Shall we discuss? JAMAICA

Michael Barnes wrote: There are "better games to play"? Huh? Classic German games/Euro family games are just as good and sometimes better than anything else.

Up the River is about as classic as they come. Capt'n Clever is definitely a German Family game.

Jamaica does the euro version of that Fantasy Flight thing that you hate. It's from that same period in game design where designers added another layer of crap or another mechanic to games to make the randomness more opaque, and make the players feel as if they have "meaningful choices." Jamaica has the ever popular "replace the dice with a hand of cards" thing. It's not horrible, it just feels like what might have originally been a lively family game got weighted down during development to have the appropriate dignitas and gravitas of eurogames of that period.

Seriously, take a look at Capt'n Clever to play with the kids. One of the great things about it is it is easy to control the length of the game and to handicap it by changing the number of treasures each player needs to collect to win. Plus, like TransAmerica and Cartagena, it pushes the planning and prediction envelope for 6-8 year olds and therefore allows cognitive modeling.

Read the rules to Up the River before you buy it. It is actually kind of like Thunderroad but without PVP. There is screwage and dumping boats off the last tile. This makes some kids cry.

If you are just looking for a great game to play with the kids, and aren't specifically looking for a pirate game or a race game, get A La Carte. Brilliant fun game. Great high quality, absolutely adorable production. Easy enough for a 4 year old to play with a few rules tweaks. Cool enough that The Spawn plays it with her high school friends.

A La Carte was re-released by FFG just a couple of years ago, but seems like it may be close to going out of stock (I was hunting for the expansion which I lost in the fire and noticed that neither the game or expansion is in-stock at most of the usual places). So I'd jump on it now. You can get it for about $35 new. Don't know what the used or trade market is like.