Wits and Wagers by Northstar Games is a trivia based game that is fun for the whole family. The recommended age for this game is 8 and older and in our opinion…. that’s pretty spot on. We still played with our children (6 and under) and they LOVED playing, but Nathan and I had to sway their answers a few times. We'll definitely be playing this one again though!
The box and all of the pieces are very well constructed, which is HUGE for us. We like a game that can last and this is certainly one…. And thus my love affair began. Inside you’ll find 6 small boards to write your answers on 6 quality black dry-erase pens, 10 meeples (5 large and 5 small people shaped tokens) 150 trivia cards (with 2 questions on each for a total of 300 questions), and a scoreboard. All of the boards are nice and thick and the cards with the trivia information are great quality, not flimsy at all.
The learning process for this game takes just minutes and the actual play time is about 20-30 minutes. For our family we split into teams and let the smaller children place the answer cards, meeples, and hand the trivia cards back and forth between mom and dad.
The actual game play starts when the youngest child gets a card from the box and reads the top question. Then everyone (or each team) writes their answer to the question on their answer board. I find this game a lot of fun and easy because all of the answers require only a number and then everyone lays out their cards in numerical order. From here you can place your meeple(s) on ANYONE'S card... which is awesome! If you think that someone else had a better answer then you can put your piece on their answer instead! Woohoo! (Nathan is often better at guestimating things so I kind of rely on him for that kind of stuff!) Whoever guesses closest to the correct number without going over gets points for that round.... large meeples are worth 2 points and small meeples are worth 1, so if you put all of your meeples on one card and that card was the closest then you'd have 3 point for that round. It is possible to split your meeples if you think two answers may be correct.
Do I have any criticisms of this game? Not really. It'll be a happy addition to our collection.... some of the cards make me laugh because our kids have NO CLUE what they're talking about. For instance? For children that have never had fruit loops or know what they look like it's pretty difficult to guess how many colors come in one box :-D. Yes, that's a parental issue *laugh* We explained to the kids on our team what they are and talked them through guessing, kind of funny! The other question that made me laugh was how many Disney Princesses there are. Yah, not really common knowledge around here, but still fun.
What I do really, really like is that there's a little blurb on the back of each card that gives a little extra trivia in addition to having the numerical answer to the question. I actually learned quite a bit and am excited to play again. Oh! The other thing that I thought was really nice is that when you open the box of trivia cards there's a little place holder card of sorts. You put that card to the back of the box and go through playing the game until all of the top questions of the cards have been read and then once you get to the place holder card you know to go through the deck again but reading the bottom question.... thus no duplicate questions for 300 questions worth of play! Clever, clever.
Wits and Wagers Family can be found online and from national retailers. I can see this being a fun family gift for Christmas.... we like to just hang out and spend the day together, Christmas is pretty low key, so having a new game around is always fun!
If you'd like to read what other crew members are saying about Wits and Wagers Family please feel free to check them out here.
*As a member of the 2011 TOS Homeschool Crew I was provided a free copy of this product in exchange for my honest review of its content. I have not received any other compensation for the opinions stated here, and they were not promised a positive review.**
1 comment:
Thanks looks fun.
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