Reddit reviews Fireside Games Castle Panic - Board Games for Families - Board Games for Kids 7 & Up Holiday Toy List

Forbidden Island is great for kids and cooperative. Castle Panic might be a bit advanced for him at 6, but, again, it's a co-op game, so you can help him out. He could probably play King of Tokyo. There's always Hey, That's My Fish!. Also, pretty much any board game by HABA

I agree with /u/raisedbynarcoleptic - you need a structured non-threatening activity with the kid. Start with all four of you, don't suddenly take the scared kid out alone.

Honestly, I'd wait six months before bringing up the potential for marriage. Wait until you and he have had a conversation, he's smiled at you, and he's volunteered something positive about you to his mother. Also, STOP TEACHING HIM, if you haven't already. Move him to another teacher or studio. Stop muddying those waters.

I'm a board game person, so here's what I would do:

• Buy 2-3 board games for him for Christmas for his mother to give to him.
  
  
• He and his mother play the games for a few weeks until she knows what his favorite is.
  
  
• You and your son learn that game. (or all the games!)
  
  
• You and she get all four of you together for a tournament over a few weeks with silly prizes. Out of six times, the overall winner gets five bucks and a silly hat. That sort of thing. (NOTE: Some teenagers would flat-out refuse to play cheesy board games with their parents, but it sounds like he is close to his mother and not a particularly brash kid, so you might get some buy-in.)
  
  
• Start having weekly game nights.
  
  
• After a few successful game nights, suggest playing a game that's 2p only and then have the winners play each other.
  
  
• Let the kids play against each other.
  
  
• Once that has been shown as non-threatening, suggest kids against adults - parent v. kid.
  
  
• Finally, suggest mixing it up and have you play against him. Direct interaction, but in the same room as the others.
  
  
• If that goes well, have his mother schedule a multi-hour thing on the same day that your son is busy with another friend. Ask his mother to fret and wring her hands about leaving him alone so much. Volunteer to go to a cafe with the kid and play whatever his favorite game is.
  
  
• First time alone with him! Keep it low-key. No talks about the future. No talks about family or feelings. Just stay in public and play a game together and go home. Maybe buy him some sort of mountain-of-sugar drink.
  
  And so on.
  
  The hobby doesn't have to be board games, of course, but that is the general outline of how I'd recommend handling it with a kid who literally shakes at the sight of you. Excruciating baby steps.
  
  Games I'd recommend for this:
  
  
• King of Tokyo ($33)
  
  
• Betrayal At House On The Hill ($34)
  
  
• Uno ($5ish anywhere)
  
  
• Sorry! ($12ish anywhere)
  
  
• Carcassonne (out of stock at Amazon but usually $25ish)
  
  
• Ticket To Ride (out of stock at Amazon but usually $35ish)
  
  
• Bohnanza ($14)
  
  
• Castle Panic ($22) (Has Star Trek and Zombie versions!)

A few games I like that would probably fit the bill:

Spot It. Super fun game, easy to learn and quick to play. Not the deepest game but it's lots of fun for all ages and a nice quick game to play when you want something short or as a break between longer games. Good for any number of players.

Dixit. A storytelling game. Each turn one of you is the "storyteller" and tells a short story (one word to a sentence) about it. Everyone else picks a card from their hand that they think fits the story. The cards are mixed up and everyone guesses which one the Storyteller had. The interesting scoring mechanic is the storyteller only gets points if some people don't guess right. If everyone or no one guesses right, the storyteller gets no points and everyone else gets points. Plus, if it's not your turn but someone votes for your card, you get points. The cards can be somewhat crazy and surreal but are definitely safe for a 9 year old. The game is a fun casual game.

Ticket to Ride. Fun game where you lay out train routes. You can block people's routes and you will be angry at whoever does that to you. Only takes 5 people though.

Tsuro. Another somewhat shorter game. You take turns laying tiles and moving your Dragon along the path they create trying to stay on the board. Near the end of the game it gets hectic and you might end up knocking each other off.

TransAmerica. A train game like Ticket to Ride but faster and a little less complex. Rounds go quickly and it has an interesting scoring mechanic. Each round you lose points if you don't connect to your cities and the game ends when someone is at zero. The winner is whoever lost the least points.

7 Wonders. A fun game that involves playing cards that you draw from a hand you pass around. Takes up to 7 people but might be slightly too complex for the 9 year old.

Shadow Hunters. A hidden roles game where you will be on teams but you won't know who's on your team. Throughout the game you try to figure that out and it can get very competitive. Again might be slightly too complex for the 9 year old but maybe not.

