This Family Strategy Games Page contains a growing list of our favorite Strategy Games!
Battleship – Milton Bradley
Our kids played Battleship for hours and hours (so did Steve when he was a kid). The game was created in 1967 by Milton Bradley and has gained popularity with each generation since then. It’s the ultimate hide and seek with ships. This is an opponent game that can be played for hours on end. Sink all your opponent’s ships and you win.
Each player set his ships of different lengths secretly on a small square grid. The ships vary in size from two to five squares. Each player keeps his grid hidden from the opposing player. On each turn players “shoot” by calling out coordinates like “A5.” The defender responds with either “Hit” or “Miss.” The defender responds by “Hit!” or “Miss!”. Play continues with each person trying to deduce where their opponents ships are hidden and then targeting them to sink. The first player to sink their all of their opponent’s ships wins the game. You can also find it here too.
Puerto Rico – Rio Grande Games
Puerto Rico is a great strategy game for older kids (ages 12 and up). You compete against the other players as they select various roles in the operation of the island of Puerto Rico. You are basically a wealthy landowner who needs to put in various plantations to produce various goods, process those items and ship them to other countries.
When you ship your produced goods you earn victory points. You can also sell items to the trading house to earn income. There are lots of various strategies you can use to benefit your plantations and your purse while not benefiting the other players quite as much.
Watch this video that explains the game in more detail.
Settlers of Catan
Settlers of Catan is an incredibly fun game. We play it as a family a couple of times each month. The goal is to build settlements by harvesting natural resources of wood and ore, and gathering and trading commodities like wool, brick, and wheat. The challenge is to build your settlements on the best areas on the board to increase your income in resources so that you can build more roads, cities, and settlements before your opponents can.
It’s a little tough to learn, but once you do, you’ll love playing it. It’s a little bit of chance and lots of planning, strategizing and punting when your plans get blocked. It takes us about 2 hours to play a complete game. The game is so popular that is has spawned expansion packs and additional versions like Seafarers of Catan and Cities and Knights (our favorite, but it takes about 4 hours to play).
We did a local TV interview about inexpensive recreation ideas and played a game Settlers of Catan for the cameras. You won’t learn how to play from this video, but you can tell we really like the game.
Watch the video below:
If you want to learn more about the game, this is one of the better YouTube videos explaining the basics of the game. You won’t understand everything if you have never played the game. But trust us, this game is worth learning to play.
If you have a favorite Strategy Game that your family enjoys playing, please mention it in the comment section and we’ll consider it for this page.