Thomas... slow down already.

The Thomas The Tank Engine games over at Briarpatch got us excited. Connor is slowly becoming a huge Thomas fan and I am a huge board game fan so between the two of us I knew we had to add one to our collection. So when Thomas Great Race Game arrived from Briarpatch I was pretty excited. Connor is still a bit too young to play but thankfully I have an endless supply of willing board game players here and I have to say of all the board games we have tried out this year this particular game looked a bit boring from the outside to me, and I have to tell you it totally surprised me as being my favorite game of the year from an educational value and just plain good fun all in one.

Thomas Great Race comes with two plastic board pieces that snaps together in the middle forming a hill that the tanks must race up. The board will allow anywhere from two to four players and the engines are color coded. Once you have decided how many are playing you just slide the tanks into the track before you put the two pieces of the board together and your ready to rock. The players are given cards which have questions on one side and the answers on the other, no peeking! The cards show a picture on one side with a simple question such as "How many yellow tracks are there?" The card will have a picture of four tracks and in this case there are two yellow tracks, the player then names how many yellow tracks there are before turning the card over to see if they are correct. If the number the player says matches the number on the back of the card (Its always anywhere from one to three so the number skills are pretty basic.) then the player then is allowed to insert "coal" a tile with the same number as the answer into the board under their train. These tiles then are what moves the train to the finish line. That alone was one of the coolest features of the game if you ask me as I can't tell you how many times we have had arguments here over who accidentally moved who's piece where or if the players moved the correct number of spaces. Pretty much other than answering the questions and inserting the correct tile the trains on Thomas Great Race move themselves.

I love the fact that the game makes the players use basic counting, colors, and number skills to play but its not so hard that a preschooler can't handle it if they have at least minimal reading skills or have a parent to read them the questions. Connor is getting pretty good with his colors so hopefully by this time next year we will be playing together. Actually the only unfair part about the game is that if a parent is playing a child obviously the parent has an unfair advantage by being able to answer all the card correctly, but with that said depending on the luck of the draw of cards anyone can win as one person could draw all three cards and the other could draw all one cards and if the player with the larger cards answers correctly they will move faster than the other. So even unevenly matched players in skill still end up battling it out with the luck of the draw as much as they do having to worry about correct answers.

Briarpatch is one of our favorite game makers and I highly recommend you go over and check out their entire collection of games including Thomas Great Race.

Briarpatch has been cool enough to give us one copy of Thomas Great Race to give away to one lucky reader.

To enter :

• Leave a comment on this post. Check out Briarpatch's selection of games and tell me what is your favorite board game or card game they offer.
• Make sure there is a way for me to contact you - if your email address is not on your profile or you are not a blogger you may leave it in your comment or email it to me directly (angelaandconnor at gmail dot com) We have had to disqualify a lot of potential winners as of late as many people do not have emails available in their profiles or leave anonymous posts without any way to contact you.
• Please US entries only.
• To get extra credit :
  • For an extra entry :
  • Bloggers - Blog about this contest and leave me the link on your comment, or add me to your sidebar and let me know its there.
  • Non Bloggers (or bloggers) subscribe to my mailing list/RSS feed and earn another entry!
  • One extra credit per person. Please post your extra credit in a separate post.
  • This contest will end Jan 15th at midnight!