A Fantastic Festive Season's Board Gaming Shopping Guide with TOYTAG!

It's the season to be jolly, of good cheer and gifts of Thanksgiving. So in the spirit of festive cheer, TOYTAG wants to help you get a fun gift for the tabletop gamers in your life and not only that but games that can be played in no time after the wrapping paper has been taken off. In fact, why not play it at the party or gathering the game is given, tabletop games are all about bringing people together and having fun, which can only make any party better!

 1. Gas Out

A hooting good time and definitely something people will be using for pictures and jokes the whole night. Gas Out is a simple game and is played by firstly turning on the "star" of the game, Guster the Gas Cloud and then dealing each player 3 gas cards. 

On each player's turn, they play a card with a number, which represents how many times they are choosing to squeeze Guster and then if nothing happens, play passes on to the next player but if Guster farts from all the pressure you have been giving him, then you are out! Last person standing stands supreme as the best smelling and most sophisticated of the party. 

Also included in the game are skip, reverse and other cards that will build the tension of gameplay and keep things interesting for everybody watching. 

2. Bucket of Doom

The human brain has given us unlimited potential for improving our lives and getting us out of bad situations and that is what Bucket of Doom is all about. The active player starts by reading out a horrible situation you have found yourselves in. Then going around the table, each player has to choose one item card in their hand and explain how they are going to use it to get out alive. After all the players have given their idea, everybody chooses the player whose idea they liked the most and that players wins that card. Then start a new round of heroic creativity once again, in the end, the player with the most cards wins the game. 

Related: More Bacon coming to TOYTAG from Oink Games

3.Scrawl

Scrawl is the game of Chinese whispers but in picture and word form. A game that is not only hilarious but shows how a point can divert so far from its original point the more people it goes through. 

The game starts with each player getting a set of drawing tiles and a marker. Then everybody gets a card describing a situation, item, etc., afterwhich everybody will draw to the best of their ability the thing they are trying to describe. Then everybody will pass their drawing facedown to the player on their right. All players will then clip a blank piece over the drawing they got and write in words what they think the picture is about and pass it on again. Then the next player will draw what the words the last player has written and so on. When each player has had a chance to go through everybody else's clipboard of awesome art and deduction, it is then revealed how a man eating a cheeseburger became a man with the Olympic torch. There is a scoring in the game but I have always felt this is a game that is more about the experience than the victory. 

Do note there are more risque cards in the game which you can remove if you are playing with younger players but again personally I have always liked it better to make up your own categories. Imagine a Star Wars themed session of games! 

4. Dixit

 A massively popular game of wonderful art and fun that has become a classic in the board gaming world, Dixit is a game of averages, the active storyteller starts by choosing one card in their hand and then describing it in one word or phrase. Then everybody else chooses one card they feel matches the description as much as possible. The active storyteller then shuffles the cards together and then reveals them face up on the table. 

The other players will then vote on which card is the story teller's one and then there is a scoring and the scoring is what makes the game fascinating as if all or no one chose the storyteller's card then he/she scores nothing but if anybody chose his card, the storyteller and players that chose his card gets three points (Unless all other players chose the card). Everybody also scores a point for each other person that chose their card. First, to get thirty points wins the game.

5. Baobab

If you are looking for a more active and dexterous game though, look no further than the small package of Baobab. Baobab is a game about a growing tree in the African plains and the animals that visit it and of course as per the course of nature, every once in a while branches will fall and someone will have to suffer the consequence of it. 

After the tree is set up, the deck of cards will be dealt out equally facedown among all the players, then the active player will announce if he/she will be placing one to three cards on the tree. Then flipping over one card at a time, the player will have to place the card on the tree as per the instructions. Example, the snake has to be touching two other cards, if there is a flower or monkey, the area of the card that shows "ground" has to hang over any part of the tree, toucans cards have to be thrown from a foot away and bats having to be dropped on the tree but with your eyes closed, etc. The first player who finishes their deck wins but more often than not, expect branches to come falling down and that player has to pick up the mess!

All the products above are available at TOYTAG at Harbourfront or from our webstore.  So from all of us here, we wish all of you a merriest of merries and the biggest of smiles. If you have fun with any of our games, we would love to hear about it or better yet see it in pictures or video on our Facebook! 

E: huibin@toytag.com

Zhou Huibin is a smith of words who majored in Philosophy & History from the University of Western Australia and whose life has followed the flow of his hobbies. He seeks continual contentment in his ponders, reading, writing, painting and board games which fills almost all of his time.