Ting Tang Tommy. Simon Godwin

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      After they have been reunited with their original title, each player now reveals their sequence of words and pictures. Players talk through their sequence, holding up one paper at a time. A potential example might go: I wrote down One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Dad drew [show strange drawing of a flying bird]; Granny wrote Chicken Run, Mum drew [an abstract figure distantly related to a chicken fleeing a prison] and Grandpa wrote The Fugitive, and so on.

      It’s fantastically rewarding when one series of papers manages to successfully convey one consistent title, but this is pretty rare. There is no winner; the pleasure lies in the often crazy relationship between image and title. Players should do their best to be as precise and detailed as possible but more often than not this is a celebration of distortion. Also, don’t be put off by people being confused or grudging at the start. The game reveals its magic gradually and it’s always thrilling to discover the way you arrive back at your title and the mad journeys everyone has gone on.

      It’s a Knockout in Your Living Room

      Playing games with lots of people is not easy. Arriving at a party, people’s expectation is to drink a lot and talk. So when someone proposes a game there may be some resistance. There is a failsafe way to short-circuit this and that’s by exploiting the human animal’s competitive gene. As soon as you put people in a team they are overtaken with a desire to win at all costs. Suddenly, you have people obsessed with potential strategies and ways to prove their skills to their team-mates. Everyone becomes desperate to avoid the humiliation of being the one who lost the match.

      You will discover how, once a team has played a game together, they become hungry to stay together to play more. With this in mind, I have put together a series of games here that can be played consecutively. If you are feeling really motivated you can create a score board and build up a championship-type vibe. I’m thinking a ‘games decathlon’. You can have an interval halfway through when people can drink and chat before getting going again, with even crazier and more adventurous games.

      Slap Penny

      

This game is good because it’s a relatively sedate way to start a run of team games. It takes skill but it’s not too complex or too physical. It allows people to start working together and the penny slapping technique is not as easy as it seems.

      For this game you’ll need two teams with a minimum of four people in each team. The two teams stand facing each other. At either end of each row place a chair (so you’ll need four chairs in total). On the two chairs facing each other at one end of the line, place a pile of ten pennies. When the umpire shouts ‘Go’, the two players on each team standing next to the chairs pick up a coin and place it on their hand. They have to hold their hand and palm upwards, with the penny resting in the palm.

      The penny is then slapped from that palm to another and then onto the palm of the next player, who in turn transfers it to his other hand, and so on. The first player palms the coins from the pile as quickly as he can to get as many pennies travelling down the line as possible. The last player in the line drops the coin onto the chair standing beside them.

      A penny may never be clutched. If it is dropped, it must be returned to the starting point on the chair. If you really want to test your players, when all ten coins have arrived you can demand that they send them back again. The first team to slap all their coins home wins.

      Leaping Cards

      

Playing cards are fiendishly difficult to throw. They are resistant to too much force and their shape means that you have to find an oblique approach to getting them on target. This game was originally played by the Victorians who would try and throw cards into a top hat. Sadly, most of us don’t keep one to hand anymore. But you do need a stiff hat with a wide brim. I have an old trilby, for example, that works perfectly well. Alternatively, a pudding basin or small bucket will both work well.

       Here I have adapted the original, rather sedate game into a high-octane team competition. The game has acquired a greater urgency as you now have to balance accuracy with speed.

      The aim of the game is to be the team that wins as many points as possible. The game ends when one team has managed to throw all their cards.

      Begin by spreading a newspaper on the ground and placing your hat in the centre of it. Using a jumper, scarf or the edge of a rug, establish a line around 1.5 metres from the hat. This will be where players throw their cards from.

      Divide the company into two teams. Each team is given half a pack of cards. One team has the red cards and the other the black cards. On ‘Go’, one by one a member of each team goes to the line and throws a card towards the hat. For every card that makes it successfully into the hat, players are awarded three points, for any that land on the rim players get two points and for any card that at least makes it onto the newspaper, players get one point. In the fast and furious snowstorm of cards, leave the scoring until all the cards have been thrown.

      Both teams scramble to throw their cards as accurately and as rapidly as possible. When one team has succeeded in throwing all their cards, the game stops. At this point the two team captains begin by collecting all their team’s cards that have landed around the room, which are discarded as they are worth no points. They then collect all the cards on the newspaper, which are worth one point. The captains should count as they go, moving on to gather cards on the brim (two points) and then in the hat itself (three points). The team with the highest score wins.

      Picture This

      

There are various board games that you can buy in the shops based around drawing. Pictionary and Articulate are two good examples that revolve around a very simple premise. Indeed, the premise is so simple that you can easily play your own versions at home, with stuff you already have. Unlike Chinese Pictures, this game is competitive and is played with a time pressure; this means you can happily include it in your games tournament.

       Drawing games are like charades in that they ask for skills that most people don’t have to any great level. This is exactly why they are such fun.

      You need a pinboard, which you can cover with sheets of A4 paper, or single sheets of A3, depending on what you have to hand and the size of your board. After forming two teams, each player writes three everyday objects on a different piece of paper and throws those bits of paper into a hat. The game begins with the first player pulling out a piece of paper from the hat and drawing the object on the board, which must be guessed by the rest of her team. Each player is given only thirty seconds to try and draw as many objects as possible. As the names are guessed correctly, the team keeps their papers to add up when the hat has eventually been cleared. The team with the most names at the end wins.

      The Sofa Game

      

It is with some trepidation that I share this game. It’s a game that can end in tears and possibly even injury. It takes the childhood fun of making obstacle courses and gives it a competitive edge. However, only play this game if you have the СКАЧАТЬ