About a year ago, I began hosting Game Night Social at the Garage Food Hall in Indianapolis. And while I’ve taught games to friends, hosted game parties, and led game sessions at conventions in the past, I’ve never before introduced so many games to so many strangers.

While some hobby gamers come to our weekly event with a wealth of tabletop experience (and often with their own games in tow), many of the folks who wind up participating are less experienced. Some haven’t dabbled beyond Clue and Monopoly and, if they did, it might only be for a sampling of such crossover hits as Catan or Ticket to Ride.

One of the big pleasures, for me, is making a connection between those players and a game they hadn’t previously tried or even heard of.

As the year winds down and the holiday shopping season revs up, I thought I’d share some of the games that have proven to be consistant winners for those without a lot of new game experience. These are games that are ideal to bring to a family event where strategy and tactics aren’t at all important and fun and accessibility are high priroties.

Enjoy.

Blank Slate. When a group of six-to-eight people ask for a suggestion, this is my go-to. It takes about 30-second to teach and, with simultaneous play, there’s no lag time. Each player gets a color coded dry erase board. A cue card is flipped showing a word and a blank (for instance, ___________ bear). Each player

secretly fills in the blank. The challenge is to match one and one other person. For that, you each get three points. Match more than one person and you each only get a single point.

Timeline. While this one can be played by a larger group, I use it as a go-to when two players are looking for a smart, fun one. Each player gets dealt cards which each show an historic event. One card is put at the center of the table and flipped to show the date that that event occurred. In turn, players have to put one of their cards in the proper place on the timeline. In the beginning, it’s fairly easy: You just have to select one of your events and decide if it came before or after the one already on the table. But as the timeline fills out, there are more

options on where to place cards. Bonus: You can adjust the difficulty simply by starting with more or fewer cards.

Green Team Wins. Whereas trivia games can make some players feel

dumb, there have been a steady flow of games where there are no right or wrong answers. In this one, if your answer lines up with the majority of your group, you get to join the green team and score a point. If you are already on the green team and answer a question with the majority, you score more. Miss a question and

you are demoted to the orange team.

Word on the Street. I’m a big fan of this one, whether for two players or for a group that likes to break up into teams. The board features a street of sorts with a row of letter tiles down the middle. One team reads a category to the other (for instance: A type of pasta). A timer is flipped and the other team has to rush to come up with a word for the category and then move all of the letters in that word toward their side of the board before the sand runs out. Then they read a category and the other team has to do the same. The tug of war continues with the goal beind to get letters off your side of the board. The edition I have is the original, from Out of the Box Games. A newer edition, from Educational Insights, isn’t as well designed and has downgraded the componants, but the game play is still the same.

Gimme That! Sometimes, players are just up for something silly and raucous. This one always does the trick. Players each have a sheet with 100 potatoes on it. The goal is to number them all. That’s made difficult by the fact that there’s only one pencil. Players take turns quickly rolling a die which features a pencil on one of its faces. Roll that and you can grab the pencil and start numbering. Meanwhile, other

players are rolling and, if they roll a pencil, they steal it and start counting. The other faces on the die are what make this loud and chaotic, with symbols saying when to high five, thump the table, and fist bump. There’s also a face that says Left, meaning that all counting sheets are passed to the left. At Game Night Social, one of the highlights of the year was seeing three groups of people who had never met each other before having a grand old time swiping pencils, scrambling to write, and fist-bumping their way to friendship.