Review: The Best of Sport and Leisure board game

We were sent The Best of Sport and Leisure for review purposes. All images and opinions are our own.

I was chatting to someone this week about board games, and how as a family we’d fallen back in love with board games during the pandemic. Lockdown had made us dig out the board games and reacquaint ourselves with the rules of all kinds of games which had been gathering dust for years. We’ve also added some new ones to our collection, like The Best of Sport and Leisure, where the questions are all about sport; everything from football to fishing, badminton to basketball, and walking to weightlifting.

The Best of Sport and Leisure is the latest game release from the LOGO family. Question cards are divided into the famous LOGO favourites; Picture cards, Theme cards and Potluck cards. There are questions even people who don’t really love sports (me, this is me) can answer.

The questions aren’t generally about who won a race in 1922 or who scored the winning goal in the 1966 World Cup Final; it’s all the things you pick up without even knowing it, like “Which ex-England footballer has the name of a borough of New York City tattooed across his lower back”. So it’s a fun game to play, even if you’re not a sports-super fan!

Review: The Best of Sport and Leisure board game

The box contains –

252 Question Cards
12 Action Cards
Playing Board
2 Playing Pieces
Instructions

Ideally you need two teams for this, with at least two people per team. It’s aimed at people aged 12+ and the rules are pretty simple to pick up. Two teams race to the finish, answering questions along the way. There are three kinds of question cards (each card has four questions on), pot luck, picture cards and common theme cards.

Review: The Best of Sport and Leisure board game

To keep everyone on their toes, there are six different kinds of action cards. These are mostly used to disrupt play and throw your rival team off their game. Each team takes turns in being the Question Master; it’s a fun, fairly fast-paced game which really gets your brain working.

I think the more people on your team, the better. It is pretty simple to pick up and if you have a mixed age team, then your chances of winning are probably higher. Despite it being all about sport, my team did pretty well answering the questions; because it’s not so much about remembering facts and figures, but more general stuff. I was surprised at how many questions I knew the answers to, and I did wonder how I’d managed to remember so much info about surfing, for example.

Review: The Best of Sport and Leisure board game

The Best of Sport and Leisure is made by Drummond Park for Tomy and costs around £24.99. I spotted it on Amazon, but it is widely available in toy shops and larger retailers.

Family Game: PenSilly – the silliest drawing game!

We were sent the PenSilly game for the purposes of this post. All images and opinions are our own.

If you’re looking for the daftest family game this year, then I think PenSilly is a serious contender. In previous years we’ve had Silly Sausage and Speak Out, and this is just as silly and just as much fun; making it the ideal game to play with the family this Christmas.

Family Game: PenSilly the silliest drawing game!

PenSilly is a super silly drawing and guessing game for all the family. To play, you pick up a description card and a subject card and try your best to draw them for your team to guess and win points.

To make things slightly harder, it’s against the timer and the battery powered pencil you use has two wobbly speed settings; which makes everything much harder and much funnier. There are over 5,500 drawing combinations, and it’s a game which depends on teamwork and as steady a hand as you can manage.

The PenSilly box contains;

1 PenSilly Pen
1 minute sand timer
75 Description Cards
75 Subject Cards
2 Erasable Markers
2 Drawing Pads

And you will need 3 AAA batteries for the PenSilly pencil.

Family Game: PenSilly the silliest drawing game!

The game is really simple to set up and play. Just put your pen inside the giant pencil, pick a description and a subject card, set the timer and you have to draw what’s on the cards whilst your team tries to guess the answer. It’s a bit like Pictionary, but completely bonkers.

The two speeds of shaky pencil make it so hard to draw, we managed pretty well on the slower setting, but the faster one was almost impossible; hilarious but impossible.

Family Game: PenSilly the silliest drawing game!

We all laughed our socks off while we played this game. It’s definitely a winner with us and I’m certain it’s going to be a huge hit with families this Christmas.

PenSilly is available from Smyths Toys Superstores and available to buy from Smyths Toys.

Board Game Review: Exploding Kittens

When I first heard of Exploding Kittens a few years ago, I was instantly quite horrified. My vivid imagination was already making its mind up about what horrors this popular card game could contain. Thankfully my vivid imagination was wrong and its since gone on to be one of the biggest and most popular card games available today.

