect has to give up one of his or her dice.
At this point, all dice are re-thrown and a new round starts. This goes on until only one player has any dice left, this player is the winner of the game.

Ticket to Ride: London is the newest game in the Ticket to Ride series released this year. In these games, players have to create transport routes between different destinations using trains. In Ticket to Ride: London this is a bit different. Players now create bus and taxi routes to get passengers to locations in the city of London. Players collect cards in different colors which are used to claim routes available on the game board. But beware, routes that have already been claimed cannot be claimed by any other player, so speed and planning are very important in this game if you want to complete your routes.
The London edition has a somewhat smaller board than usual but is also a shorter game, the box depicts only 10 to 15 minutes, a great in-between game.

This year, a very beautiful and thematic game has been released for bird lovers: Wingspan. In this game, each player tries to attract different kinds of birds to their aviary to score points and get benefits that can be used in the game. To attract the birds you want, you will have to change your aviary to the correct circumstances for these birds, you will have to keep in mind the habitat each bird lives in and what food these birds need to survive. The game contains over 100 cards depicting real birds with an image and information about the bird in real life.
Every playthrough will have its own unique rules to score, this makes it so that you will need a new strategy every time. The player that has best maintained his or her aviary and so score the most points will be crowned the winner of the game.

For those of you who like a more heavy game, we highly recommend Clans of Caledonia! In this game, each player takes the role of a Scottish clan leader and accepts the challenge to farm the land for agricultural products and produce products such as, naturally, whiskey. This game has a high emphasis on economics and money is very scarce, but you need to pay for producing buildings, as well as the ground where you place your buildings. You need to keep a good eye on the market as everyone who produces, sells, and buys resources will change the market, the prices are constantly in flux.
After five rounds, all points are counted and the player who has the best score will be crowned the best clan leader of Scotland.

Très futé ! is a simple, but clever dice game which you can learn your friends very quickly. Every player, on his turn, throws the dice and chooses one of these dice to keep, after that, all dice that had a lower value disappear and the remaining dice are thrown again by this player. This continues until the player either has chosen three dice or no dice remain to be chosen. The chosen dice can be used to complete or cross off fields on your own personal player board. Each color has a unique way of scoring points and certain fields in one color will give you an advantage in another color, this way you can make long chains of point-scoring. Now, all other players may choose one of the discarded dice and use the value on their own player board.
This goes on for four rounds where everyone takes turns throwing the dice. After these rounds, all points are counted and the player with the most points is the winner of the game.

Hopefully, you will find some new and fun games on this list to play during the holidays. Have fun!

Publié le 01 Dec 2019 par Jerodev