“Alone we can do so little; together we can avoid getting the Angry Pink Cow.“ - Hellen Keller, probably
Hello Gaming Library Family!
Sometimes we just need a teamwork boot camp. Sometimes board games can be just that—they just happen to be wrapped in a box. They challenge you to strategize, communicate well with one another, and get more in sync with your teammates so you pull off epic wins together. In games like Pandemic—read on below for further info!—you and your team become disease-fighting heroes, learning that saving the world is a team sport. As the dice roll and the cards fly, you'll discover that a victory shared is a victory savored.
Board games aren't just fun – they're brain-boosting fun. By working together and tackling unexpected challenges, you all learn to be masters of quick thinking and creative problem-solving. You also learn more about how each of you as a member of your team operate; from your personalities and plans of attack, to your weaknesses and subsequent compensation techniques These are the same skills that'll have you conquering real-life challenges like a champ, all while high-fiving your teammates for being the ultimate dream team.
So, next time someone suggests a game night, jump on board – quite literally! With every roll of the dice and every cunning strategy devised, you'll be boosting your teamwork prowess and fostering bonds that'll stand the test of time. Board games aren't just entertainment—they're your ticket to leveling up your cooperation skills in the most enjoyable way possible. Read on further for our 10 titles perfect for team building activities! All titles are available in stores and online at www.gaminglib.com!
Speaking of team building, All aBOARD XP is the perfect place to try out new party games with friends! Drop by our branches at SM North EDSA The Block, Greenbelt 5, Uptown BGC, and Shangri La!
Pandemic
In the game Pandemic, several virulent diseases have broken out simultaneously all over the world, and it’s up to you, the players, as disease-fighting specialists to treat disease hotspots while researching cures for each of four plagues that threaten to infect the world at large. On each turn, players can use up to four actions to travel between cities, treat infected groups, discover cures, or build research stations. A deck of cards provides the players with these abilities, but sprinkled throughout this deck are Epidemic! cards that accelerate and intensify the diseases' activity. A second, separate deck of cards controls the "normal" spread of the infections.
Taking on unique roles within the team, players must plan their strategy to mesh with their specialists' strengths in order to conquer the diseases; roles like the Operations Expert who builds research stations needed to find cures for the diseases and to allow for greater mobility between cities, or the Scientist who needs only four cards of a particular disease to cure it instead of the normal five. Beware though—the diseases spread quickly and time is running out. If one or more diseases spreads beyond recovery or if time runs out, all players lose. Will you cure the four diseases and win?
Three monkeys have started a construction company, and the building blueprints are coming in quick! Working together, these monkeys must complete their blueprints before time runs out. TEAM3 is played in teams of three, each playing as one of the three monkeys: the monkey who can't speak, the only one who can see the blueprint card but can communicate only in gestures; the monkey who can't see, the monkey responsible for building the structure, the only one who can touch the pieces, but must play the game with their eyes closed; or the monkey in the middle, who must interpret the gestures of the monkey who can't speak and relay them to the monkey who can't see so that they can build the structure. TEAM3 comes in two different sets, PINK and GREEN, and feature version-specific cards and mini-expansions.
Codenames is a fairly simple party game. Players are divided into teams of red or blue, and respective leaders must prompt their team members of the colors they select from a pile of twenty-five cards. Each card has a corresponding word and color, and these words are the key to the leaders’ successes in helping their teammates select all the cards that correspond with their team color and win.
…Is a cooperative, guess-the-word party game in which players try to discover as many mystery words as possible. Over 13 cards, players will coordinate with one another to give the best clues to help their teammates guess the word. There’s a catch, though: giving clues similar to the last will get you canceled, so be unique!
The goal of players in That Sound Game is to get their teams to guess as many answers on the category cards as they can in a minute. There’s a twist however: You cannot use your hands. You can only make sounds! Categories include Incidents, Actions, The P’s (People, Places, and Personae), Nature, and Objects. The key here is to use any combination of sounds and movements to portray the words on the category cards to your teammates, but your hands must be behind your back. Lifelines also grant you additional help. The Uncuff Me card allows players to use their hands for the rest of their turn, while the Steal card allows players from other teams to steal the answer if they know the answer to a card on another team’s turn. Beware though: getting the answer wrong on a steal means losing not only the point, but also the chance to use that card again for the rest of the game. Use them strategically to help you win!
