UKC

I'm looking for a couple of games to take away on a long trip that will likely involve some days stuck in a tent. Previously I've had the normal deck of cards and tried a travel set of Monotony (Monopoly) but want to take something a little more interesting this time. They need to have a player count of 2 to 4 and be as lightweight & compact as possible. A couple on the current shortlist are; Pass the pigs & Hive (Pocket). Does the UKC hive mind have anymore suggestions?

In reply to Tom F Harding:

Uno

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uno_(card_game)

In reply to Tom F Harding:

Scrabble ? Chess ? Both available in mini-versions.

In reply to Tom F Harding:

Go. 

Uno - good shout but I find it can get a bit samey after a while. Was already on my maybe pile.

Scrabble - I cnt spell well and dictionry is heavy

Chess - A bit too high brow probably and games tend to take ages. Also if anyone on the team has played a bit they will just dominate the rest of us.

Go - Hopefully we wont spend the whole of our trip in a tent....

In reply to Tom F Harding:

Deep Sea adventure is quite fun and uses a minute box, possibly have a look at others from the same manufacturer as they are tiny boxes.

I think Roam is very good, you could probably pack it down fairly small. 

Various Tabletop RPGs could work if you run them theatre of the mind style. Monster of the week would be my suggestion, the player facing stuff is all very simple once familiar with the rules.

Playing monopoly in a tent might strain a climbing partnership somewhat.

If you are going to have a tablet with you and can recharge from solar you could look at board games with digital options to provide more variety.

In reply to Tom F Harding:

This is childish fun and doesn't take up much space. Also soft so can add to camping pillow comfort. 

In reply to Tom F Harding:

Avoid Risk at all costs, it breeds mutual hate and can destroy families and even the best of climbing partnerships

In reply to spenser:

Deep Sea adventure and Roam both look fun.

I had fond childhood memories of playing monopoly until a recent trip. Terrible.

In reply to McHeath:

That's another game with fond childhood memories that is actually terrible if you play it now. 

In reply to Tom F Harding:

Doctors and nurses

In reply to Tom F Harding:

This is a favourite of mine. Been played in a snow hole using a map case as a board! 😂

https://365games.co.uk/products/tantrix-game-box

Dobble is also good and comes in a compact tin. 

In reply to Tom F Harding:

Nutrition Top Trumps.

you each grab a pile of snacks/dehydrated meals etc. play top trumps with the nutrition labels.

Player1“Carbohydrate 11g”,

Player2: “oooh! I’ve only got 10g”, 

Player 1 takes the snack off player 2 and continues with their next item

Hours of fun.

In reply to Tom F Harding:

Hide and Seek?

In reply to Tom F Harding:

Bop it

In reply to spenser:

This is the answer - best variety to weight ratio going. I once took a Nintendo Switch to the Greenland Ice Sheet...

In reply to Tom F Harding:

Zombie Dice... you will thanks me later 😘 

In reply to spenser:

There's a version called monopoly cheaters, different rules, different cards etc.. it's even worse. 

In reply to Tom F Harding:

I spy with my little eye, something beginning with...

In reply to Tom F Harding:

Exploding kittens

In reply to Tom F Harding:

Calvinball.

You don't need to bring anything at all.

In reply to Tom F Harding: dice . Buy small ones off eBay . Get 5 for each member of your team , plus 5 for a member of the crew to lplay plus 5 spares for losses . There are 100 s of games you can play , print some off from t internet . My favourites are liar dice and a scoring game where you have to make 501 or 5001 and have to hit it exactly . I’ve play these for hours and hours in mess tents . Also an Aussie card game called 500 which is a simlyfied bridge and easy to pick up . Needs four players . Again played for hours .

In reply to aln:

Keeps you warm too

In reply to Tom F Harding:

With a paper and pencil:

Famous person name stuck to forehead, take turns to ask yes/no questions to guess the identity of yours. Or get to keep asking questions as long as the answers are yes. (or it could be with climbing route names or dinner dishes or whatever else).

Origami.

Or with nothing at all:

Starting at A and going to Z, name a country/city/famous climber/porn star beginning with each letter. Endless variations.

Animal, mineral, vegetable.

I spy with my little eye / I'm thinking of something beginning with [letter].

rock, paper, scissors, lizard, spock.

thumb war - bonus: thumb strength training.

truth or dare

If you bring 5 dice each, liar dice is a good one if you want to get to know how honest your climbing mates are and what ticks they have when they lie

Depending on gender mix and how cold it is, you can play strip versions of any game.

Or "loser gets to run round the tent naked 20 times/cook dinner/etc."

In reply to Tom F Harding:

Bananagrams. 
 

Recommend the smut version.

In reply to Tom F Harding:

Bandido

In reply to Tom F Harding:

6 who take

In reply to Tom F Harding:

Depending on your group, and sense of humour - Cards against humanity. 

Yahtzee. 

In reply to Tom F Harding:

Hanabi - a co-operative game no bigger than a deck of cards that's infuriatingly difficult to win (but not so hard to feel like you couldn't). 2-5 player

In reply to Tom F Harding:

Ligretto is excellent! Got me throught many night shifts in a row with a group of 4 pals.

