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Action Games Ice Breakers

Giants, Wizards, and Elves

Summary: An icebreaker / action oriented game good for medium and large sized groups.  Similar to a game of rock, paper, scissors, two teams face off and decide to become either “giants,” “wizards,” or “elves.” Giants defeat elves, elves defeat wizards, and wizards defeat giants.

Ages: 10 and up.  Recommended # of People: 20 and up (large groups work fine too!).  Messiness factor: Might break a small sweat!  Materials Required: None.  Recommended Setting: Indoors or Outdoors.

Giants, Wizards, & Elves

Giants, Wizards, and Elves is a fun, silly icebreaker game that is a good way to break the ice at meetings or in classrooms. It’s a simple game based on the classic game of rock, paper, scissors.
Setup
Teach everyone how to become three characters: the giant, the wizard, and the elf.  Each character features hand motions and a noise.
  • For the giant, each person stands on their tippy toes, lifts up their arms, and makes an angry growling noise: “Roooar!”
  • For the wizard, each person crouches a little bit, flutters their fingers as though they are casting a spell, and they make a magical noise: “Woooo!”
  • For the elf, each person gets down very low on their knees, cups their hands around their ears, and makes a high pitched elf noise: “Eeeeee!”

Practice each motion together a few times.  Divide everyone into two teams and have them separate into opposite sides of the room. The game invovles several rounds.  For each round, the following takes place:

  1. Each team forms a huddle and decides to become a giant, wizard, or elf.
  2. Both teams then line up and face each other, about 5 feet apart.
  3. The facilitator says “3..2..1..Go!”
  4. Each team acts out the giant, wizard, or elf (whatever they decided to become).
  5. As soon as they act out their character, the winner tries to grab the loser and pulls as many people over to their side as they can.  The loser tries to run away, back to their side, in order to be safe.  The winner of each round is determined by the following.The giant defeats the elf because giants “squash” elves.
    Elves defeat wizards by outsmarting them, chewing at their legs.
    The wizard defeats the giant by “zapping” them with a magic spell.
    Identical characters are a draw (no one wins).This process keeps repeating for multiple rounds until one team is entirely consumed (or when time runs out.)

Variations

Other variations of this game exist – or you can make up your own.  Be creative!

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