Board Games for Kids, and no not monopoly. A 'Gamer Dad' topic.

[mageParticipant 20596xp 0]

So, Im a single dad who shares custody of his little 5 year old dude.

 

I want to get him something simple for Christmas in the line of board games that are Fantasy themed. I tried the old D&D board game with the bright, badly sculpted minis I bought as a teen in the early 2000s. I sat down to play it but he had no interest in rules or the like and wanted to do his own thing.

 

While Im more than happy to try and do a gamer dad thing from scratch as a project, that wont make for a good present.

 

He likes his toys, action figures, and vehicles. However the only thing he seems to enjoy following the rules for is Kerplunk.

 

Things that spring to mind might be Labrynth (the Ravensberger Game), some of the Wizkids D&D minis for kids and like some Schleich stuff. Obviously he is too small for Warhammer.

 

However, BoW is the only forum and community online I am part of anymore. I dont need any other, this is that awesome and I love it here that much. All the members out there, you guys, well, your opinion kind of matters to me most.

 

So, fire away with comments, ideas and suggestions please, if you don’t mind.

 

It will all be sincerely appreciated 🙂

[mageParticipant 20596xp 0]

PS: He already has a set of RPG dice. He loves to play with all mine. He picked them out himself in Dungeons and Donuts in Galway (an Irish city, about an hour north of where I live, great shop!).

[embracraigParticipant 427xp 3]

My eldest is coming up for 4, so I’ve been looking into things like this as well. Honestly at age 5, most games that we’d buy as adults are going to be a stretch for them – you’d need to simplify them and shorten them to work for kids ability and attention span.

Take a look at Haba – they’ve got a whole bunch of games aimed at kids from preschool onward. While they wont necessarily keep adults entertained for long, they’ll introduce concepts of following rules and waiting turns to kids, which is as good for life in general as it is for future board games. Most of their games have the instructions PDF on their website, so you can get a good look at how they work before you buy too. Any of them would be a good opportunity to get into a habit of having some games time with them, and you can add more complex games as they get older.

If you want something with a fantasy theme, there’s a good few in this list with castles, dragons and knights on them:

https://www.haba.de/en_GB/toys/games-books/childrens-games/c/opqzz7?sort=relevance&q=:relevance:ageRange:search.range.age.5

An exception to the not fun for adults thing is Rhino Hero – that game is a good laugh at pretty much any age 🙂

[sundancer 42979xp 1]

Hi dad, I’m dad. #scnr

We (my wife and I) had much fun with our 7 year old daughter with “mice and mystic” Also X-Wing can be player casually. Then there is Blitz Bowl (slimmed down version of bloodbowl) Also rory’s story cubes are great fun.

[sundancer 42979xp 1]

Also if you have a GW store near you, just let him paint a demo mini there. My daughter had great fun painting a Stormcast Eternal.

[embracraigParticipant 427xp 1]

Oh, and RPG wise – there’s a few RPG systems out there for kids. Some are adaptations of D&D etc (names escape me, but do some googling and I’m sure they’ll pop up). One that I like the look of, but can’t quite justify yet is No Thank You, Evil! which looks brilliantly well put together, and they say works with kids from 5 up 🙂

[sundancer 42979xp 1]

5 Minute dungeon is also easy, fast and fun

[danlee 22443xp 1]

I’m having success with getting my 6 year old into age of sigmar. Check out my project if you want more details. https://www.beastsofwar.com/project/1282370/

[onlyonepinman 18062xp 2]

Before you decide to do this, does he actually show any interest in your hobby?  If he has seen your models and is really keen to play with his dad, then I reckon one of the best ways to start is actually to maybe paint some stuff with him, probably some space Marines or Stormcast Eternals because what kid doesn’t like super human Warriors right?  Sitting down and following rules might not be what he wants to do – I can well imagine that being the case for a 5 year old boy, even though it’s a long time since I was one.

In terms of games most dungeon crawlers are aimed closer to the 12+ mark and I don’t really see much variation in that – maybe Mice and Mystics?  Now, this isn’t a dungeon crawler as such but I bought this on Kickstarter as “one for the future” for my little girl when she gets older.  It’s still aimed at 8+ but that’s not quite as big a gap as 12+ for a 5 year old.

http://www.eden-the-game.com/gnomes-et-associes-la-boite-de-base-art1616.html

[darthcheeseParticipant 4436xp 2]

My 4 going on 5 year old daughter loves looking at my ministry, so I bought her some of her own. She started by using my paints, then I let her choose her own paints (I now own lots of pink and purple GW paints). This Xmas I’ll get her the My little pony choose your own adventure book, we go through it at bedtime. I tried Heroquest with her and she lasted about 15 minutes which was about 10 minutes longer than I expected. In a year or so I’ll try again.

Not saying this would work for you, but is worth a think.

[darkvoivod 7112xp 1]

I have 2 boys. Age 7 and 11 now. I have in the past played some heroquest ith them. They liked it.

These days I tend to play games that have a badguy or gamemaster. Imperial assault. dungeon saga. I simplify the rules for them and act more as a dungeon master then opponent. They really dig it. Also x-wing with unnamed pilots and no upgrades.

Lately I started a RPG with them set in the Dragonlance setting. There’s plenty of goofball stuff in that setting to attract kids. They loved meeting filtty stupid Gully dwarves. There’s aslo kender and gnomes. The weird god avatars.

For rules I use the olf World of darkness. Stats go from 1 to 5. every pont in a stat is and extra dice you roll. Every target number hit is a succes. It’s really easy and even my 7 year old got it in a snap.

[mageParticipant 20596xp 0]

@embracraig

 

Oh yes, of course they would be too much for them. A lot of work would need to go into simplifying them too to be fair.

 

Ill check Haba out shortly.

 

He actually said ‘I want Dungeons and Dragons stuff for Christmas’ so that’s what made me go on to start this thread.

 

Yeah, that’s the idea, getting in games time and taking into account his development and starting small.

 

Rhino hero? Colour me intrigued.

 

Ill hunt down those ‘Not D&D’ games.

 

@sundancer

 

Saul good.

 

X-Wing is one of those things with mass appeal due to its awesomeness, fun, simplicity (but of course it has complexity too). Its one of those funny casual/competitive things. When did BlitzBowl come out? I have some of those story cubes. The Batman ones.

 

5 Minute Dungeon? Gotta check that out.

Would five be too young for a demo mini? My nearest GW is some ways away for taking him. Then again, there isn’t one too far from where he lives.

 

@danlee

 

Ill check that out. Might not be a bad idea.

[noyjatatParticipant 16155xp 2]

I would suggest maybe Stuffed Fables. It’s got a great little story I troductuon to each game and has some lovely minis that represent children’s toys.

[sundancer 42979xp 0]

@mage Blitzbowl has been released 29.08.2018 See https://www.bloodbowl.com/blitzbowl/ for retailers

And five isn’t too young. My daughter had her first mini with 5. You can see her results here: Project Link

Also, since X-Wing V2 is out you may be able to get V1 boxes for the cheap. One X-Wing, two tie fighters. everything you need to start and it’s a small box.

And I highly recommend @embracraig suggestion of HABA. High quality games, simple but fun rules. (And a high resell value if you don’t play them anymore)

[onlyonepinman 18062xp 0]

I was considering buying a copy of Stuffed Fables.  There’s a lot of good stuff around at the moment but just a little too old for my toddler.  However it seems to me that they’re worth buying while they’re available and keeping on ice for the future.  I think I would probably lean towards stuffed fables over Mice and Mystics at the moment

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