Christmas is all about the board games but it isn’t often you find a board game that is all about Christmas. This is exactly what The Very Merry Christmas Game is all about. The object of the game is to be the player with the best set of presents in your stocking at the end of the game.
The Very Merry Christmas game contains 42 cracker cards, 32 Present Cards, 4 playing pieces, 2 dice, the game board and a party hat.
You can play as four players using the standard rules or as two or three players with slightly adapted rules. You can even play as teams. Each player or team chooses a coloured stocking and sits along that side of the board. They place their coloured playing piece on their fireplace square.
You need to shuffle the present and cracker cards and place them on their spaces on The Very Merry Christmas Game board. Two present cards are placed on the empty spaces A and B on each of the four stockings (face down). The present cards feature a range of gifts that have star ratings. The aim is to fill your stocking with gifts with a high star rating. There are two sprout cards in the game. If a player has one sprout card at the end of the game then that player automatically loses, however, if a player has both sprout cards then they automatically win.
The cracker cards allow players to do the following. Take a present from someone else’s stocking, give away one of their presents to someone else’s stocking or swap a present between their stocking and someone else’s. To pull a cracker the player nominates another player and takes a cracker card placing it face down between them. The card is turned over and the winning player then gets to look at one present card in their own stocking and one present card in the losing players stocking before deciding what action to take. All present cards must remain face down.
When playing the Very Merry Christmas game you will come across a variety of spaces. Most of them are self-explanatory. When landing on a present square you get to look at the next present card and decide whether to add it to your stocking or give it to another player. The peek in a stocking space allows you to check a present card in the colour stocking that is shown in the space.
The carol singing spaces mean that the player has to sing a few lines from a Christmas carol. If they don’t then the player from their left can take one of their presents and place it in the game box. You can not sing the same song twice in a game. The party hat space means that this player has to wear the party hat which makes them immune from singing. The hat is passed as other players land on the party hat space.
The Very Merry Christmas game is lots of fun and great for all ages as it is easy to play and easy to understand. It is recommended for ages 8 plus but I think younger players could play as well.
I love the concept of stealing other peoples presents and peeking inside the stockings which is what Christmas is all about so we definitely recommend The Very Merry Christmas game to families this year.