Castle Panic. This game is slightly different because it is a cooperative game. All of you play against the game itself to try and defend your castle and defeat all the monsters. It's a pretty fun game.

There are a ton of other good games but I'll stop for now since I've probably listed too many as it is. Two things I'd recommend to try to find new games that your family might like beyond these. First, see if there's a board game store near you. A lot of them will have board game libraries where you can go in and try out the games at no charge. Most (in my experience) are pretty friendly to newer players. Second, check out TableTop. It's a show hosted by Wil Wheaton where he explains games and then plays through them. My wife and I used it as a good way to see new games that we might be interested in without having to buy them sight unseen, since boardgames can be expensive. The demo part of the show has sold us on a bunch of games (several of which are listed above). Hope this helps and enjoy the family game nights.

Do your guests already like board games? I love them but in my experience getting people to learn new rules is like pulling teeth, especially when it's out of a rule book. Unless your guests are well-seeded with experienced/enthusiastic gamers who are willing to teach the rules, I'd stick with games that people probably know or have rules for kids. Scrabble, Monopoly, checkers/chess/go, Chutes and Ladders, Sorry, Candyland and decks of cards (perhaps with chips). I would also consider party games like Balderdash, Taboo, Cranium, Charades, Fishbowl, Telephone Pictionary which are really fun in groups. Maybe you could designate a charismatic friend as a "Master of Games" or something to form groups and get the ball rolling on the pen-and-paper games.

If you have a geekier group that likes more modern/European board games, there are a few games I think are totally worth a try. I'd look into: Red Dragon Inn (my FH says it might be too complicated but I think it's approachable), Ticket to Ride, Carcassonne, Dixit (I haven't played this but my FH says it's like Apples to Apples with pictures), Castle Panic and Fluxx in all its many varieties. Settlers of Catan is a bit more complicated but people are more likely to be familiar with it. It might not be great for newbies but I can't pass up the opportunity to plug Pandemic which is a fantastic cooperative game.

As a board game geek I would suggest either Tsuro CDN 29.99 or Castle Panic CDN 34.99 from his Board Game list. Hopefully with the garbage pile it would be enough for one of those games. Both are excellent!

Here's one for those with kids: Castle Panic is at $16 - either out of stock or about $10 more at the discount retailers.

Castle Panic is great for what you want.

Evil Baby Orphanage is a quick and cute game that is like Munchkin and magic drafting. Quick to set up and easy to learn.

The various Flux variations.

Smallworld is relatively easy to learn strategy game that you'll love until all your friends leave because you attacked them WHEN A PERFECTLY GOOD TRIBAL SQUARE WAS AVAILABLE.

Castle Panic! is a cooperative game kinda like tower defense.

Hope everything turns out okay for you. That's really unfortunate!

Very long time ago I was making soup and I was boiling all these veggies in a pot to make broth. Well when they were done I poured it all through a strainer and then realized I just lost all of the broth!

Why on earth did I do that?

Castle Panic!

boardgames/cardgames:

I recommend Gloom, castle panic, Munchkin (though if he's into boardgames and card games he might already have these)

Edit: also smallworld, settlers,

Well, as far as silly card games go, I'm partial to We Didn't Playtest This At All and Fluxx which support 2-15 and 2-6 players respectively. Both games can be really quick or take a while, but I've always found them to be great fun, and they both have a bunch of expansions, if you find that you like them.

Of course, if you want to delve into the world of board games, I'm a big fan of co-op games like Castle Panic and Pandemic. In Castle Panic, you work together to defend a castle from oncoming hordes of monsters and in Pandemic you need to cooperate to keep viral epidemics under control while finding a cure. Castle Panic is great fun, a simple game, and easy to get into, but I've never found it an easy game to win which keeps it fresh. Pandemic is a bit more complicated, requiring a lot of strategy and cooperation, and it can be brutally difficult at times, but that just makes winning all the more satisfying.

If you and your friends like a little friendly competition, I'd suggest something like 7 Wonders or Bang!, which was the game that got me started down this path. In 7 Wonders, you draft cards to build a civilization and compete for victory points. It may seem a little complicated at first, but once you play a game or two, it really starts to shine. In Bang!, you enter the wild west where one of you is the sheriff, and the rest of the players are deputies, outlaws, or renegades, each with their own win condition. The thing with this one is that everyone's role except the sheriff's is hidden. You can play Bang! with as little as 3 players, but it really only gets good if you have 5 or more.

If you want to do some research on your own, check out /r/boardgames or http://boardgamegeek.com/ which has a pretty comprehensive database of all the board games out there with ratings and reviews.

sorta re-rolling castle panic?

Edit: added link