Cheap games to play with a group this Christmas

Or whichever holiday you celebrate

It might have escaped your attention, but Christmas is just about here again. At this time of year there’s a good chance you might be spending some time with friends and family, and when that happens you’re likely to hear these immortal words at some time:

“Shall we play a game?”

Cue groans, cheers, and someone blowing the dust off a weathered copy of Monopoly.

If a little part of you died inside at just the thought of it, then fear not! I’ve got some game recommendations that meet three very important criteria:

1. The game must be easy to explain and learn.

2. It has to be a game you can ideally get your hands on in the next week or so (depending on where in the world you live).

3. The game shouldn’t cost a fortune.

I’ll add links to my partner store, Kienda, where possible because they’re good eggs. If you order some stuff from them for the first time, remember to sign-up for an account through this link - https://kienda.co.uk/punchboard - for a 5% discount if you spend £60 or more.

So, let’s get to the good stuff. What games should you buy?

Card games

Love a card game but can’t face another game of Blackjack or Snap? I got you.

6 Nimmt!

6 Nimmt! is a true classic that works from three people right up to ten. You each play cards from your hand face-down, before turning them over and adding them to the end of one of four rows of cards. They have to go next to the card they’re closest to in ascending order. If your card is the sixth in a row, you have to pick up the previous five, which all count as negative points.

It’s quick, easy to learn, dead cheap, and so much fun. The groans and cheers from around the table when someone realises their card is going to force them to pick up a bunch of high-scoring cards is glorious.

You can pick it up for £10-15, and you should.

The Resistance / Avalon

The Resistance, later reimplemented as Avalon, is a fantastic social deduction game. My worn and tattered copy is a testament to how many times I’ve played it, and how many times it’s been thrown into my bag for gatherings. I’m not talking about game groups either, I used to take this to martial arts competitions and it was always a hit.

You’ll need 5-10 players to play, but if you’ve got that many, it’s brilliant. Essentially most people are given the roles of resistance members, but a smaller number will be spies. Each round you’ll all vote for which players go on a mission (they don’t actually do anything or go anywhere), who turn in face-down cards with success of failure. A single failure and that mission is lost - oh no!

As soon as a failure turns up, the accusations start flying. “He’s a spy, don’t choose him for the next mission, it’ll fail and the spies will win!”. “No, it’s her, I’m a good guy, trust me!”. Do you trust them? How much. Glorious fun, best played with people you don’t mind accusing of being big, fat, dirty liars.

You can pick it up from my partner store, Kienda, right now - https://kienda.co.uk/party-games/411-the-resistance-3rd-edition-722301926178.html.

Anomia

Another of the games I take everywhere with me, just in case. Playing the game is simple, but it will break your brain. I don’t care who you are, or how clever you think you are, it will break your brain.

On your turn you take a card from the deck and flip it over in front of you. Each card as a symbol in the middle, and a word on it. If the symbol on your card matches the symbol on a card in front of someone else, you have to name an example of the word on their card, while they try to do the same with the word on your card.

As an example, let’s suppose I flip a card with a lightning bolt on it which matches the one on your card. Your card says ‘Book’ on it, while mine says ‘Vegetable’. All I have to do is name a book and all you have to do is name a vegetable. The winner claims the loser’s card as a point for the end of the game. It sounds so easy, I know, but trust me, it isn’t. There’s a great domino effect too, where a won card is removed, and the newly revealed top card matches with another on the table. That duel gets resolved, and there’s another, and so on.

Anomia is my favourite ice-breaker game and highly recommended.

https://kienda.co.uk/party-games/1777-anomia-5060377420646.html

Team & co-op games

If you’ve got some younger or older members of the group who want to join in, or want to avoid too much conflict, playing some team or co-op games is a great idea.

Wavelength

Wavelength is simple and fun. One person from each team is given a topic with two extremes, hot and cold for example. The clue giver checks the big dial to see where the indicating line is, and gives a clue. Let’s say I give you the clue ‘McDonald’s Apple Pie’. Now, along with the rest of your team’s players, you have to set the dial to where you think that clue lies between hot and cold.

If you set that dial to nearly all the way to hot, then congratulations! The middle of a McDonald’s apple pie is somewhere between lava and the surface of the sun. It’s a clever, easy game that is a great ice-breaker, even if it works better if the players know each other reasonably well.

You can get it here, while stock lasts - https://kienda.co.uk/party-games/1848-wavelength-860001981704.html.

Just One

Just One is an amazing game that scales to pretty much any number of players. I’ve played in hundred-player games at conventions. One person is the guesser who has to guess a single word from a card propped up in front of them. The rest of the players write a single-word clue on their little easels. Here’s the catch though. If any of the clues match, they get turned face-down, and the guesser never gets to see them.

You get this brilliant game where you’re worried about giving too obvious a clue, so you throw in some tangential clue. The problem is, everyone has done the same thing! There might be seven players, but now you’ve got ‘flower’ and ‘bug’. As your clues. You might guess garden, right? Except it was bed, and the two matches of ‘sleep’ and ‘mattress’ got excluded.

Simple, endlessly enjoyable genius.

https://kienda.co.uk/party-games/1497-just-one-5425016922583.html

Creativity games

So you’re feeling arty, or think you have a way with words? I got you covered.

Gorilla Marketing

This game is sadly not as well known as it deserves to be. You all play as primates running a marketing agency. After choosing a category, like Companies or Movies, you roll dice with letters on them to generate themes. Let’s say you’re making movies, and you’ve got the category of Sci-Fi rolled. You write those on your dry-wipe notebook and pass it around the group. Round by round you roll dice that give you letters, and these form the starting letters for your movie name. Can you come up with a romantic movie name with the initials SQB? How about an Indian food truck with the initials TGRS?

The same thing happens after the first round when you have to come up with a marketing slogan. It’s basically stupid fun which can either be cute and charming, or rude and risque, depending on your group. There are categories for voting on your favourites, and points are awarded in the form of small wooden bananas.

Just about everyone I’ve introduced to Gorilla Marketing has never heard of it before, but ended up loving it. Brilliant game.

A Fake Artist Goes To New York

If you’re looking for something that scratches that Pictionary itch but does it a bit differently, A Fake Artist… is a great choice. It’s part drawing, part social deduction. All of the players know the thing they’re trying to collectively draw with the exception of one person. That one person is the titular Fake Artist. On your turn you take the collective drawing and add one line to it. At the end of the round all of the players simultaneously point at the person they believe is the fake artist, while the fake artist gets a chance to guess what the thing they were drawing was.

There’s a wonderful pressure you feel as an artist. You’ve got to draw something that convinces the other artists you know what you’re drawing, while at the same time not giving the faker too big a clue as to what the thing is. Great fun with anything from 5-10 players.

Other games

This is just meant to be a quick guide to give you some ideas. As such, it’s a short list and there are a ton of games I didn’t include. Some to bear in mind which are well worth playing include:

• So Clover

• Hues & Cues

• Wits & Wagers

• Telestrations

• Decrypto

• Codenames

• Dixit

• Monikers

• Coup

• Letter Jam

• Cockroach Poker

If there’s a scenario I haven’t covered or you’re looking for a more personal recommendation, head on over to the Punchboard Discord server and ask away. I’ll be happy to help however I can.