SO: Games for mismatched skill levels and no speed

seeker

Tue, May 12 2020, 1:40 am

Spinoff of the Shabbos game thread, would love to hear specifically which games are good for a group that is not on level playing ground. A lot of the great games on the other thread would not work for my family because of this. In strategy one child is just older and ahead of the other but that can probably be helped somewhat, and time will help, but particularly in speed I have one fast child and one who moves more slowly and I suspect that will not change. Of course one gets upset that she never wins and the other gets upset that we never want to play the "good" games... you get the idea.

I'll start:
Rat-a-tat cat benefits from some strategy but you don't need a ton.
Sleeping Queens - same brand, same thing - benefits from some strategy but ok with mixed group.
Too Many Monkeys - same brand, not as much replayability fun.
Uno - also, good enough for the skill difference but gets old.
Forbidden Island - it's cooperative so that helps. But if one kid has a LOT less skill than the others, they will feel left out because the more dominant person can just take charge.
Rummikub - well again you do need some skill but there's also luck and I find that one can get away with helping the kid who needs help without it feeling like too much of a handicap.

You'd think things like Dixit and Apples to Apples should work but I learned the hard way that there is actually a good amount of skill involved... probably great for a more advanced social skills learning/therapy group actually because you have to be thinking about what will go over well with the judge or with the group (depending which game) and alas my younger child does not. Yet.

Need new ideas because we're getting a little bored of the ones I already mentioned (to be fair, we played Sleeping Queens about 2,000 times within a couple of months so yes we did burn out eventually.) Older DD and I love more complex games like Catan and Ticket to Ride and younger DD enjoys them in theory but very very very rarely wins, which is of course upsetting. She's able to appreciate the added complexity though. So I'm trying to find some happy medium where everyone can be entertained, engaged, and stimulated without having the same person get clobbered every time. And no, I can't help, it gets very very sensitive...