
Pandemic: 2-4 Players, Ages 10+, 60 Minutes, Around $25įorbidden Island: 2-4 Players, Ages 10+, 30 Minutes, Around $15 (best valued game out there) 6.
KIDS OF CATAN BOARD GAME FULL
See our full reviews of Pandemic and Forbidden Island. And you can also increase the difficulty level if you’re feeling particularly daring. It has a variable board set up so the game offers a new challenge every time. In Forbidden Island your team of experts is searching for treasure on a sinking island. And Forbidden Island has been described as Pandemic-Lite. In Pandemic diseases are breaking out around the world and your team of experts need to work together to clean up the mess and find cures for the diseases. When you’re not really in the head-to-head competitive mode, it’s good to have a board game where you can all work together to defeat the game. Pandemic is a great cooperative board game. Pandemic or Forbidden Island – Cooperative play Good placement of your meeples will determine your success or failure.Ģ-5 Players, Ages 8+, 60 Minutes, Around $25 5. You place your miniature people (Meeples) on the tiles depending on how you want to score points. You randomly select a tile and place it so the board and countryside grows over the course of the game. In Carcassonne you build a country side full of cities, farms, and roads. Carcassonne – Create your own worldĬarcassonne is another good game that has a great balance of strategy and luck and is another hugely popular family board game for good reason. See our full review of Settlers of Catan.ģ-4 Players, Ages 10+, 90 Minutes, Around $35 4. The variable layout of the tiles and numbers make it a fresh game every time you play. And you’ll use those resources to build and expand further. Any time a player rolls a number that corresponds to where your settlements or cities are located, you get a reward – your spot produces those resources.

What we love about Settlers of Catan is that even when it’s not your turn, you still participate. When it was published in 1995 it established a new type of game experience. Settlers of Catan (now just known as Catan) has been at the top of the best selling hobby board games for a number of years. As the game nears the end is when it really gets tricky – and fun.Ģ or 4 Players, Ages 5+, 20 Minutes, Around $20 3. Blokus is great for developing spacial recognition skills as well as strategic planning. The only caveat to placing a piece is that it may not lie adjacent to your other pieces, but instead must be placed touching at least one corner of your pieces already on the board. Blokus – Spacial recognition and planningīlokus is an abstract strategy game with colored Tetris-shaped pieces that players are trying to play onto the board. See our full review of Ticket to Ride: Europe.Ģ-5 Players, Ages 8+, 45 Minutes, Around $40 2. There are different versions to choose from – we like the Europe version the best. Learning to plan your route based on your cards and knowing when to block others are the keys to a good strategy. We love that it has a good balance of strategy and luck and is simple to learn and play. Players compete to build train routes on the board and earn points based on the length and destinations. Ticket to Ride is a fantastic family board game that’s great for people of all ages.

Most likely your kids will be up to the challenge before then. Note: Even though we’ve listed the manufacturer suggested ages, we find that often times those ages are higher than necessary.

They’re all great board games and we have no hesitation in recommending all of them to every family out there. And with over 160 games in our game closet, this is a tough list to make. These are the 10 board games that we’ll make sure to rescue if our house is burning down – or at least the first to buy again if the fire marshal stops us from running back in. That’s why we’ve put together this list of the top board games that we believe every family should have on their game shelf. That’s why we think it’s important to make sure your game shelf or game closet is supplied with a variety of family board games so you’re ready for any occasion. Well, that depends a lot on who and how many people are playing. So what are the best board games to pull out on cold winter nights? The other thing we do a lot of this time of year is play family board games. Ok, so we’ve never actually roasted any chestnuts on an open fire, but we sing about it a lot this time of year. The snow is falling, the temperature is dropping, and chestnuts are being roasted on open fires.
