Dixit and Fairy Tales

Amazon's Deal of the Day is save 40% or more on select strategy games. While there are several worthy games in the sale, I would like to HIGHLY recommend my personal favorite, Dixit. The game is usually about $36 and today is $18.99. I'm picking up a new set as a gift. It'll be the third time I've bought this set--my second gift copy.

Dixit has become the family favorite in my house and wins as the board game I have played the most times this year since we tried it out over the winter holidays. My parents (officially senior citizens) and my nephew and niece (ages 9 & 11) love it. We played it at least once a week all summer and during every visit during the year. It's Balderdash with images--strangely wonderful images. You have a handful of 7 cards with intriguing illustrations. Someone comes up with a phrase or metaphor for a card in their hand, then they share the phrase with the group. The group hands over a card from each of their hands which best suits the phrase. Then everyone tries to guess which is the correct card. You get points if you guess correctly and more if someone else chooses your decoy card. You also get points if part of the group, but not all or none, correctly chooses your own card when you choose the phrase, so you are rewarded for being vague but not too oblique. You have to find that balance.

That said, I think it plays best when you have a group comfortable enough to know each other and be a little silly, perhaps have a few in-jokes, like a family or close group of friends or a mix up there of. I tried it with a group of non-related teenagers who liked it and kept playing it, but they weren't comfortable enough with each other to reach the level of fun I have had playing it with family and friends.

I make it sound like my family plays lots of board games--not really, we spend just as much time playing Just Dance and other games on the Xbox 360 Kinect and not playing board games at all. But this one stuck and the kids kept wanting to play it and the adults enjoyed it, too, so it became a regular event and I ended up buying all the expansion packs over the past year to keep adding to the fun.

And while I can justify posting about Dixit because I love it and hey, it's my blog! I also can share that some of those cards have fairy tale themes to them which is always a jolt of fun--there is an average of a few cards in each set that invoke a well-known fairy tale. This sale set doesn't have as many but it is still my favorite because the illustrations are charming and work well. The images I've shared here are all from that set.

One expansion set--I can't remember which one--was a definite least favorite although we enjoyed it, too. Just not as much. It was harder to get an imaginative scope with it. Another set is darker in tone than the others, but I just can't remember which set was which. I've kept them separate so I'll have to thumb through them sometime. But not this sleepless morning.