Game on: Happy Families

I have ummed and ahhed about including this one.  Even the name feels un-PC these days, let alone the expectation that a family necessarily has mum, dad, boy and girl.

But part of the point of games is that they work.  The junior player I was with had no such qualms – she liked the game, and she wanted to play it with me.  A lot.  So we did.

And you know what? It’s fine.  It’s really just about forming sets of cards, bidding for the ones you want to collect and getting rid of the ones you don’t.  (Plenty of card games out there operate on the same principle.)

How to play

For those unfamiliar with the game, you have something like 11 or 12 sets of families.  All the cards are shuffled, and dealt out.  Each player therefore ends up with a mixture of cards across the possible sets.

If you have 3 of one set, it makes sense to try and collect the missing card, and complete your set.  If you have 1, you may want to move it on to someone else – unless you can tell they are collecting that set, and want to stall them doing so.

If you have 2 of a set, it’s up to you whether to collect or not.  You’ll probably get some clues from the other player(s) – if they seem to be collecting it too, you need to decide whether or not to hang onto your cards, and stall them, or focus on a different set to collect.

Once you have a complete set, you put them out on the table, so they all show.  The game keeps going until all the sets are complete, and out.  The winner is the person who has the most sets of cards collected.

Choice of cards

One of the reasons I am less keen on Happy Families is the sets of cards I remember from my childhood.  Each ‘family’ set is a different type of animal or bird, but done up in rather strange clothes, with props etc.

Some of the pictures are sort of sweet – some are downright strange. (Tadpole in a cradle, for the Frog family, would probably be in the latter category, even if it’s ‘accurate’.) I do still have a set, but the choice of pictures has been one of the reasons I’ve been less keen to show them to our own junior player.

I’m sure I’ve played a version of this where the cards are all professions.  Again, this may seem less relevant today, though clearly we still need butchers, bakers, grocers, but not automatically candlestick makers.

However…find a better set of cards, and it becomes a lot more interesting.  The ones we were using on holiday were of ‘international families’ ie still the same sets of 4, but each family representing a different country.

You therefore get a bit about national dress, landmarks of the country (background to each pic), and maybe a bit of self-identification too for junior players (what they are, and maybe what they would like to be).

Making it work

I was mostly playing as a two.  Happy Families probably works best when there are 3 or more of you, because if you ask a player for a card, you don’t know whether they have it or not.  (If there’s just two of you, there’s no question!)

Again, this was my hangup, not my partner’s.  She liked it because it made the game go faster, and she got to bang down her sets of cards quite quickly, shouting ‘Happy Family!’ with each new set.

In other words: if speed makes the game work better for the junior player, go with it.

Having your hands full

Playing as 3 or more may however help if your junior player is having difficulty holding a full handful of cards, because they won’t then have as many to deal with.

It can also help to get your sets in order in your hand, so you can see what you have, and what you are missing. However, if there’s another adult around, to help junior player hold and order their cards, this can help too.

Conclusions

I suspect I might not play this one as much, longer term, but if the pack had appealing pictures, it would probably help.  It doesn’t have the pace (and simplicity) of snap, but can be a good way for junior players to try a little strategy, without it being too complex.

There may be something of a gender influence too – my female junior player was happy to form families, a male one was less taken with the game. I should probably now quiz my brother as to whether he remembers playing it or not.

The important thing, really, is whether you liked the game, whether your junior opponent did, and whether you’d play it again.  And on the basis of a better pack of cards: yes, yes, and yes. Case closed.