The Return! It took a little longer to get the next edition of this series out, but if you’re reading this to begin with, you know what it’s like with little ones under 5 years old, so I don’t need to explain any of it!
Just to recap the origins of this “series” – I’m currently at a time in my life where it is hard to get the games that I truly want to play to the table as often as I want because our kids take most of our energy and time, so it’s nearly impossible to play that meaty 2-3hr game after they’re finally in bed. With that said, we’re now entering a new phase where my oldest who just turned 4, Ryker, now understands the basic skills needed to play a game, so we are starting to play some actual board games together! When he turned 2 and then 3 we played our share of HABA games (we’ll talk more about this AMAZING company later) and they were great activities for the kids to learn and practice important skills like patience, taking turns, rolling a die, and lots and lots of matching. I noticed that Ryker had started to “perfect” a lot of these skills as he neared 4, so I started to push the limit a little with the age recommendations on some games to see if he would be able to handle them. The following, is our journey into….
4 YEAR OLD BOARD GAMING!
Before I chat about the games, I want to discuss something I discovered on BGG with regards to many 3+ games. They are all rated very low. Many of the comments are “there’s no decision making” and “it’s all random.” Well folks, for a 3 year old, that’s probably all that they can handle, and all that you would probably want them to do. It’s about the experience of playing something within a loose structure and just a few rules, which are more like guardrails. It’s about learning to take turns, or to not throw the die across the room. It’s about staying focused for 5+ minutes. I don’t really understand many of the comments to be honest, because it’s not like your going to sit your kid down to a game of On Mars and say, let’s go kid! I’m also not expecting to see the rating be a 9.6, but when you pull something up on BGG (which we know we all do) and you see the rating in red, you may just shy away from it without knowing how great it can be for your kid!
Monza by Haba Games (5+)
Wow – what an awesome game! Monza teaches pattern recognition and decision making, with a pinch of strategy, while rolling tons of dice! Oh, and it has race cars, so of course Ryker loves it!
So in a nutshell, if you’ve played Rallyman GT, you’ve played Monza – minus the pit stops and overheating and all the bad stuff! Monza plays 6 players, which would probably be wild with a bunch of 4+ year olds, but it’s possible. Essentially, each player will roll the six dice that have various colors on them. Once rolled, you will need to determine what order you will activate the dice in order to move around the track. Based on where your race care is currently, you need to have a die that matches the color in front of you or one that is adjacent to you, but the space has to end further ahead of where you are currently. It’s rare that you’ll be able to activate all six dice, but it sure feels good when it happens!
Ryker learned really quickly that he had to pay attention to the order in which he activated his dice in to maximize how many spaces he would be able to move in total. He got himself trapped a few times, so that was a great lesson in patience and planning. There are small “tire” obstacles on the track that are dead spaces that you can’t travel through, so it condenses the track a bit, requiring a specific color to advance. The tightening of the track also creates lots of fun with multiple players because when you complete your move on the same spot as another player, it will bump them back!
Overall I think this is a real winner. The components are great (as all HABA games are), and while it’s luck based because of the dice rolling and no mitigation, it requires some critical thinking in order to plan your moves after the roll!
Dragomino by Blue Orange Games (5+)
I think Ryker’s face and thumbs-up tells you everything you need to know about this one!
Dragomino is the highest rated on BGG of the games that Ryker and I have played (7.2), and I would have to agree with the the community consensus (even though I still think all of the kid games rating number doesn’t work….. but alas). Dragomino is essentially a kid version of Kingdomino. It’s a tile (domino) drafting game where you draft dominos that have two of a possible six landscapes that you then try to slot into your personal domain. If any of the edges of the newly touching domino match landscapes, you will get to select a dragon egg of that type. You’ll then flip the dragon egg over to reveal if there is a dragon or an empty shell, and place it on top of the part of the domino where the landscapes match. Dragons are worth 1 point at the end of the game and empty shells are worth nothing, but allow you to take the wooden mommy dragon token, which gives you first pick in the next rounds draft. The mommy dragon token is also worth 1 point at the end of the game for the player possessing it.
This was a brand new experience for Ryker in terms of game play and mechanics. He was completely in charge of building his domain and which dominos he drafted. So not only did he have to think about which domino he wanted to draft (balancing not always taking the volcano terrain just because it was cool to have a volcano…. lol), he also had to think strategically about where he wanted to place it to maximize how many dragon eggs he would receive. I walked him through the first game and would offer him some advice on if there was a domino on the board that would give him 1 or 2 or 3 eggs, but I didn’t ever tell him which one, making sure that he was evaluating the game state and matching things on his own. Once he discovered which domino was the best to draft, he almost always placed it in the most advantageous spot. My wife and I are big on the assisting, but not doing things for them, method of experiencing life, so teaching and learning board games plays right into our philosophy.
Dragomino is a huge win for us, and I suspect will be heavy in the rotation for a long time. Ryker currently leads the series 2-1, blowing me out in the most recent game 9-5! I love how excited he gets when he asks to play it and how well he does balancing having fun and not being too disappointed when he flips over an empty egg shell!
Winner Winner, Chicken Dinner by 25th Century Games (8+)
So yes, this game was over Ryker head a little bit. It’s rated for 8 year olds and over. Did it stop us from having fun though, absolutely not! We’ve played a game called Count Your Chickens a few times, so Ryker was excited to play something kinda similar, but definitely more challenging!
Winner Winner, Chicken Dinner is essentially a press your luck dice rolling game with a little side plate of variable card powers that can help you advance through the game, often to the detriment of your opponent (take that!). Each turn you’ll roll the six dice and can re-roll any of them up to three more times, except if they land on the dog head. Dice showing chickens let you steal chickens from the coop (worth 1 point at the end of the game), pairs of chicken legs allow you to “cook” your chickens (cooked chickens are worth 2 points at the end), fox heads allow you to buy action cards from the dinner mat which will then give you power ups and actions that can be played along the way, and dog heads allow you to steal chickens from your opponents, but can also speed up the end game condition.
For Ryker, the action cards were the hardest thing for him to grasp as they added a layer of reading and complexity that he isn’t ready for quite yet. Even with this additional hurdle, I was able to walk him through each of his turns and he still had a blast rolling dice, trying to match faces, stealing, and roasting chickens! The component quality of the game is top notch, and I love that the main game board and the place setting mat are both neoprene mats, not cardboard! I love me some mats! I am very excited to bust out WWCD in a few years and play it to its full potential with Ryker, and not too long after that, with my daughter Sloan for a full on family roast!
Well, that’s our story so far. What other games should we be on the lookout for?! What games have you played with your little ones? What do they ask to play? Would love to hear some of your stories and games that you love to play with your kiddos!
-Stuart
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