220 – 5 More Games for 5 Players – The Family Gamers Podcast

One hundred episodes ago, we created our most popular podcast ever – our top 5 games for five players. We’ve got five more games that we’d highly recommend for this player count. These are games we really like with a fifth player, not just games that are “okay” at five.

220 fact – 220 AD marks the end of the Han Dynasty in China. It began in 202 BC, so that means it was over 400 years old. That’s a long time!

Thanks to our sponsor, First Move Financial! If you need help figuring out where to place your dollar “workers”, reach out to First Move Financial. You can find them at firstmovefinancial.com/familygamers to schedule a call today.

What We’ve Been Playing

Shifting Stones (Gamewright)

Tempus Imperium (find it on PNPArcade.com for free)

Penny Rails (Button Shy)

Heist (University Games) – we really enjoy this (in small doses) and it’s in our gift-giving guide for this year

Telestrations: Upside Drawn (The OP) – listen to the SNAP review.

Magic: The Gathering is still a hit with Asher. This has been a great tool for practicing how to lose without being a sore loser.

Dungeon Academy (The OP) – a fun real-time path finding game. Our review.

Giveaway!

Congratulations to Chris Hazen, winner of the Food Fighters giveaway.

Back talk – from Hub Games

We love how creative the games from Hub Games are. And it’s gratifying to know that they appreciate our work as reviewers, too; specifically related to our recent Prisma Arena review.

Hi Andrew,

It’s rare to read a review and think “This reviewer gets it!”. It shouldn’t surprise me, but you covered so much in the review that other reviews overlooked. For that, I am very grateful. I think I speak for all of us at Hub Games when I say we are extremely happy with our partnership with The Family Gamers. I think your ethos and our games align nicely with each other.

Rory O’Connor

SNAP Review – Telestrations: Upside Drawn

Team up and draw mysterious pictures in this Pictionary-like game from The OP. Although it’s recommended for age 12+, we think it’s suitable for the whole family.

Read the transcript and see more pictures at our SNAP review.

Games for a 5th Player

We have five players in our family: Our fifth player is getting older and ready to play more games with us – and he can read a little now! Do you have five players?

Back talk – Community!

See the recommendations from our Facebook community:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/familygamersaa/permalink/2775568602732612/

“Key to a good group game for us is that there isn’t too much downtime between turns.”

Love the idea of letting pre-readers draw pictures in clue-giving writing games like Blank Slate or Just One!

There’s a few games we’ve recommended in the past, and a few we’ll recommend in this episode.

5 More Games for 5 Players

Playing a game with 5-6 players doesn’t mean it has to be a party game or a guessing game. We’ve picked some of our favorites in five different categories:

• Draftosaurus – Drafting Game
  • Drafting games keep a large number of players involved on every turn.
  • We think that having the scoring on the board makes it a little easier for younger players.
• Grimm Masquerade – Deduction
  • This looks like a social deduction game, but it’s not.
  • Collect sets of objects to use special abilities and unmask other players.
  • More than one way to win a round
  • Players are never “out”, and it feels the same at all player counts.
• The Crew – Cooperative Trick Taking
  • cooperative plus trick-taking is an odd combination, but we love it.
  • winner of the Kennerspiel des Jahres (2020)
• Catacombs of Karak (or Karak) – Tile Laying, Dungeon Crawl
  • This is a very simple dungeon crawl game for kids
  • dungeon is different every time
• Just One – Cooperative Guessing
  • All players but one will give clues; but any overlapping clues get erased before the last player can start guessing.
  • five players is the sweet spot. More tension than in a bigger group or a smaller group.
  • winner of the Spiel des Jahres (2019)

Runners Up

You knew we couldn’t keep it to just five, didn’t you?

• Similo – Clue-giving, Deduction, Cooperative
• Super Cats – Sort of Social Deduction (like rock-paper-scissors)
• Endangered – Cooperative Worker Placement
• Animal Kingdoms – Area Control
• VISITOR in Blackwood Grove – Deduction with 3 asymmetric roles

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