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Now then. This isn’t the regular Christmas games to play after you’ve stuffed yourself full of turkey and all the trimmings type blog. There will be plenty of those offering suggestions for light-think, low-movement fun as your boiled brussels and glorious gravy slowly digest.
This is a list where we emulate the grandeur and ceremony of the biggest meal of the year, but in board game form. Starter, main course, dessert, cheese course, and irresistible chocolate nibbles in between. Each plate varying in size and time to eat. And as such, Christmas games to follow suit! So don your best elasticated trousers and settle down at the table for a feast of gaming fun!
Starter – Faraway
8 cards. Just 8 cards. Playing left to right. Scoring right to left. How hard can it be to do well? Turns out, incredibly! But in an incredibly, forehead slappingly, fun way, that is!
In each of the 8 rounds, on your turn you play a single card face down into your Exploration Area. As mentioned above, they are played from left to right. They each contain a point value (which could be zero), a number of icons, a colour, and some have a scoring criteria on them. At the end of the drafting and placing, your 8 cards get turned over and you score from right to left. Each card will only score if there are sufficient colours/icons already showing in your Exploration Area at the time it is flipped over. You can increase your scoring capability by gaining Sanctuary Cards which are awarded when you play a card with a number which is higher than your previous one. These offer permanent colours and/or icons available to use against any flipped over card. But of course, higher numbers are harder to score and if they flip over first, the challenge increases even more! Just like smoked salmon on a blini, or prawns on a lettuce leaf, it’s a time-critical, tasty balancing exercise from start to finish!
Palette Cleanser – Vegetable Stock
This often has a light touch in terms of ingredients and portion size. Getting your eyes, mouth, and tum ready for what’s to come. So what could be better than a game that’s full of vit V and over so fast that you’ll have time to play again as you wait for the plates to clear!
It’s a super light, fun, card game where you are playing the veggie stock market. At the beginning of the game, each of the 5-per day gets a random opening value. Then at the start of each round, 1 more card than player count gets revealed. Players take a card and place it face up in front of the which shows 3 random vegetables on it. The total number of each revealed veggie on the leftover card increases the prices in the market. But, if any type reaches higher than 5 coins, that mighty morsel crashes and its value drops to the bottom again. After 6 rounds (6 cards), players total the value of each veggie they have harvested according to the final values in the market. Lightning fast and leaving nothing that will spoil the courses to come!
Main Course – Wyrmspan
What do we want from our Christmas dinner? We want something delicious to behold. We want something comforting and familiar. But we are also likely to want a wee bit of a twist. Nothing too outré or risky. Just a note or hint of something unique to this year’s offering. Wyrnspan does all that and more.
Based on the well known and well-loved mechanics of bird-orientate Wingspan, the tableau building, et collecting, and engine building is back. But this time it’s all about dragons and caves! With more under the lid to get your teeth into, the gameplay is simultaneously more generous and yet restricted, but no less beautiful or engaging. Whether you are excavating caves to house your new recruits, or exploring and gathering the resources on offer, seeing your table covered in those pretty wee eggies as you let the main game course slide down, will keep you satisfied until the next course is ready.
Dessert – The Gang
Eschewing the fruity, boozy stodge, our choice for a perfect dessert game is something that is sneakily weighty and rich. Like the Christmas puddings soon to be soaking up sherry and other boozy additions all over the country, The Gang from Kosmos Games may be small but it has an irresistible spiciness to it!
Why? Well, its Texas Hold Em but it’s not Texas Hold em. Poker that’s not about bluffing, but more about working together! Wait. What? Yep, after the heaviness of the main game, you are going to need the support of your fellow gamers to get you through to the cheese board. So what better time than now to introduce a co-op with flavour!
The most competitive card game around has gone co-op. And do you know what? It’s brilliant! You’ve still got the rudimentary ingredients of poker – the flop, the chips, the melds. But here you are trying to suss out in what order of strength the players’ hands should fall using limited communication. Which is probably welcome after stuffing yourselves on the main event! Everything about the choices each player makes in terms of hand building and chip taking counts, so the small hints and mentions of suits and flop composition are fully loaded. And if you open 3 vaults before 3 alarms go off, you win as a team, and can revel in post stuffing glory! What’s even better is that you can change the challenge level, so if you need to dial down the difficulty or up the ante, you can!
Cheese course – Harmonies
Cheese. Soft like Brie, or tangy like a mature Stilton. The board is filled with yummy treats for everyone. And, just like those dairy queens, Harmonies from Asmodee UK is a game that manages to be both smooth and sharp! It’s an open drafting tile laying game where you are building a variety of landscapes to attract wildlife. To gain points you must place tiles in exact patters shown on cards and then take a scoring cube from that card and place it on top. The more times you can score a pattern, the more it is worth, so you can keep nibbling the edges until the cheese…ahem I mean card(!) is retired! But the tiles you use to score can only be used once. As such, like finding the perfect cracker for your Stinking Bishop, you’ve got to create the perfect balance between scoring now and leaving possibilities open to score later. The perfect abstract puzzle to end a mammoth game feast upon!
We don’t know about you, but we are well and truly stuffed! We hope these Christmas games ideas get your tastebuds and your tablebuds firing on all cylinders during the big day for Christmas 2024!
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