Ingenius-- board game

Ingenius

Overall Score: 7

Price: 6

Kid Friendly: 7

Parent Friendly: 8

Easy Access: 8

This game was introduced to me a few years ago by one of my good grade school friends (that miraculously we keep in contact even though she doesn't have Facebook!) The game itself is super simple to pick up, the scoring is a little tricky.
I have been wanting to play it with my kids ever since and I finally broke down this year and bought it. Of course it costs about as much as most newer board games (around $40).  One of the obvious downsides right away is that it maxes out at 4 players, so Drew and/or I usually take one of the kids as a partner. 

I am not sure why my boys keep playing games without their shirts on, but you don't get much more candid than this lol. This is a color matching game but with strategy. You can work it so that you block other players. Because it uses all colors and no words, this was easy for the kids to understand by themselves. Some of the problems with the game are with the materials. The board is one of those funky folding boards where if you bend it the wrong way, it breaks.........needless to say that our board is already broken. This would have been much better if it was just a two sided folding board and they just made the box rectangular. The problem with the broken board is that the pieces all line up against each other (kind of like dominoes). So if you bump one of our broken board quarters, it is really hard to get everything back lined up in place. I could just glue or tape the board together but then it wouldn't fit in the box,  which pretty much means that we will automatically lose enough pieces to not be playing this in a few short weeks. The other "mistake" in my opinion is with the pegs. You keep score on these boards that take pegs. The pegs are the size of a small raisin......naturally we have lost one of the pegs. I have looked everywhere online for a replacement peg and cannot find one (if you find one would you kindly send me the link!). Luckily the peg holes are the same size as the single unit lego, so I can use that but I am usually stuck with that board because nobody wants the "funky board"....(and truth be told, the lego piece gets in the way of the other pegs). Other than that, this is an easy quick game we can play with our kids (and still watch our Broncos....,well now the Packers, game without skipping a beat).