Exploding Kittens is a highly-strategic, kitty-powered version of Russian Roulette. The rules are pretty simple and they are pretty simple to pick up. We’ve played a few quick-fire games and they’ve been great fun.

Board Game Review: Exploding Kittens

The box comes with 56 cards and a set of instructions. There are several different kinds of cards which you can play; Exploding Kitten cards, Defuse, Nope, Attack, Skip, Favor, Shuffle, See The Future and four different kinds of Cat Cards. They’re fairly explanatory, but if you’re not sure the cards have what you can do with them written on them.

Basically, if you explode you lose. If you don’t explode you win. All of the other cards will help to lessen the chance of you exploding. It’s great fun, really strategic and sneaky.

Exploding Kittens is for players aged 7+ and for up to five players, though expansion packs are available. This game is both perfectly pitched at my 7 year old, but still fun enough for grown ups to play. I confess my husband and I have had a few sneaky games by ourselves and enjoyed it just as much.

Exploding Kittens is an ideal game to travel with or to take out to entertain the family when our for a meal or something. It’s compact and requires some strategic thought (for strategic, read devious and sneaky). Each game is pretty quick and takes 10-15 minutes on average.

Board Game Review: Exploding Kittens

The Original Edition of Exploding Kittens costs around £19.99 and I am a total convert, I can see now why several friends have raved about it. It’s available from a wide range of retailers and online too.

We were sent Exploding Kittens for review for the Asmodee UK Blogger Board Game Club. All images and opinions are our own.

Find other board game and toy reviews here.

Board Game Review: Dobble Animals

Dobble has been an incredibly popular game since it was launched a few years ago. It’s kind of like snap, but better, more interesting and a bit more fun. We’ve had Dobble for while now and it regularly comes on trips and meals out with us. I knew there were other versions of Dobble, so we were very pleased to put Dobble Animals to the test.

Board Game Review: Dobble Animals

Dobble Animals is a speedy observation game where players race to match the identical animal between the cards. Each player turns one card over. Each card has a number of different animals on. The first to find the matching creature shouts “DOBBLE!” and slams their hand down on the cards – just like snap.

It’s genuinely brilliant fun. Some matches you can spot almost instantly, others can have all the players puzzling for a minute or two. Each pair of cards has a matching animal, even though sometimes you can’t for the life of you spot it.

Board Game Review: Dobble Animals

Dobble Animals relies heavily on players having a sharp eye and quick reflexes. It’s also a brilliant game for travel. It comes with its own tin which keeps the cards together and dry. We take our original Dobble everywhere with us. It’s great for a quick game, or several rounds and the instructions are so easy, it takes no time at all to pick it up.

I really like the animal version, the pictures are always colourful and interesting and this does not disappoint. This really is a family favourite for us. I’m pleased we’ve got a new, different version to play with and the boy is pleased too. He can choose which one he wants to play with dependent on his mood.

Board Game Review: Dobble Animals

Dobble Animals is available from a wide range of retailers and costs around £12.99 (and is worth every penny).

We were sent the Dobble Animals game for review for the Asmodee UK Blogger Board Game Club. All images and opinions are our own.

Find other board game and toy reviews here.

Blogger Board Game Club: Stuffed Fables

I am part of the Asmodee UK Blogger Board Game Club run by Playtime PR. Each month 50 bloggers are sent a board game to play and put to the test. This month we were sent the Stuffed Fables game to play.

Stuffed Fables is a Story based board game from Plaid Hat Games. It’s a role play game which fans of Pixar films will probably really enjoy. All of the action takes place in the spiral-bound storybook which contains all the rules, a story guide, and game board.

Blogger Board Game Club: Stuffed Fables

In the box you will find –

1 Rulebook; 1 Storybook; 40 Card Discovery Deck; 1 Sideboard; 6 Stuffy Figures; 17 Minion Figures; 35 Dice; 1 Dice Bag; 15 Buttons; 6 Character Cards; 29 Lost Cards; 10 Sleep Cards; 46 Item Cards; 12 Minion Cards; 8 Environment Cards; 34 Status Cards; 4 Reference Cards; 30 Stuffing Tokens; 15 Heart Tokens; 4 Objective Tokens; 4 Lost Tokens; 1 Bookmark Token; a Red Wagon Token; 1 Train Token and 1 Door Token.

