Christmas Board Game Review

For Christmas I got several board games including Bananagrams, Cirkus and UBONGO.  Over Christmas we learned and played Bananagrams and Cirkus.  And, last night we went to the Harrington’s for a game night and learned how to play UBONGO and they had a new board game, Killer Bunnies, that they wanted to try out.  I thought it would be fun to review the games in a blog post!  Please remember that these are personal opinions, and NOT paid endorsements – haha I saw that on other blogs, thought it was funny!

Bananagrams (2+ Players, ages 7+, great for travel)

This is a fun spin-off of Scrabble!  Each player plays their own individual ‘scrabble’ boards, while trying to be the first player to use all their tiles, plus the ones in the ‘bunch’!

6/6 Benson-Fields gave this game 2-Thumbs Up!

Cirkis (2-4 Players, ages 8+, ~20minutes to play)

This is a similar game to Blockus, where you take turns playing “follow the leader” and placing different shaped pieces around the board trying to complete circles and stars to score points!

The jury is still out on this game, not sure if we like it yet or not!  that being said….1/3 Benson-Fields gave this game 2-Thumbs Up!

Ubongo (2-4 Players, ages 8+, 20-30minutes to play)

This game is a Tetris style game!  Players are simultaneously trying to cover their individual boards with certain tiles before other players and against the clock!  This game is VERY simple to learn, but it would be nearly impossible to master!

We played this game last night with Kim, Mark & Sophia where  6/7 Benson-Harrington’s gave this game 2-Thumbs Up!

Killer Bunnies (2-8 Players – great for large groups)

Let me just start by saying, this game was complicated and took a long time to figure it out, in fact my mom quit halfway through and my dad and Kim never did quite understand it!  The funny thing was after my mom left, Sophia jumped in and took over for her and had no problem figuring out the game!  It turned out to be a pretty humorous game, but did I mention complicated??! 

Overall concept, keep other players from collecting ‘carrots’ by killing each other’s bunnies!  However at the end of the game its a total crap-shoot on who wins, all just luck!  Everyone who has carrots gets a chance to win, and if you have the winning (last carrot chosen) you win!  Alex ended up winning, even though I had 5 carrots and she had 2!

I think this game would be more fun the second time you play it, once you understand the concept and how to ‘use’ the special cards!   However only, 3.5/7 Benson-Harrington’s gave this game 2-Thumbs Up!