I am so out of my depth that I need to ask for help.

Essentially, I'm seeing a girl. It's looking serious. Given it's Xmas, I've got her a few things but thought it'd be nice to get something for her family. I was looking at maybe Cranium or Rapidough but they need four players. There's only five in the family - 4 kids and one parent, and one parent and one kid are going away over Xmas.

Soooo...what do you suggest as a game for 2-4 players? Don't want to go for the usual Cluedo/Monopoly stuff.

My all-time favourite board game is Squatter (The Australian Sheep Farming Game). It's a sort of Monopoly but with sheep farms and instead of houses and hotels it has hundreds a tiny plastic sheep. Can be quite hard to find in this country, but I'm sure you can track down a copy if you look.

Jungle Speed. It's a snap like card game with direction changes etc and a Totem in the middle which one must grab before the other person can. Great fun for the kids when they realise the adults are maybe slightly worse for wear and not as quick as they would like.

Find one of the Fluxx games that's in a theme they might like.

You can always get recommendations from Boardgamegeek

We got Gnummies earlier in the year, card game, which is fun. Phase 10 is also good fun and quick to learn.

Sanssouci, which is a board game about scoring points for making a garden. Sanssouci is the German equivalent of the Palace of Versailles, so I don't know if it will have a different name in England.

Metro is a great game, based around the Paris Metro, you have to make underground tracks between your stations, but you make tracks for everybody at the same time, the trick is to try and make their runs as short as possible, whilst making yours as long as possible. Great family fun for 2 to 6 players.

The really nasty racing game. Its a f1 type game where you deliberately try and cripple the other player's. Its hilarious

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The really nasty horse racing game is the original and best. 2-6 players, but best with 6.

How about Settlers of Catan?

I don't think 5 is enough to play Werewolves of Millers Hollow. Plus that isn't technically a board game. Good for parties though.

It may well be a bit much for a first board game, but Arkham Horror is a phenomenally good game. There's a also a kind of very light version of it called Elder Sign which you can even play solo, so will be fine with 2-3. They're both team co-op games as well if competitive games are likely to cause rifts in the family.

Also, the Munchkin series.

Zombiecide - http://guillotinegames.com/en/

Yep, I was also going to mention Settlers, bit forgot. I'm glad somebody else thought of it.

Wil Wheaton has a series on YouTube where he plays board games with people. Worth a look if you are after ideas.
http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL4F80C7D2DC8D9B6C

Cranium is a very good choice. I own the Cranium advanced (the black box) and it's great. very good ice breaker too. My parents have the original and it's also rather hilarious
+1000.

Thought about cranium but you need a min of 4 players and at the moment this will be a family of three over the xmas period. Want something that'll work as well with three players as it will with four.

Yes, it's played in teams.