It’s Tuesday, and so I’m here to talk geeky nerdy things to do with gaming, and also outside the weather is frightful—which is to say, it’s snowed. Ottawa is like that, sometimes it snows early and just stays and I think that’s the winter we’re going to have, and as such, it put me in the mind for the upcoming holidays, and how much I like to tuck a game or two under the tree—but also in the stockings.

Which isn’t always as easy.

I should note our stockings aren’t tiny, but I don’t think they’re huge. Here are three card-based games I’ve managed to fit in them over the years that have turned out to be winners.

Timeline—One of the first games I always think of—and check to see if there are any new expansions thereof—is Timeline. One year for the holidays, I tucked Timeline Canada into the stockings of each of the couples and it turned out it had more than just the benefit of being small enough to wrap for a stocking going for it. The other thing it did well as be super-quick to explain and easy to play for anyone, even those who don’t normally play a lot of game, and we ended up playing it a couple of times on Christmas Day.

The idea behind Timeline is deceptively simple: you each get a number of cards with events on them—you might end up with The Invention of Radio, The Discovery of Antarctica, and The Birth of Cleopatra, say—and in the centre, the dealer flips up a single card. It could be anything, an invention, a discovery, an event, like: The Domestication of Bees. Your job is to put your card before or after that card to begin to create a timeline. Once you place your card (before it or after it) both are flipped, and the dates are revealed, and if you were wrong, you discard your wrong card and draw a new one to place next time it’s your turn, and if you’re right it’s added to the ongoing timeline. As the game progresses, it gets more and more difficult to drop a card between the cards already in play with the precision you need, and even if you lose, it’s always fun to learn that the thing you placed in the 1900s actually happened in the 1600s. Who knew? The first person to play all their cards wins, and that’s it. Simple, educational, but also fun.

What’s great about Timeline as well as if it’s a hit one year, you can nab the expansions thereafter. The base game has a bunch of expansions—Inventions, Events, Science & Discoveries, Music & Cinema, Canada—and you just add all the cards together (or keep them separate, it’s up to you) to add to the complexity of the game.

Sushi Go!—Another fun game that comes in a small enough tin to pop into a stocking is Sushi Go! It’s a set-building card game played over multiple rounds where you pass cards around while keeping some and the way the game plays and scores is simple, but contains just enough complexity to be interesting to those who are way, way more into considering all the options and permutations than I am.

But what’s great is, if you’re not like that, it’s still fun, because you can just try to do the best with what comes your way, the cute cards are adorable, and honestly, who doesn’t want to see how many puddings they can get before the game is over?

This one also lands as particularly kid-friendly in that regard as well: as I said, it’s still fun to play when you’re not really strategizing what’s going on with other people’s hands and the hands you’ve sent forward (some of which will eventually get back to you)—my games with younger folk have always seen them just as engaged playing “what can I do with what’s right in front of me?” Also, kid logic is fun to watch play out: “I just like nagiri!” can be a sound as sound a strategy as anything else, frankly.

Joking Hazard—Okay, so I need to caveat this one with a very, very clear caution that you should only gift this to someone with a truly bent sense of humour, but the game is basically a series of panels from a Cyanide and Happiness strip, only you’re arranging it to taste. Most of the time, the judge will lay two cards and ask you to place a third to create a strip; sometimes the draw will make it so you have to place two out of the three.

Whoever makes the judge laugh loudest wins the round. And that’s it. I cannot tell you, however, how truly inappropriate and dark some of these strips end up turning out, and watching people say, “Okay, don’t judge me,” as they place a card is the best.

(Also, you’ll judge them.)

I once took this game with me to a writer’s retreat with a bunch of romance authors, and my stomach was aching the next morning from the laughter, and I think most of the players wrote down what the game was called to get it for themselves.

There are also blank cards where Green and Blue are speaking but there’s space for you to write in whatever you’d like—I’m not sure if I got those from backing the original Kickstarter or not—but every time I play the game with a new group of people, I end up writing something someone said as one of the blank cards, and it’s a nice way to remember past games.

What are your go-to small-box, could-fit-in-a-stocking games? Hit me with your faves.