What Games?

At Cafe Games, we mainly play light, social games. Yes, I know “real” boardgames clubs look down at these, but we have fun, so … nyer! 😛

(Actually we do play more strategic boardgames when we feel like it)

We don’t have a boardgames library – we rely on people to bring their own games. You should at least have a pack of cards – or buy some boardgames?

= Games where you’ll be on a team
= Free games – at the most require ordinary playing cards or dice. Learn these, and you can play them anywhere
= card games, only ordinary playing cards if also
= traditional games, played for > 100 years
= Psychological games. Rarely have a board or pieces. Talk to people and work out who is lying.

All The Time

• Perpetual Commotion: Easy. No turns. Play your cards the fastest!
• Werewolf: For 10-20 ppl. Who is killing off your fellow “villagers”? Can you spot liars? Can you lie?

Often

• Scrabble: Use letter tiles to make interlocking words
• Cranium: Pictionary + Taboo + Charades + Trivial Pursuit
• Cloud 9: Bet how far the balloon will go before crashing
• Five-Hundred: Strategic, clever, easy to learn, popular
• Fluxx: silly game where the rules keep changing. Fun!
• Bang!: Wild West “shoot-em-up”. Who’s on your side?
• Uno Attack: Uno but a machine throws the cards at you!
• Sitting Ducks Gallery: Shoot at cartoon ducks, but protect yours!
• Tipayatung: Complete the sayings, songs or film quotes

Sometimes

• Are You The Traitor? Who will betray you to the Evil Wizard?
• Covert Action: Secret identities. Who’s your target? Who’s a mole?
• Masters & Slaves: Simple, with an unfair twist
• Up & Down The River: Win exactly the right number of card “tricks”
• Cluedo: Use logic to find all the murder clues in a mansion
• Sorry!:
• Crazy Eights:
• Family Business: Mob families making deals, and “hits”
• Pictionary: Guess a word from clues drawn on paper
• Risk: Attack, defend, strategically take over the world with your armies
• Pandemic: Work together to cure diseases spreading around the world
• Zombie Fluxx: Fluxx, but now undead hoards roam the table
• Monty Python Fluxx: Fluxx, but you’ll be singing, and quoting!
• Circular Snap: Like Snap but keep your wits about you 🙂
• Uno: Simple well-known game – draw two! draw four! wild!
• Give Me The Brain: Very silly – squabbling zombies
  
• Rummikub: Make sets of number tiles, and go out first
• Taboo: Describe a word without using forbidden words
• Outburst: List items that match topics
• Cockroach Poker: You get given bugs if you can’t tell who is lying
• Dixit: One cryptic comment. Six weird pictures. Which one is it?
• Poison: Throw potions and poisons into cauldrons but they might boil over
• Billionaire: Swap cards quickly trying to collect a set, avoid the Taxman!

Have Played

• Settlers of Catan: Gather harvests and compete to colonise an island
• Carcassone: take turns using tiles to make a medieval map to conquer
• Gloom: build up the most depressing life stories!
• Masterpiece: buy and sell famous paintings for profit
• Canasta: Race to get the most sets of cards
• Men from Mars, Women from Venus: Who understands Women? Or Men?
• Liars Dice: Bet on the results of a secret dice roll
• Would You Rather?: Predict your friends’ responses to tricky choices
• The Resistance: Who to trust with the plans? Who is a spy?
• Gem Dealer: Win auctions for beautiful gems
• Guillotine: Compete to execute the most despised aristocrats
• Chess: 2 person strategy game, pawns, castles – you know!
• Backgammon: 2 person “race” – kick out the other player!
• Mystery of the Abbey: Expert-level Cluedo. Who killed the monk?
• Kill Doctor Lucky: Cluedo “prequel”, kill the Dr without being seen
• Scopa: Simple Italian card game of matching cards
• Trivial Pursuit: answer trivia from a range of categories
• Quiddler: build words from letter cards you’re dealt
• Mahjong: A Chinese classic. Build sequences of tiles, like Rummy
• Tobago: Tropical island treasure hunting. Colourful and strategic!
• Killer Bunnies & Quest For The Magic Carrot: Cartoon mayhem
• Cribbage: Old card game involving a scoring board
• Red November: Dwarves aboard a sinking submarine
• Spy Alley: Who is who? Try to get what you need before being identified
• Pictionaussie: Pictionary but guess the Aussie-themed drawings
• Motus – Words in Motion: Race to collect most letters, then make words
• Mao (aka Mau-Mau): Like Uno, but the rules are secret.
• Scrabble Trickster: Sometimes lets you break the rules!
• Phase 10: Find the cards to build your rummy sets and climb the ladder
• Acquire: If you’re the boss, you’ll do well when your company gets taken over
• Bluff: …
• Puerto Rico: Strategically develop your island nation and sell your crops
• Qwirkle: Scrabble without words – tactically place your coloured shapes
• Primordial Soup: tribes of amoeba evolve and fight for survival
• Greed: Keep rolling dice for more points, but take care!
• Ghost Stories: Chinese monks band together to fight off demons

(These are some of the boardgames we play at “Cafe Games” Melbourne Boardgames Club)