Matthew BaileyGame 1 of the “Bailey House Mini Xmas, not quite a marathon but let’s see how we go, Boardgameranza” is “5er Finden” played by myself, Jack(7) and Toby(4).
“5er Finden” is a “Roll ‘n’ Write” made by Haba but oddly not in one of their usual Yellow boxes.
The game is simple but absolute heaps of fun and has quickly shot to the top of the games we are planning to take away for our first “Family Board Game week” (that’s what I am calling it but I think it is more commonly known as “our trip to Wales”) in February.
Essentially you all get a grid with different colour squares on. You then roll 5 dice rolling again if there are more than 2 matching colours.
You then have however long the sand timer is to find groups of those 5 squares as shown on your dice on your board. Depending on the shape of the group you find denotes how many points they earn.
You do this 5 times with the last round counting double for a spicy finish and then you add up the score.
While it sounds simple it’s amazingly good fun and we played multiple games. It’s hard and while there is a max 5 shapes you can find each round I never managed 4 shapes only managing 3 a few times.
I was much better at it than the boys so the boys went in a team to try and beat me… which they NEARLY did.
I would say a few things. Firstly the time is tight and I feel an extra few seconds would have improved the game. Secondly, because everyone is staring at their board no one actually looks to see when the timer runs down meaning on several turns someone noticed the timer had run out potentially quite a while after it had, I would therefore recommend a timer with a buzzer.
So game 1 is a big “too close to Christmas likely for you to actually be able to order it but hell does any of us need excuses to buy board game” recommendation.
Great stuff… lets’ hope we enjoy all the games we play over the xmas break this much (spoiler alert: We do not).
