10 Ideas for Christmas Presents
This is the time of year when people’s thoughts turn to Christmas presents so we thought we’d come up with ten ideas for great games you might want to give your family or friends.
First up is Zooloretto, winner of last year’s prestigious Spiel des Jahres. It’s a delightful game in which players build a zoo from a range of exotic animals. The secret of Zooloretto is that it is a game which requires skill and judgement but can be played – and won – by young and old alike.
The Axis & Allies franchise has now been going strong for almost 30 years. Ground-breaking when it was first introduced, the original WW2 game and its many variants – all of which feature playing pieces replicating infantry, armour, ships and aircraft – still manage to tread the line between wargames and mainstream board games. One of the latest versions, Axis & Allies Guadalcanal is a two-player game which re-creates the pivotal battle for the Solomon Islands in 1942.
Based on the best-selling book, Dragonology involves players travelling the world by air, land and sea to gather knowledge of nine different species of dragons, using ancient spells and dragon charms in their pursuit. With the same authentic look and feel as the book, the game includes a map game board, exquisitely detailed 3-D sculpted dragon and dragonologist pieces and much more.
Christmas is a time for family games and Elfenland is one of the most imaginative family board games around. It’s set in the mythical world of the elves in which a group of fledgling elves are charged with visiting as many of the twenty Elfencities as they can over a short period of time. To accomplish the task they will use various forms of transportation including pigs, elfbikes, magic clouds, trollwagons and, naturally, dragons.
Another game which works well for adults and children alike is Family Business, a quickfire card game where players aim to make sure their group of gangsters are the last ones left standing!
Staying in the world of card games, Guillotine is an amusing take on the trials and tribulations of keeping your head in revolutionary France. Each player tries to recruit the high-scoring king, queen, nobles and generals to their cause before the guillotine intervenes.
Another game with a historical theme is Colosseum in which each player is a Roman impresario – producing great spectacles in his or her arena in the hope of attracting the most spectators.
Pass The Bomb is a perennial favourite and the kids version, Pass The Bomb Junior, is a specially-adapted version which has all the fun of the adult game with easier categories of objects to name before the bomb explodes.
For those who like their games abstract and Eastern, Saikoro is a strategy game for two players using a grid of 62 dice. The object of the game is to block or strand your opponent so that they cannot move.
Last but not least is Puerto Rico, a hugely popular trading game which has influenced a generation of board games since it was created through a game system that is based around the selection by players of different roles in each turn.
