"Online gaming for 11-12 year-olds - simple suggestions?" Topic

Hi all,

I run a school wargaming club and have been asked to run a game each week for the ten children in the club. Using MS Teams, last week I ran a game of FFG's X-Wing (actualy, the hex-oriented 'Hex Wing' variant available on BGG), with each child controlling one fighter. I used a visualiser (camera) to display the setup (on my kitchen table), and each kid in turn told me their move, which I plotted.

One week soon, I will be unavailable to run the game, so wondered what alternative I could suggest to them. Might anyone please kindly suggest a *website* where the kids could go to play a strategy game of some kind, whether individually or in groups? Crucially, I don't want to recommend anything that would require the kids to *pay* or which would require them to *download any software* onto their PCs. Are there any such sites available, where you can play Risk or other similar games?

Also, does anyone have any simple suggestions for alternatives to X-Wing, which I could supervise via MS Teams and which could incorporate up to ten players?

Nothing complicated, please!

Thanks v.much in advance for any suggestions!

Www.conquerclub.com

Membership is free, and allows 4 simultaneous games,
Games are essentially Risk clones, but with a wide variety of maps, some historical wars or battles, some fanciful, and some completely bizarre. Has a few interesting optional features to shake up the standard rules.
Note that without a paid membership any game created is immediately open to all comers, so if you want to restrict play to specific members everyone needs to act fast to enter the new game. A paid membership can set up private games and invite others to participate, restricting the game to only the invitees.

Play is by turn, and the amount of time to make a move can be set by the creator of a game, so play can happen quickly, or a game could be allowed to continue for weeks or even month with 24 hour turns.

Caveat: It's an entirely open community, so game chat and global chat aren't constantly monitored. Occasionally some jerks and profane types will see what they can get away with in terms of language, insults, or provocative statements. (In other words, it's the Internet.) But overall that's rare, especially if you just log in to your games and play.

The game To the Strongest covers ancients and has an ECW variant. It uses a grid to regulate movement and shooting. For numbers it uses a deck of cards (minus the face cards). Combat is a simple hit then save type deal with units taking 1-3 hits before being eliminated. A load of fun and the grid would make it easy to manage. I have run games with 3/side easily. Not sure that would work for you if you need all players in a single game?

link

I recommend the Blue Max game and the Wooden Ships & Iron Men game.

Pluses are…

Free
Set up private games
Tournaments
Simple rules

As an alternative to X-wing might I suggest Panzer Kids:

link

The free basic version is very simple. The deluxe version includes advanced rules you can add incrementally depending on the situation and the ability of your students. I've run games with upwards of 8 kids of varying abilities (and as young as 6), each commanding one or two tanks in a British vs. German confrontation over a burning Tunisian village. I can imagine 10 kids would work, too. You could run it using top-down counters from juniorgeneral.org.

Let me know if you have any questions.

Griffon86
schweig@att.net

These are all great suggestions – thank you very mch, gents!