Other parents have told me that Pokemon is impossible to learn, annoying and expensive. Not true? I definitely want a real game, not a thing where you have to keep buying stuff...

Castle Panic and Castle Keep--I think I have these confused!

Magic the Gathering, Pokemon, YuGiOh are all theoretically expensive to keep at. It is possible to buy a starter set, but because these have a history and tournaments and 1000+ collectible cards involved and variations of rules and rule interpretations, it's messy.

The upside of that type of game (TCG,trading card games) is they have tournaments, places to play, people to play with, and offer the novelty (and additional statistical/strategic challenge) of designing your own deck to play with.

Have you looked at Dominion? It has a mechanic sort of like Magic the Gathering, but it does not require collecting cards. You have a randomly selected tableau of ten cards available, and everyone starts with the same deck and builds their own. There are lots of expansions available, but the base game is pretty fun by itself. You can get the base game for iPhone/iPad/Android pretty cheap, I believe, if you want to try it out.

We love Dominion at this house! However we have not started DS5 playing it yet. Hopefully soon.

For the mathy ones here you might want to check out Numbers League. It is a card game. There are villains and superheroes. You build your superhero so his/her "number" is equal to the villain's. It includes cards which use neg. numbers, mult., and division.

Thanks for the great lead on Dominion. I think I must get that.

numbers league is awesome - also available on the ipad - where its this fun spinner to pick your villains to challenge

We got a ton of free pokemon cards so we haven't spent any money - but since ours were free doubles from the cousins I can definitely see how expensive it can get.

DeHe

We don't have an iPad, iPhone, Android, etc.

I feel like DS may be inevitably booked on trading card games or something like D and D when he gets older, but that I don't NEED to intro it now. Next year he'll be able to start in chess club at school, which he's anticipating eagerly.

You can also play online at http://dominion.isotropic.com, but there are some killer players there, and also some mean people who will not be patient with newbies (as well as some total sweethearts, don't get me wrong). I wouldn't recommend it for a kid in general, but it's fun for grownups.

Even for gifted kids, I wouldn't try to get them to play Dominion before 7 or so - I think my daughter learned shortly before she turned 8, and that was about the right time. But it does sort of scratch the same itch as the collectible card games, and it's recent enough that not everyone knows about it already, so I thought I'd point it out. Like the CCGs, there are tons of tournaments, etc., around it.

DS11 loves The Whole Brain Game, and I love to hear the ideas she comes up with during the game! It is a card game for divergent creative thinking skills. Children have the advantage in this game, as they tend to be more flexible. For some adults, such as dad who was stressed out from work, it was too much, so we had to bend the rules and only give him easy questions.

The original list on this forum thread included the game Set, which I use in my SAT prep course because it trains the brain to pay attention to subtle differences and double check answers. Try it and see if you don't feel your brain starting to think differently. Besides, it is fun and anyone can play as it doesn't require reading.

BTW, thinking differently is good. As Mini USA says, normal has its advantages but normal can never be amazing!!

My DS7 loves Ticket To Ride and Agricola. Agricola can range from insainly hard to mind shattering hard. Lol