Wednesday, December 15, 2010

Review ~ Wits and Wagers Family

This game is an absolute blast for the whole family.  I was so delighted to be selected by the makers, North Star Games, to review the game Wits & Wagers Family.  Our family LOVES games.  The first night we played as a family we were hooked!  Grandma and Papa were here visiting so they joined in on the family fun. Even Grandma loved the game! 

Directly stated on the North Star Games website....

Wits & Wagers Family simplifies the rules and scoring system of the popular Wits & Wagers. Now families and kids can get into the Wits & Wagers action! First, every player writes down a guess to a fun question. Then players try to score points by choosing which guess is closest to the right answer without going over. That is it!

The game features 300 new family-friendly questions. And even better than that, Wits & Wagers Family includes Meeples-- fun, cute, human shaped wooden pieces that the players use to select which answers they think are correct. Meeples have been a hallmark in European style strategy games for years, but this is the first time they have made an appearance in a party game.

The instructions for Wits and Wagers Family were very simple to comprehend considering I have never heard of the original game, Wits & Wager. The instructions were written in a very colorful brochure that included extremely helpful diagrams.  Also, included in the instructions were a rule variation to better personalize the game.


 The order of the game goes something like this..
      Ask a question
      Sort the Guesses
      Place the Meeples
      Determine the Winning Guess
      Score Points
      Prepare for the Next Round
      Winning the Game

Play individually, or divide into teams.  The object of the game is for the player, or team to reach 15 points first.  There are 150 cards with 2 questions per card.  Once the family has gone through all the top questions per card ( should be about 10 games), then they utilize the bottom questions.  It would be nice for North Star Games to have additional questions for purchase.

The recommended ages for the game is 8 and up.  However, I allowed my ds3 and ds6 to participate and they were thrilled with their assigned jobs.  Ds3 was responsible for returning the designated weebles to all the players.  Ds6 was encouraged to sort the guesses.  He also helped put the weebles in the selected places since we all were playing in the living room and were spaced far apart.  This made them feel part of the game and never once did they complained that they were bored.  However, in order to actually play the game,  I thing age 8 is an adequate age to comprehend the rules and questions of the game.

I liked the diversity of the questions, some were geared more towards the children and some were geared more towards the adults.  For example, two of the questions were, How many different colors of Froot Loops are there or How many different Webkinz stuffed animals have there been?  Of course, the adults had no idea, but the youngsters knew.

One potential drawback that I observed was that a few of the questions were material items that my children have not been exposed to.  We try to live a pretty simple life.  However, it really didn't cause a problem, but we really didn't have any clue of the correct response.  Relatively speaking, you aren't expected to know the exact answer, but  are encouraged to make educated guesses.

Wits and Waggers Family can be purchased here or at most Target stores for 17.99.  This is hours of family fun for 17.99.  I would love to try out the other games North Star Games offers here, too. 

To see what fun my crew mates had with this family game, click here.

I received for  free a Wits and Wager Family for the purpose of writing an honest review. No other compensation was given.

2 comments:

  1. Great review! You gave so much detail. We all really enjoyed Wits & Wagers Family too. And your blog layout for Christmas is adorable. Merry Christmas!

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  2. We had a lot of fun with this, too. My guys also had a harder time with questions about things like popular TV shows, but knew the answers to funny, obscure things. Your review is great.

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