Being stuck with sticks in Stick Stack isn’t ideal, so players compete to place them as carefully as they can on the wobble tower in the center of the playing area. By drawing a stick from the bag or choosing one of the sticks in front of them each turn, players place that stick onto the tower—but only the colors on that stack may touch matching colors on the crow's nest or on other sticks that have already been placed. When all sticks have been placed onto the tower or when the tower falls over, the game ends. The player with the lowest score wins! Will you turn the tides on your fellow players in the tricky-yet-fun game of Stick Stack?
Don’t worry: No artistic skills are required to play Dekalko! Simply slot the picture into your tray, trace your picture as quickly as you can, then show your drawing to your fellow players to guess. Skip the details if you want to finish quickly, add as many flourishes or visual clues as possible, but once the original picture is hidden, however, your drawing may look unrecognizable compared to the original image. Yikes!
The game includes two hundred unique images in various themes (animals, sports, etc.) that players can draw!
In Hand-to-Hand Wombat, players are each given either of two secret identities: Good Wombat or Bad Wombat. The Good Wombats try to build the three pyramidal towers in an orderly fashion whereas the Bad Wombats sabotage by deconstructing the towers or by ruining the pyramidal shapes. So with their eyes closed, Good Wombats build towers using game pieces that are then scattered around the table; Bad Wombats pose as Good Wombats trying to mess with the tower building process. When the timer runs out, everyone opens their eyes and discusses, argues, and votes on who they think is a Bad Wombat. If the Good Wombats successfully build the towers before too many of their teammates have been eliminated they win. Otherwise the Bad Wombats are victorious.
Calling all friends, family, and cow rustlers! This game is for you (Don’t worry, we guarantee it’s vegan-friendly). Herd Mentality is the name, and the aim of this kooky party game? Think like the herd and write down the same answers as your friends.
If your answer is the same as the majority, you all win cows. However, If everyone else writes an answer that is matched by at least one other person, and yours is the lone answer, then you get the angry Pink Cow, and your herd of cows is worthless until you can offload it onto someone else. The first player to collect eight cows wins.
The key to this party game then is to harness perceptiveness: how do your fellow players think collectively? What sets them apart individually? How would they approach you and their fellow players? How well will you truly fare as one with the herd?
Dixit is a creative storytelling guessing game that both stimulates imagination and sharpens players’ cognitive perception. Each player takes turns being the storyteller, choosing from one of six cards in their hand to inform their one-sentence story they share with fellow players. The other players must now select a card from each of their hands that best matches the story and give that to the storyteller.
Its spinoff game Stella exists in the Dixit universe and is played in a similar manner: in each round, players interpret Dixit cards on a board after receiving a common clue word. Each player observes the Dixit cards and secretly associates these cards with the clue word, marking on their erasable personal slates the cards that they choose. Selecting the same cards as the other players allows you to score more points. Conversely, selecting a card that no one else chooses may cost you dearly.
At the end of each game, each player calculates their total score. Whoever has the most points — which is possibly more than one person — wins. Take calculated risks, but beware of the fall.
Lift It! Party is one such title that subverts those expectations: a dexterity game in which players within a time limit, must use colorful blocks to build structures according to a pre-assigned card. The caveat? You can’t use your hands! Instead, you use cranes that you attach to your forehead to individually pick up the pieces and stack them one on top of the other to build a structure that most closely matches the one depicted on the card assigned to you.
About Gaming Library
Gaming Library aims to be the go-to resource for board games, providing not only titles that can be enjoyed by families, but also to be enjoyed by friends both newcomers and veterans alike. By pulling from different resources from all over the world, we at Gaming Library curate an impressive collection of games for consumers to choose from, suitable for anybody from casual players to hardcore hobbyists. In doing so, we hope to provide the best means to foster activities that strengthen family ties and friendships, while teaching relevant skills and practical critical thinking that can be applied to your everyday life.