Blogger Board Game Club: Stuffed Fables

As you can see, there are a lot of elements to this game and if you like quick fire games with simple rules, this game is not for you. To play it properly I think someone needs to sit down for an evening, read the rules and fully understand them so they can lead the rest of the group. We played a couple of chapters. It took a long time and there was a lot of reading and re-reading of the rules which probably made it feel like harder work than it was.

The story follows a group of stuffed toys who are sworn to protect the little girl who owns them and loves them. The stuffed toys awake to defend the little girl from all the monsters who creep out at night. Each player plays the role of one of the heroic stuffed toys; so throughout the game you must fight to defend the little girl and keep her safe. Stuffed Fables is suitable for people aged 7+.

Blogger Board Game Club: Stuffed Fables

To play, you assign and roll colour-coded dice to perform a variety of actions, from melee attacks, to leaping across conveyor belts, or steering a racing wagon down a hill. The chapters are one page long and the action should be quicker than we managed. Some of the characters really reminded us of the Toy Story films. You don’t have to play it all in one sitting, you can play a chapter or two at a time and got back to it later. This makes is fairly easy to dip in and out of, but it’d probably best if you can play for an hour or two in one sitting.

I’ve spoken to several friends over the last few days about Stuffed Fables, half of them didn’t like it, the other half really loved it. I think if you’re into Dragon Crawler type role play, then you will most likely love this. If you’ve never tried role play before, then this will take some getting used to. I quite liked it and suspect if I was playing with people who also enjoyed it then I would love it. I think I need to find different people to play this with. My husband just didn’t like it and that made it feel like hard work.

Blogger Board Game Club: Stuffed Fables

There are a lot of bits and pieces in the box, it’s a complex game with lots of elements. It costs around £55 which is a lot of money to spend on a board game; but with all the elements and figures included and the amount of game play in there, I think it’s probably worth it. It’s very beautifully illustrated and put together, which makes it really feel like a premium product. It’s quite a niche game, but role play fans will almost certainly enjoy playing it.

Stuffed Fables is available from a wide range of retailers including Amazon.

We were sent the Stuffed Fables game for review for the Asmodee UK Blogger Board Game Club. All images and opinions are our own.

Find other board game and toy reviews here.

Blogger Board Game Club: My First Bananagrams

I am part of the Asmodee UK Blogger Board Game Club run by Playtime PR. Each month 50 bloggers are sent a board game to play and put to the test. This month we were sent the My First Bananagrams game to play.

My First Bananagrams is suitable for children aged 4+ and for 1-4 players. The banana shaped bag contains 80 single tiles, 13 combo-letter tiles and a set of instructions. The game is really simple to play. You tip the tiles out and turn them face down, each player picks 15 tiles at random and when someone shouts “split!” everyone turns their tiles over.

Blogger Board Game Club: My First Bananagrams

Each player individually races to arrange their letters in their own word grid. At any time during the game you can say “Swap” and put one tile back face down and take a new one. You can rearrange your grid at any time and as many times as you like, there are no limits to the number of times you can swap tiles. The first person to use all of their tiles, or failing that, the most tiles wins.

Each game is quite short, probably between 10 – 15 minutes and it’s probably about the right level for my son. He can find words without too much of a struggle, so it’s still lots of fun and does stretch him a little bit. I think it’s a nice fun game to help build confidence around finding words from a collection of letters.

It’s a lot of fun to play and really great for helping him to think more creatively about words. He started off with three letter words, but was soon confidently finding five letter words. It’s a bit like Scrabble, but with fewer rules and therefore easier to play.

Blogger Board Game Club: My First Bananagrams

My First Bananagrams is a real winner for us. It’s nice and compact, so you can throw it in your bag and play it anywhere with a flat surface. This will be hugely popular on holiday, I know it!

My First Bananagrams costs around £15.99 and is widely available in toy shops and online.

We were sent the My First Bananagrams game for review for the Asmodee UK Blogger Board Game Club. All images and opinions are our own.

