Looking for a good minis game to play with my son. We currently play Heroscape and love it. I'm looking for something to change things up from the regular Heroscape sessions. My son is 8 years old, has anyone had success or otherwise with their young gamers?

sapender said:

my son turns 8 in June and he's grasped the grasped the basic concepts really well.

My boys are 7 and get the movement and basics but I help them with the weapon lines.

I play with my daughters 19 and 16 and my son 14,My kids got me the revised core set for X-mas this year!,so you can say my kids got me into Dust…lol

I play with my 4 year-old son (with simplified rules, of course).

I play x-wing with my 6 year old using the quick start rules. He loves Star Wars so enjoys it and it the rules are simple enough for him ( and me) to have fun. We also play Dungeon which is brilliant for that age group (not a minis game though!). Not tried Dust as I buy premiums and they can't help but be rough (fair enough he's 6 and they are cool). I was thinking of buying the core set unpainted to play with him, interesting to read how others get on.

I play with my 6 year old son (started when he was 5). He knows all the rules and can do the math of figuring out how many dice to roll. He loves the zombies with a hero: 24 dice.

That being said he does not like to compete so we "play together" against "the computer". We follow the rules and don't modify dice rolls but the "computer" sometimes makes pretty dumb decisions.

Our last game he added some of his toys that he painted as SSU units and we made up armor levels, hit points and weapons for them. When I (and sometimes my wife paints) he has been painting some cheap army toys as well.

Its been great for us. Last night I just ordered the book for Dystopian Wars and I would like to get into something like that as well with him. He loves Crimson Steam Pirates on the iPad and he draws ships and also likes to play on the floor with his drawings.

We also play Lego Heroica but we play that co-operative as well as a party. He sometimes wants to be the bad guys and "defend' the dark druid from the "heroes". Heroica is fun because we play that with my wife as well who is not a gamer. Because he likes cooperative games I ordered "Flash Point: Fire Rescue" which is another great game with the family or with friends (young or old). My board gaming has come back in the last 2 years and I want to keep ordering more and more games.

Well thats my story.

Sweet! I have a 5 year old at home and looking at adding this game to our repertoire.

Any tips that you can provide on how to make this a more collaborative experience (he always wants to be on my team ), would be greatly appreciated.

@El_Capitan

My son also likes to be on my team so we play together against the computer. We both control our team and the other team. At key moments the "computer" may make some dumb decisions so we can attack instead of being wiped out. He knows all the rules and helps out when friends come over to play, especially when they are new to the game.

One piece of "parent talk" that I got from a friend who wrote a parenting book: ask you kids at the beginning of the game "do you want to win or do you want to play for real/follow the rules". This is great for us because it gets the anxiety and unknowing out of the equation of how the child is going to react to things.

On the painting side, he has been saving his allowance for quite a while and has decided to buy some squads and even the SSU tank and attack helicopter so he could paint them. Mine are still sitting in boxes as I don't have enough SSU yet to field an army (on the way from Book Depository). He has painted up 2 squads, the tank and yesterday morning the helicopter.

Enjoy the gaming