Game Night with 9 Players

As I’ve mentioned, I have a game night that meets every other Thursday night at 6 PM at my place. Attendance sit’s pretty steady at 6 or 7. We usually eat dinner, play a few games, and then end around 10:30.

Last night we had nine people. NINE! And our group doesn’t like to split up. I’d be happy to teach two games to two tables of 5 and 4 or whatever, but they’ve expressed active disinterest in doing that. So. Last night we were severely limited on what we could play.

I pre-screened my games to find a few that could play 9 people, excluding things I didn’t want to teach or that I didn’t think the group would have fun with. I cut Welcome To (I actually don’t enjoy it), Hues and Cues (we’d just played it last time), and Deception: Murder in Hong Kong (I haven’t taught it yet, and one person who was coming hates social deduction games). I also skipped Trails of Tucana because a game with that many open-ended choices would take HOURS in this group.

I pulled Rolling America, Dream Crush, 6 Nimmt (pictured above), and Wits & Wagers Party.

We got to Wits & Wagers first, since it’s simple to teach, easy to play, and it’s great to mix a group up and have different people work together. Not to mention the questions always spark some fun conversations among us. How tall is the Sistene Chapel ceiling*? How many countries border the Mediterranean Sea**? Did you know that 35 years passed between the invention of the hamburger and the invention of the hamburger bun? Crazy! And the best part is that you don’t have to know anything. You just have to bet on the people you think know best. That removes the biggest barrier to trivia games, leaving no one feeling stupid.

We ate a hundred pounds of Mexican food, including chicken and beef tacos, chips and salsa, churros, and tres leches cake, so everyone was feeling a little lethargic. What better way to perk people up than making them envision their Dream Crush?!

Do not dismiss this game as just a frivolous reimagining of a crappy 80s dating game. I mean, that descriptor is sort of spot on, but it’s so much stupid fun! You get 3 candiDATES (see what I did there?), and every round (five rounds) you learn something new about them, then you choose which one you’d most like to date. After you choose, you write down your guesses for which beau everyone else is gonna choose. The person who gets the most right at the end wins. It’s so simple and so hilarious.

Last night we had a woman named Ace in full ping pong gear who assured us she was NOT in a cult, another woman who wanted to move to Montana and make her own beef jerky, and one dude named Dana who had a hot tub and a motorcycle. He was a crowd favorite, leading to a pretty one-sided game. But we still had fun.

We were all pretty lethargic from carb loading and cake, but we busted out a game of 6 Nimmt at the end.

In this simple card game that seats 10, you’re all playing one card simultaneously, revealing them, placing them next to the next closest (and lower) number in one of four rows, and hoping not to be the one to place a 6th card in a row and taking a buttload of points. First person to 66 points ends the game, and the person with the fewest points wins. This one is in my top 100, and it always elicits laughter and groans from everyone. It was a good way to close the night. A few players even decided to play randomly from their hands, which threw a but dollop of chaos in the mix.

We didn’t end up getting to Rolling America, which is one of my favorite “Oh no. I fucked this up” games. That’s maybe my favorite type of game, where you get halfway through your first play and go, “Oh no. I fucked this up.” It’s just such a delicious learning experience. But alas. Maybe in a couple weeks when we’re all back together.

And maybe we’ll pick some lighter cuisine so we aren’t all just piles of meat and carbs struggling to breathe.

Stay tuned for more of my top 100 in the next entry. Until then, thanks for coming by, and I appreciate your eyeballs.

~Justin

*68 feet (some said as high as 300, which is insane)
**21, which was my weird gut instinct, but we answered 17 after discussion.