Six Picks 1: Great games to play with the family at Christmas

These choices are not the games to turn your non-gaming family into avid gamers (that may be a future list), but they are the games that I have had the most success and fun in introducing to the family over recent years.

Diamant is a fantastic push your luck game that plays in 20-30 minutes. Searching tunnels for treasure, do you turn back early to preserve your loot or do you risk venturing into the next cavern. Lots of oohs and ahhs as the adventurers uncover diamonds, snakes or poison gas. Great fun.

Apples To Apples never fails to get people laughing as people try to match the subjects on their cards to the category for the round. Sometimes picking the most ludicrous answer can turn you into a winner if you think the person making the choice might think that way.

Igloo Pop is a frantic game of trying to work out the number of beads in the igloos simply by picking them up and shaking them. Guess correctly and you win cards for points, guess incorrectly and you lose playing chips.

Transamerica is a competitive and collaborative connection game where you try to link all your cities to the rail network before your opponents do. Games are always tight with a fair amount of tactical opportunities for such a simple game.

Wits & Wagers is a trivia game where you don’t need to know the facts to win. Good estimation is helpful but canny betting on which of the possible answers is closest to being right is usually the way to win. Played twice this year.

Tsuro is a simple game: Place your tile on the board to build paths that keep your piece in play while forcing others off the edge or into one another. Takes up to 8 players and a game can be played in about 15 minutes – so you can play several.