We had games night on Saturday. Have a games night has languished undone on my 101 list since I made it in September 2023. Three weeks ago we were having family dinner and the topic got on to games nights and we decided to have a family games night. E and K have a good selection of games because they play a lot with their friends and S has an organised games night with her friends every few months. G was away that night, but the kids and I decided to set a date and checked the AFL fixture so we made sure we did not pick a date when G’s team, Collingwood, was playing. What I forgot about was his mates weekend, so he ended up missing games night anyway.

We selected a variety of games that we could play with five people. I organised a mixed box a Maki and Inari for dinner, and cooked Spinach Ohitashi and some dumplings. We followed it up with mint chip icecream. To set the mood I also made a new playlist called Games Night and finally worked out how to play music from my iPhone through the soundbar in the living room without turning on the TV. We actually started games night at 4 pm to give us plenty of time to play the games and finish at a reasonable hour. There was one non-negotiable rule—no Monopoly!

E and K had a new game called Selfish: Space Edition. This is a card game where you’re trying to reach the space ship before you run out of oxygen. None of us made it. This was a fun, quick game where you pick up cards and use them to attack others or protect yourself. Oxygen cards are required to stay alive.

The second game we played was Space Base. I think we’ve had this for about 8 years now—it was a family Christmas present one year. In this game everyone takes on the role of Commodore of a fleet of ships. The active player rolls the dice and earns rewards according to the ships on their board or deployed in each sector but the other players can also score points if they have ships deployed in the sectors that match the dice. This is a strategy game and it took us a number of hours to complete. S won this one.

We had a small amount of time left after we’d finished Space Base so we played multiple rounds of Code Names. We played E and K’s version which is the original but we have the pictures edition which was another family Christmas present. For this there are two teams and you are trying to uncover your teams secret agents without uncovering the assassin. Agents, bystanders and the assassin are all represented by cards with a single word on it. 25 cards are arranged in a grid and the spymaster on each team knows where their agents are and has to give a one word clue to their team so they can uncover their agents. It can be really difficult to find a clue to uncover more than one agent in a turn, which is what allows you to stay ahead of the other team. Each round of this is pretty quick so we had time to play multiple rounds, swapping teams and spy masters each time.

Games night was a success and I think we will be doing it again! Do you like board games. Do you get a chance to play very often? What are your favourite board games?