Games found in a holiday let

You’re on holiday, the weather refuses to be clement and your thoughts turn to an enjoyable game. Lo! The sideboard is stocked with boxes! How do you rate this collection, team?

I’m not exactly au fait with the current cream of the crop, but this strikes me as small beer by any standards.

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Working in the holiday rental field myself, you’d be lucky to find much more than Monopoly or a pack of playing cards in most rental properties. However a small proportion of our guests have brought their own games on holiday, especially the Spanish and those who drive here. I see a fair few families every year bringing Catan with them, and one family had about 10 games with them including Scythe and Fury of Dracula.

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Scrabble is legit good when you don’t play it as a word game but an area control one.

Why anyone needs an actual hangman game is beyond me though

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It’s not terrible; especially considering that anything “good” would just be stolen accidentally packed

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It is exactly what I would expect. Minimal fun to be had there.

I’ve seen somewhere that Cluedo can be made more tolerable by overhauling the rules for moving around (pretty much getting rid of the dice, I suspect), but I’ve never actually tried it.

I played Scrabble as a kid, but having played Bananagrams I imagine Scrabble would be unbearable now.

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Mostly in agreement, but Articulate is still pretty good as a party game, and Trivial Pursuit too, even though some of those questions are likely to be many years out of date. And even today’s kids would still love Buckaroo, surely?

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yeah thats pretty much where I was going with it. The quiz games will still entertain some (I’m a trivia nerd so quite like them!)

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Fo '80s Trivial Pursuit, the answer will always be the USSR. Doesn’t matter what the question is.

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A friend of mine had one of the infamous misprinted copies, which we discovered when the answer to the question “What does the double-oh stand for in James Bond 007?” was shown as “Rolf Harris”.

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I’ve played some Scrabble with my wife. She beats me every time, but it set me up to be very good at Letter Tycoon.

If @BigJackBrass doesn’t mind a small hijack-ette: if you were setting up a holiday cottage to let to strangers, what games could you put in the cupboard for them to play on a rainy day? (Assume for the sake of argument you want the renters to come back next year. Or not…)

Thinking of my collection, and ignoring both availability and small piece hazards for the tinies…

  • Tinderblox
  • Freehand
  • Lemminge
  • Just One
  • Landmarks
  • Rhino Hero
  • Trio
  • Ensemble
  • Zombie Dice
  • Tuki
  • Tsuro
  • 6 Nimmt

.…goodness, I have a lot of low-weight games. I’ll stop there.

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According to my mum, the answer to the entertainment question is always John Gielgud.

According to me, the answer to the science & nature questions is often “but that’s not science or nature!”

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Last time I saw my board-game friends we played Articulate while sitting in the sun with some food between “proper” board-games.

To win the game I had to convey “Blade” to my team-mate without the other team guessing. As he was comics-obsessed I opted to describe the Wesley Snipes film/character. He got there marginally before the other team.

I remember the conclusion to that board-game better than most others I’ve played.

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Bananagrams.
Telestrations.
Dixit.

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Our last rental had a copy of Carcassonne…
I’d go for used copies from Kleinanzeigen for the bigger games.

Big games category:

  • Carcassonne
  • Pandemic
  • El Grande
  • Kingdomino
  • Cascadia

Games you can play all evening

  • Just One
  • That’s not a hat

And because sometimes just 2 people want to play games:

  • Patchwork
  • Star Realms
  • Jaipur

Smallish Card games:

  • Sushi Go
  • The Crew
  • 6 nimmt
  • Bohnanza
  • Scout
  • Cockroach Salad – perfectly silly

Dixit would just be stolen. Too pretty.
I think some of these would also work for kids…

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I would only let my property to people of impeccable character!

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I would go out of my way to have a non contemporary trivial pursuit. You can’t have a holiday let with a modern trivial pursuit imo. Part of the secret rules of holiday trivial pursuit is reframing your knowledge as if it’s from a specific era.

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You should try the Spanish version. 50% split between USSR and UK, which can be found as Russia, and as Great Britain, United Kingdom or England in a random but always annoying way.

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West Germany. The answer is always West Germany.

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To be fair, that’s pretty much how it is with English people referring to the place a lot of the time. Scottish, Welsh and Irish people seem to have a better grasp of the correct names for various bits and combinations of bits of the islands; traditionally the English are somewhat - let’s say slapdash - about it all.
Although less so now than in earlier times, I think (hope).

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I almost never use GB unless its the Olympics!

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