Team Party Games
HYSTERIA
Players: 5 - 9
Playing Time: 20 - 30 minutes
Description from the manufacturer:
A game about Dios de lost Muertos: Hysteria is a quick-playing, small-box, social deduction game for 5-9 players. In Hysteria, players must keep track of who is on the human team as loyalties shift and your neighbors seek to obscure the truth. The base game is designed to be approachable for any audience, with advanced rules included for seasoned social deduction aficionados.
CODENAMES
Number of players: 2-8
Playing time (ROUGH ESTIMATES): 15 mins
Description from the manufacturer:
"Codenames is a social word game with a simple premise and challenging game play. Two rival spymasters know the secret identities of 25 agents. Their teammates know the agents only by their codenames. The teams compete to see who can make contact with all of their agents first. Spymasters give one-word clues that can point to multiple words on the table. Their teammates try to guess words of their color while avoiding those that belong to the opposing team. And everyone wants to avoid the assassin. The game works very well with 4 players if you prefer to guess without help. Or you can add more players if you prefer lively discussion. There is also a cooperative variant where a single team tries to achieve the highest score they can by playing against the game itself."
A FAKE ARTIST GOES TO NEW YORK
Number of players: 5-10
Playing time (ROUGH ESTIMATE): 20 mins
Description from BoardGameGeek:
"エセ芸術家ニューヨークへ行く – which is pronounced as "Ese Geijutsuka New York e Iku" and can be translated as Fake Artist Goes to New York – is a party game for 5-10 players. Players take turns being the Question Master, whose role is to set a category, write a word within that category on dry erase cards, and hand those out to other players as artists. At the same time, one player will have only an "X" written on his card. He is the fake artist!
Players will then go around the table twice, drawing one contiguous stroke each on a paper to draw the word established by the Question Master, then guess who the fake artist is. If the fake artist is not caught, both the fake artist and the Question Master earn points; if the fake artist is caught and cannot guess what the word is, the artists earn points."
FORBIDDEN DESERT
Number of players: 2-5
Playing time (ROUGH ESTIMATE): 45 mins
PANDEMIC
Number of players: 2-4
Playing time (ROUGH ESTIMATE): 45 mins
From BoardGameGeek:
"In Pandemic, several virulent diseases have broken out simultaneously all over the world! The players are disease-fighting specialists whose mission is to treat disease hotspots while researching cures for each of four plagues before they get out of hand.
The game board depicts several major population centers on Earth. On each turn, a player can use up to four actions to travel between cities, treat infected populaces, discover a cure, or build a research station. A deck of cards provides the players with these abilities, but sprinkled throughout this deck are Epidemic!cards that accelerate and intensify the diseases' activity. A second, separate deck of cards controls the "normal" spread of the infections.
Taking a unique role within the team, players must plan their strategy to mesh with their specialists' strengths in order to conquer the diseases. For example, the Operations Expert can build research stations which are needed to find cures for the diseases and which allow for greater mobility between cities; the Scientist needs only four cards of a particular disease to cure it instead of the normal five—but the diseases are spreading quickly and time is running out. If one or more diseases spreads beyond recovery or if too much time elapses, the players all lose. If they cure the four diseases, they all win!
The 2013 edition of Pandemic includes two new characters—the Contingency Planner and the Quarantine Specialist—not available in earlier editions of the game."
PICTIONARY
Number of players: Usually 2 teams of ~4 each, but do what feels right
Playing time (ROUGH ESTIMATE): 30 mins
Description from Amazon:
"Count on big laughs when you and your friends get together to find out who's an artist and who really isn't! In this quick-draw classic, the guesses can be just as hilarious as the sketches as you use markers to draw your best rendition of the clue on the card. You have one minute to convey what's on the card. Is it an animal? A person? An action? Just what is that word you're drawing?? If your team members just aren't getting it, try a different direction; you never know what kinds of clues might trigger the answer. You take turns drawing, so all players get to channel their inner artists! And the laughs just keep coming! Pictionary now includes two erasable markers, erasable boards for drawing, and an updated Pop Culture category of clues. Year after year since 1985, Pictionary has proven itself to be the ultimate party game!"