Find other board game and toy reviews here.

Blogger Board Game Club: Codenames Pictures

I am part of the Asmodee UK Blogger Board Game Club run by Playtime PR. Each month 50 bloggers are sent a board game to play and put to the test. This month we were sent Codenames Pictures card game to play.

Blogger Board Game Club: Codenames Pictures

Last month we struck Blogger Board Game Club gold with the Timeline British History Card Game. It was easy to set up, the rules were simple, everything fit into a little tin so you could take it anywhere easily. This month we were sent the much more complicated Codenames Pictures game which comes with a 12 page set of rules and instructions.

Ideally you need a minimum of four people to play this game, we tried with just two and it wasn’t as exciting as we suspect it could be. In teams of at least two people, one of you plays the role of Spy Master, the others, are Field Operatives. The spy master has to give cryptic clues and the field operatives have to guess the answer correctly. Innocent bystanders can get hurt or your rival spy team could get the upper hand. Either way, it’s complicated.

Blogger Board Game Club: Codenames Pictures

Codenames Pictures is described as a simple guessing game, but it’s harder than that. The spy master has to give the field operatives a codeword relating to one of more of the picture cards on the board. For example there might be a fish in a glass of water. The spy master might give the clue “gills”; the field operatives then have to touch the card or cards they think they relate to. If this is guessed correctly then the picture card is covered with a red or blue spy card. This depends on what the pattern on the key card is, see, it’s complicated.

I’m not even going to try to explain how the game fully works, there’s a 12 page booklet you can read if you want the full rundown.

Blogger Board Game Club: Codenames Pictures

Codenames Pictures is aimed at people aged 10+. I think once you’ve got a small group of players together and everyone has read the rule book several times, then it could be quite fun. But it is quite complicated and the kind of thing you need to absorb yourself in for a few hours. Each game is quite quick really, it should take around 15 minutes per game. But if you’re going to go to the trouble of mastering the rules, then it’s worth playing a few games in one sitting.

I probably sound quite down on Codenames Pictures, but I’m not really. It’s not the kind of game I would normally go for. I like quick to set up games with simple rules. This is fairly quick to set up, but all the rules are a bit much for me.

Would I play Codenames Pictures again? Probably, but only with a group of friends and with a bottle of wine.

Find Codename Pictures on Amazon today, rrp £15.99.

We were sent the Codenames Pictures card game for review for the Asmodee UK Blogger Board Game Club. All images and opinions are our own.

Find other board game and toy reviews here.

Board Games: Timeline British History Card Game

I am part of the Asmodee UK Blogger Board Game Club run by Playtime PR. Each month 50 bloggers are sent a board game to play and put to the test. This month we were sent Timeline British History Card Game to play.

Board Games: Timeline British History Card Game

We took the Timeline British History Card Game on holiday with us over half term. We were staying with some friends in a cottage with no TV; so I packed a few things to help the evenings fly by. We’d not yet played the Timeline British History Card Game, but we are all trivia fans so it felt like it would be a hit with us all.

The card game is pretty simple. It comes in a tin which makes it perfect for taking on holidays. There are 110 cards in the pack, on one side of the card is an historical event, on the other is the date of the event. Each player starts off with four cards. Taking it in turns, each player lays down a card in what they think is the right date order. If you get it wrong then you have to take another card from the pile and keep playing until someone has played all of the cards.

Board Games: Timeline British History Card Game

It can be a really quick game, or it can go on and on, depending on your knowledge of British history. I found I was pretty good with 20th Century history, but a bit wishy-washy before then.

This is absolutely my kind of game. I love a bit of historical geekery and we did get a bit competitive. The Timeline British History Card Game is suitable for ages 8+. Unless younger players have a pretty good knowledge of British history then it’s not going to be much fun for them. For four adults sharing a bottle of wine and a competitive nature, this is excellent fun.

Board Games: Timeline British History Card Game
The Timeline British History Card Game costs around £13.99 and is widely available in toy shops and online.

We were sent the Timeline British History Card Game for review for the Asmodee UK Blogger Board Game Club. All images and opinions are our own.

Find other board game and toy reviews here.