In reply to Tom F Harding:

Mini Backgammon set and Yahtzee kept us going nicely for a month in Nepal.

In reply to Tom F Harding:

I would try to find some options where there are multiple games you can play with the same "set".

Playing cards are obviously good for this - some other options (which are also quite compact) are Bananagrams and Dobble.

I hear your comment about Uno getting a bit samey after a while - Uno Flip is a fun variation that mixes things up a bit. It's still only really one game in a box though.

Pen and paper can also give you lots of options. Dots and boxes, battleships, jotto (this is basically Mastermind on paper, but with words) and racetrack are ones that I remember from my childhood - there must be loads more out there!

In reply to Tom F Harding:

Yahtzee and pass the pig.

In reply to Tom F Harding:

Twister 

In reply to Tom F Harding:

Twenty questions. Weighs nothing, packs up really small.

In reply to Tom F Harding:

sleeping logs

In reply to Tom F Harding:

So, a comment on Deep sea adventure. It's a great game, but I had the chance to test it in exactly this use case, being stuck in winterraum with 4 friends for 3 days because of bad avalanche conditions.

While the game is fun initially, it does not have much replay value. After day 2, we can pretty much stopped playing it, as it's formulaic once people figure it out.

My recommendation for good value would be Hanabi, simple to learn, difficult to master coop for up to 5 I think.  Kept us entertained on several treks in Patagonia.

Citadels is also a great classic, playes up to 7 and good replay value.

In reply to Tom F Harding:

Sardines.

In reply to Tom F Harding:

During a rather inactive spell in a tent in Alaska a friend and I invented "The Jilly Cooper game". You just need a Jilly Cooper novel (we had Riders) though any bonkbuster would probably work. It was excellent and provided hours of entertainment.

In reply to Tom F Harding:

Backgammon? You could draw a board out on a piece of fabric then just need the tokens and dice, could put a draughts board on the reverse using the same tokens.

In reply to Robert Durran:

Did you reenact the scenes? 😲😉

In reply to Robert Durran:

How does it work?

In reply to mike123:

Or just one die and play Pig. Pencil and paper help but not essential as far as I can remember.

In reply to Tom F Harding:

One once had a competition on who had the most beans in their tin, eating them one by one.

In reply to Tom F Harding:

Another vote for Hanabi. Keeps you thinking and communicating, easy to pick up but tough to master and so satisfying when you get it.

In reply to Tom F Harding:

I-Spy ?

In reply to Tom F Harding:

Botticelli.

In reply to abcdefg:

Presumably the post before yours guessed correctly.   

In reply to oldie:

Don't presume anything with Robert Durran! 🙄

In reply to Tom F Harding:

Dobble

In reply to FactorXXX:

No. Though that would be an excellent game to while away a three day storm if one's climbing partner were willing and of the appropriate orientation. 

In reply to abcdefg:

First you both read the Jilly Cooper novel at least once. This probably takes a day. A Jilly Cooper novel has approximately 20 male characters and twenty female characters and each male character bonks with each female character once in the course of the novel (roughly). This is therefore approximately 400 bonks (about one bonk every page and a half). You then take it in turns to read aloud a bonking scene omitting the names of the characters bonking. Your climbing partner has to say who and where the characters were (eg Rupert and Fenella in the stables). It may sound a bit silly, but we found it whiled away the time with much hilarity. Better than the usual farting competitions anyway.

In reply to Tom F Harding:

https://foxinaboxseattle.com/10_fun_games_you_can_play_at_home_with_just_a_...

used to play "who am I" (No. 2 in the link) using a pen and a packet of rizla. we didn't call it that, I think we just called it the skin game.

In reply to henwardian:

Good idea, we've got a boxed game with much the same but a mixture of places as well as people.

We used to do, There was a ship called ,,,,, whose captain was ,,,, sailing from ,,,,  to ,,,, with a cargo of ,,, 

Girls name, boys name, country, town/city and cargo. Take it in turns and go through the alphabet - no repeats so it gets progressively harder.

Another family favourite is the alphabet game. A series of cards with questions, girls name, boys name, number in any language, country, food, drink, composer etc*

Calller picks a Scrabble letter at random (you could take 26 tokens each with a letter) and the first person to answer gets a point. Again no repeats if you get to a second run through of the pack 

* Make up your own, could be route name problem name, famous climber. Ours was a mix of child and grandparent friendly questions to give everyone a go.

In reply to Tom F Harding:

From bitter experience of trying to climb in coastal Alaska I recommend monopoly deal.

In reply to Billhook:

T = tent. S = snow. M = mountain. End of game

Good try though

In reply to Tom F Harding:

Wow, that's a long list!

Hanabi looks interesting. Would someone be as kind as to stick it on the scales. All those plastic pieces look heavy.

Thanks everybody

In reply to Tom F Harding:

Tig?

In reply to Tom F Harding:

How much space will you have? I.e. how big is the tent? A canvas palace? Or a mountain tent?

I have hunkered down for a few days in mountain tents, and got by with a pack of playing cards. A book of crosswords might also work, if you enjoy that kind of thing.

