Drinking Games for Your Man Cave Night In
We’ve all been there. The night has just begun and everyone’s still sober, but nobody wants to be. Sure, you could just crack open a few cans and get started, but where’s the fun in that? So instead, you could whip out a few drinking games and get drunk quicker and funner. All while proving nobody’s quite as good at games as you are!
However, the games you choose are almost as important as the drinking part itself. After all, the idea is to add entertainment to the drinking! Fortunately, we’ve got some excellent drinking games for you that will get everyone in the mood on the night.
Drinking Board Games
One of the best ways to get the drinking games started is with a variation on one of the classics! Our favourite out of the bunch has to be battleships, and its counterpart battleshots! You can either buy a dedicated battleshots board game (they now exist), or buy the classic version and add your own rules.
Either way, the object of the game is pretty simple. Sink your opponent’s ships and make them take a shot every time you do! Of course, if you’re feeling hardcore you could up that to a shot every time you hit their ship. However, we prefer to keep those rules for team games only.
You can use various strategies when playing battleships, and with so much on the line, it might be worth hearing a few tips! The best advice we can give you here is simply don’t clump all your ships together! There’s been no shortage of players trying this strategy in our cave.
However, as soon as one ship gets hit it can lead to a lot of shots in a short amount of time! The problem with this strategy is that when they make their second guess, it can easily hit a second ship instead of sinking your current one. This usually lets them know exactly what you’re doing, and what seemed like a great idea at first soon leads to feelings of regret. So space them out!
Shots and Ladders
Turning snakes and ladders into a drinking game is another great way to get the night started. What we enjoy about this drinking game is the randomness. There’s absolutely no skill involved here, just random events. So anyone can become the victim or hero of this game!
Again, you can now buy shots and ladder the game if you want to jump straight into the action. However, we’d highly recommend making your own version. All you need is pen and paper, plus a few shot glasses. Maybe even some chips to use as player pieces over shot glasses.
The reason for this is you can customise the game to your liking. In our man cave we’ve drawn up a few boards to play on, and then laminated them for use time and time again. Each version has a different ‘difficulty’ level with their own unique punishments and rewards. Along with the snakes and ladders, a few of the board squares we’d recommend adding include:
- Take a shot(or double)
- Give a shot
- Add a shot to the dirty glass
- Down the dirty glass
- Everyone takes a shot
These are some of the basic forfeits worth adding. However, as time goes on you’ll know better than us what your group can handle!
Man Cave Drinking Games
Even some of the bigger items in your man cave are excellent tools for creating drinking games. If you’ve invested in a dartboard, this is one of the better games to base drinking around. Admittedly, we’d have to say this is better for the start of the night rather than the end. When the alcohol starts to kick in and players start to miss the board, sure it’s great for making them drink, but it can also have devastating consequences for your wall. So that’s worth taking into consideration.
The first darts-based drinking game is clock! This game is pretty simple. Start by aiming for number 1, when you hit that, move to number 2 etc. until all 20 numbers are hit. The interesting part is how you implement the drinking rules. These should change depending on the skill level of the players involved. However, with that said, here are a few of the ways we’d recommend implementing drinks:
- Miss a number with all three darts
- Hit three numbers with three darts
- Hitting the treble or double of a number
Which forfeits you choose should reflect the skill of the players involved. For example, if you’re all seasoned pros then hitting the double would make more sense. Either way, this is a great choice as it can have unlimited players getting everyone involved.
Another way to get more use out of the dartboard is to play the replication game! The idea of this game is simple. One player throws a dart to set the marker, and everyone else has to replicate it. If the marker hits double 15, then everyone has to try to hit double 15! If it’s a single 6, then everyone must follow all the same. Anyone who hits their target is through to the next round safe. Everyone who misses must take a shot and are either out or lose a life!
Pool Table Drinking Games
Another fantastic place to get drinking games is the pool table! Similar to the dartboard, pool tables are fantastic because there’s no limit to the number of players that can play. It’s also just as fun to play when everyone’s drunk as they are sober. Sometimes even more so actually!
The easiest drinking game we’d recommend here is three strikes and you’re out. Everybody starts with three lives and the table is racked. The player who breaks gets two shots (unless they pot with the break), and everyone else gets one. You can pot any ball except the black (which gets potted at the end). If you pot a ball it goes to the next player and nothing happens. If you miss you take a shot and lose a life! If you lose all three lives you’re out and must finish your drink! Last man standing wins. As a little side note, when all the balls are potted simply re-rack the table and continue.
A trick shot drinking game is another fun one to play when you have smaller numbers. This also requires a bit more imagination than the rest. Here you want to set the table up so that a trick shot must be hit to pot the ball. That could be a forced bounce off a side cushion before hitting your target, or bending the white around another first. Whatever trick shot you go for, the rules are simple. First person to make the shot nominates a drinker. If another player has a shot in hand they’re given a chance to match it. Simple but a lot of fun!
Card Drinking Games
If you’d rather keep things simple then there’s no shortage of drinking games you can play with a deck of cards. If you’ve got a card shuffler at hand, even better! Now you don’t have to worry about getting too drunk and having cards fly all over the place before each game starts.
The game we think everyone has to know about though is beeramid. This is a game that involves luck, strategy, and a lot of bluffing! To play this game you first need to lay out 15 cards in a pyramid shape face down(one at the top, five at the bottom), and deal each player four cards. Then you want to flip the first card over(at the top), and this is when the fun begins.
Any player with the same value card as the one turned over can declare they have it and nominate someone to drink. The lower down in the pyramid the flipped card is, the longer the nominated player has to drink. Moreover, if a player declares they have multiple cards, then the length of time is multiplied by the number of cards declared. So if a 5 was flipped over and a player declared they had two, then the length of drinking time is multiplied by two.
It’s not all doom and gloom for the nominated drinker here though. They have two choices. They can either accept the declaration and take the drinks. Alternatively, they can call the nominator out, and if they can’t produce the cards they claimed they had, then they have to drink instead!
Beer Pong
No suggestion list would be complete without the inclusion of the ultimate drinking game: Beer Pong! This is one game that needs no introduction. Each player has around 6 cups, half filled with water and placed at either end of a table like our personalised beer pong table!
This game couldn’t be any simpler. Take a ping pong ball and throw it from your side of the table to their cups. If you land the ball in one of the cups, remove it from the table and your opponent takes a drink. The first person to remove all their opponents’ cups wins the game!
The big tip we have for everyone playing this one is to fill the cups with water and not beer! For starters, it makes the game far easier to set back up when finished. Secondly, it means you won’t be drinking all the dirt the ball collects when it lands on the floor!
Conclusion
Overall, we find it’s best to have a nice mix of drinking games available to play. This prevents any one particular game from getting stale, and stops nights at the man cave feeling quite samey. If you’re competitive enough, you can pretty much turn any game into a drinking game. However, these eight games are a great starting point for anyone hosting their own drinking night in the man cave!