Board Game Club Review: Ticket to Ride First Journey

I am part of the Asmodee UK Blogger Board Game Club run by Playtime PR. Each month 50 bloggers are sent a board game to play and put to the test. This month we were sent Ticket to Ride First Journey to play.

Board Game Club Review: Ticket to Ride First Journey

Ticket to Ride First Journey is a board game designed for 2-4 players aged 6+. I played it with my 7 year old son. My son loves maps and geography, so we were really excited when we were setting the game up. The rules take a couple of reads throughs to understand, but it’s actually quite simple to play.

The game consists of a board with a map of Europe on it with key train stations such as Amsterdam, Berlin and Athens. The box contains a set of 72 train cards, 32 ticket cards, 4 coast-to-coast cards and 1 golden ticket. There are also four different sets of coloured trains.

Each player chooses a colour of train to be; I was red, he was green. The aim of the game is to be the first player to complete 6 tickets, or the first person to place all twenty of their trains on the train tracks.

Each player starts with four coloured train cards and two tickets. Each ticket shows two cities, and you need to connect those two cities with your trains in order to complete the ticket. Taking turns, you have a ticket, say from London to Athens and using the coloured train cards you have to plot a route between them using your trains across the coloured paths.

Board Game Club Review: Ticket to Ride First Journey

If you complete a track which crosses the board entirely from east to west, or west to east, then you pick up the East-to-West bonus card, which counts as one completed ticket.

Ticket to Ride seems quite complicated, but it’s really not. Once we had played it once, my 7 year old had really got the hang of it. We’ve played it over and over, which is always a sign he likes playing something. It’s good fun for adults too, I quite enjoyed trying to plot my route from A to B. It can be quite a quick game to play if you don’t have very long, and it’s great for short attention spans.

Ticket to Ride First Journey is fairly widely available and costs around £28. It’s a well made, quality board game. The board is longer than your standard Monopoly style board. The size of the board is why completing the East-to West route is so coveted. I would say that you get 20 trains of each colour and we have never completed six tickets; we have always run out of trains after two or three tickets worth of travel.

Board Game Club Review: Ticket to Ride First Journey

Overall, we really liked Ticket to Ride First Journey. It’s a really appealing game, especially for train and map enthusiasts. My son really enjoyed playing it, and I really liked that it’s got a nice geography element to it, so you can really start to learn where the major cities of Europe are. It’s a thumbs up from us!

We were sent the Ticket to Ride First Journey game for review for the Asmodee UK Blogger Board Game Club. All images and opinions are our own.

Find other board game and toy reviews here.

Board Game Club Review: Rory’s Story Cubes

I am part of the Blogger Board Game Club run by Playtime PR. Each month 50 bloggers are sent a new (or new-ish, or at least new to them) board game to play and put to the test. This month we were sent Rory’s Story Cubes, a game I am familiar with but have never played.

Board Game Club Review: Rory’s Story Cubes

Rory’s Story Cubes is a simple set of nine dice. Each dice is different and has a different image on each of its six sides. The idea is simple, roll the dice and make up a story based upon the nine images. It’s small, it’s simple and you can play it anywhere.

The game comes in a small magnetic box which contains the nine dice and a set of simple instructions. The only thing you need to supply is your imagination. The instructions are very easy to understand and include suggestions for developing your stories.

I’ve been waiting and waiting for my son (who has just turned seven) to be old enough to enjoy and understand this game. I was a little concerned he would think it was boring, but actually he loved it. He’s an imaginative little soul, so piecing together a story based on the roll of nine dice really floats his boat.

Board Game Club Review: Rory’s Story Cubes

Rory’s Story Cubes are the kind of game that could spark off a whole raft of really lovely developmental activity. The storytelling can help to develop creative ideas and improve communication skills; as well as give their confidence a boost too.

We really loved Rory’s Story Cubes. This is the basic set, but if you really get into it there are a variety of expansion packs to help you grow your stories. This is such a big hit for us, it’s going straight into the activity bag we take with us when we go out.

Rory’s Story Cubes is widely available from a range of retailers and costs around £12.99. It’s suitable for ages 6+ and would make an excellent after dinner game on Christmas Day!

We were sent the Rory’s Story Cube game for review purposes. All images and opinions are our own.