In reply to Tom F Harding:

Love Letter is a game the size of a card box but good fun, played that on holiday dozens of times with 4 of us.

Citadels is a probably too big as it is in a box about the size of 5 CD cases on top of each other but that's quite strategic and brilliant when everyone learns to play it together and can compete on a level playing field. And looking back at it and the pictures online I think you could dump the box and it's mainly playing card size with a few little plastic tokens.

Jungle speed is more like an "action" game of fast reactions. Imagine "Snap!" combined with grabbing something in the middle of the table as fast as you can (that's literally it), again you could dump the box and bring just the cards, and you could use anything as the thing you grab that you might already be taking. 

In reply to aln:

I forgot the link. Here's a photo. 

In reply to Dr.S at work:

Hide the sausage.

In reply to captain paranoia:

Spin the bottle.
Can be combined with 'Hide the sausage' if deemed appropiate...

In reply to Tom F Harding:

The banana game. It's kind of a massively speeded up version of scrabble that doesn't need a board but does need a surface on which each player can make up their  own grid of words. It doesn't matter if you can't spell since there is no need to check any other player's efforts, unless you really want to, and you are racing against them so there is no time to look anything up in a dictionary. 

Each time I have played it with family it has been fun. Each player is active the whole time and with more than two players it goes really quickly.

It comes in a bag made to look like a banana.

In reply to Tom F Harding:

If you take playing cards, Big 2 is a great game for 2-4 players. 

It's got enough of a chance element that a complete beginner can still win occasionally if they have a really good hand, but enough of a skill element that it takes s lifetime to master. 

It's a short game where it's easy to play multiple games in a row, it needs no space, and works well with 2, 3 or 4 players.

In reply to Tom F Harding:

Assuming you have a bit of portable power, you can speed things up by having a set amount of time each (so if you run out of time you lose). And to equalise things you can give the strong player much less time than the weaker player. You can download a chess clock app.

In reply to Tom F Harding:

Hive pocket is a very good one, although only 2 player. A fair amount of depth and replay ability for it's size. Things like deep sea adventure and pass the pigs would get boring very quickly I'd have thought. Monopoly deal is a good suggestion also

If you want some things that are more like proper board games but still small you could look at the pax series of games: pax porfiriana and pax renaissance are the ones I'm familiar with. Both are proper ~2 hour board games, and are basically just a (fairly big) deck of cards and a few plastic pieces for money. Mind you, if you're not already pretty into modern board games you'll probably find them quite hard to get into, they're quite unusual. Porfiriana easier than renaissance.

https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/128780/pax-porfiriana

https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/308119/pax-renaissance-2nd-edition

In reply to Tom F Harding:

Amazon says 150g (https://www.amazon.co.uk/Games-869-Hanabi-Card-Game/dp/B00CYQ9Q76), sounds about right to me - it's a deck of cards and 11(?) little cardboard tokens.

In reply to profitofdoom:

Ok - that was for a bit of fun - but seriously there's lots of things inside a tent that you don't always notice, socks, stitching, fuel blah, blah etc.,

 A little variant on this is to try to make you I- Spy game with a slightly different rule.  in that the winner is the one who achieves  the most correct answers.  
So I spy with my little eye .......Snow thats a win for you.
by the time you get to Mountain you've some choice but they become more difficult to guess and to keep on winning by making the guess easy just becomes harder and harder.

In reply to Tom F Harding:

Limp biscuit, but be careful of the crumbs.

In reply to Gwinn512:

That seems like a pretty valid criticism, I have a rather large collection of board games so generally don't find games outlive their welcome barring pandemic and forbidden island etc.

In reply to Tom F Harding:

Hive is an excellent game and I have played it many times in tents or outdoors. Buy the complete version though (now sold as Hive Ultimate). It’s only a truly great (and balanced) game with the complete set of pieces.

In reply to Tom F Harding:

Dobble… although it can get quite stressful

In reply to flatlandrich:

Yahtze is good, once git stuck in a no horse town in mountains for 4 days. We whittled dice from candles and played it hours a day. Grudge matches make it all the better 

In reply to elliot.baker:

Yeah, when taking Citadels, you can dump the box and it's a pack of cards + about 30 small plastic tokens. Not much heavier than a standard pack of cards.

In reply to Tom F Harding:

If it was for six players or more, werewolf would be a great choice.

In reply to Tom F Harding:

A ukulele, a kazoo and some spoons, some sheet music (simplified) of sea shanties, Beatles and Michael Jackson songs

In reply to CantClimbTom:

with pen and pencil again,,,

Farmers fields...create a grid with square dots...then each person takes turn to draw a line between the dots...once a square is created, you can put your initial in it...

repeat until the grid is completed...

(again, this is something I used to play as a kid, not too sure if it transitions well into adultdood).

You could also try to play slaps, or knuckles.....

In reply to abh:

Or a version of those with ice axes?

In reply to Tom F Harding:

Maybe we can learn from the Victorian/Edwardian age. Make sure your porters bring a bookcase, drinks cabinet, writing desk and grandfather clock for your tent. We're not savages are we?