It’s Summertime – Play Board Games Outside
The sun is shining, the weather is warming up, and the kids are out of school – it’s time to get outside, enjoy Summer, and play.
We don’t know about the particulars in your area of the world, but springtime in our area has been extremely wet and unusually cold. We’ve lamented not being able to enjoy beautiful outdoor weather much this Spring. We’ve been to many a soccer game on cold, windy, and rainy Saturdays over the last couple months. So we’re excited that the weather is finally cooperating with our plans to enjoy time outside.
Outdoor activities are great for families to enjoy together
There are a ton of great things to enjoy doing together outside as a family – camping, hiking, swimming, fishing, geocaching, barbequing, flying kites, and so much more. But the great thing about summer is that you don’t have to go far to enjoy time as a family outdoors. Simply going for a walk can be great for enjoying time together as a family.
As you’d expect, another great activity we like to do outside is to play board games. In all of the board game and card game rule books I’ve read, I don’t recall ever seeing a requirement that they must be played indoors. In fact, playing board games outside can be doubly fun – enjoying a good game while also enjoying the sunshine.
You don’t really even need a table for a lot of great family board games and card games. For many, you can simply spread out a blanket to kick back and play. If you’re at a park, you can find a picnic table, a bench or a nice grassy spot to spread out and play. If you’re having a barbecue, use the table for a game while the food’s cooking. We’ve even used truck tailgates and the back of a van with the seats folded down before to play some card games while we were out camping.
Great Board Games and Card Games for Outdoors
There are a ton of board games and card games that are great for playing outside. But there are also a number of things you need to take into consideration.
The first thing to consider is the size of the game and how much space it requires. Although we love Carcassonne, it can take a large flat surface and that’s not always available when camping for example. So a game like Roll Through the Ages is nice because it doesn’t take much playing space. It’s also very compact to take along with you. A lot of party games are also great because they may not require any playing area at all. Catch Phrase for example doesn’t have a play area at all as you just pass the disc around the group.
The next consideration is the weather. In our area, even on nice sunny days, we can get a lot of wind. So when choosing a game to play outside, we usually need to take this into consideration. If a game has a lot of cards sitting on the table (like Dominion), then we know it won’t work on a windy day. When the wind isn’t blowing, card games are great for outdoor activities because most are easily portable.
Some of our favorite family board games to play outside are:
- Hive
- Roll Through the Ages
- Apples to Apples
- Mastermind
- Catch Phrase
- Blokus
- Chess
- Fast Flowing Forest Fellers
- Forbidden Island
- Ingenious
- Ninja versus Ninja
- Quarto
- Quoridor
- Uno
- Standard deck of cards
What are great games that you enjoy playing outdoors?
And where is the most unusual place you’ve play board games or card games before?
Hive is probably my personal favorite. In fact, several leaders in our Scout troop bought copies, so now there are several at every Scout outing!
I haven’t tried Quarto or Quoridor. Blokus would work, but somehow I never really thought of that.
Qwirkle is a good outdoor game for the whole family!
Frank
I hesitate to post this since I designed the game, but Euronimoes (http://www.boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/90272/euronimoes) would work really well outside. Requiring just a handful of poker chips and one or more sets of double-six dominoes (depending on the number of players), it’s a very portable and very durable Euro.
It borrows elements from both No Thanks! and Coloretto — the basic idea is that you’re trying to end up with dominoes that work well with your own personal tableau, but you don’t want to pay too much for them. It’s a simple puzzle game with surprising depth that plays in about 10 minutes per player.
If you’re interested, the rules are available on the Euronimoes page of my blog: http://boardgameforge.wordpress.com/euronimoes/. Check it out!
Our outdoor games of choice are Mexican Train and Rummikub. They both are wind and water proof. I also own Speakout and think it would make a good outdoor game since no tabletop is needed. And I’ve played Upwords outside. It is both compact and fully waterproof.