Crokinole

The Rule(TM):
Crokinole is basically head to head shuffleboard made really small. You flick your pucky things in an attempt to get to the center of the bullseye marked board. There's a dreadfully small hole to try to land a piece in in the center, about 2 mm larger than the pucks themselves. This is guarded, in our incredibly cheap board, by some little plastic pegs. You're only allowed to shoot from your quadrant of the board.

... but in Latin, Jehovah begins with an I ...

Sure, for Indy to get across the crumbling floor, he just has to know the name Jehovah. But, there's a monkey in this wrench. The one twist that makes it from simple to... much more.

Without The Rule(TM), Crokinole is a pretty stupid dex game.

The Rule(TM) introduces strategy and whole heap of dex skill to the mix.

That Rule(TM) is that your shot has to hit one of the opposing pieces.

So it's now a mix of shuffleboard and dozens of billiards variants.

The Theme:
Now you get these really truly devious strategies. Like planting your pieces right behind the little pegs if you can. Somehow it begins to feel like a miniatures game. Your dudes are rushing in to capture the objective, needing to strike an opponent, possibly killing him (off the board) and hopefully achieving a powerful tactical position, possibly behind other units or or taking cover behind pegs. Unfortunately, sometimes it happens that your dude pushes another dude into a better scoring position. TRAITOR! Often, you end up knocking the opponent as well as yourself off the field of battle.

If someone painted orcs and elves on these things and sold it through WalMart, it would have a chance to outsell Crossbows & Catapults.

Might I suggest that when playing with an eight year old boy, the first several rounds should be played while wearing protective lenses.

We played for about an hour. And the next night. 5 year old Cassie wandered in and she began to get excited with the game as well. She's able to make a lot of the closer shots, and the chaos of some of her shots ended in some truly impressive scores, as well as one yowling cat.

Recommended to:
You know, in all truth, unless you have a disability in your hands (not a joke), I really kind of think everyone should try this.

It has tactics, it has strategy, it has wild luck - but not truly random. Sure you're at the whims of Newton's Laws, and some shots occur that you really don't quite plan on, but it is indeed skill based. A slight adjustment of scoring rings (3/6/9 instead of 5/10/15) suddenly handicaps players to allow uneven skills to compete.

There's an interesting scoring rule, where you only score the difference between player's scores, and first to 100 wins. Sure, you can do that, or a few rounds, or whatever.

Dex games are great games at parties. Just introduce The Rule (TM) and people very easily figure out the subtleties of what shots to attempt and which ones are practically required to win a round.

Its got great "take that" mechanics, lots of hootin and hollerin and general boatloads of fun.

We have been having a blast, even on our stupid lousy board. You certainly don't need to spend buckets of cash to play. Is it better on a hand crafted super duper board? Probably. But you don't need to.

TLDR: Shuffleboard, Pool, and Darts hybrid that fits on your table.