Twelve Years a Slave

My favorite reviews to do are the ones that discuss why I feel the way I do about a movie. I think there's more of a point if I'm challenged by the process of dissecting what I liked or didn't. This isn't one of those reviews. I'm not writing because I have anything unique to say. I'm writing because I feel an obligation to just plain praise this movie. 12 Years a Slave is one of the best movies I've seen. It's powerful, uncomfortable, gripping, horrifying, and has zero body fat.

There's a sort of historical subgenre that's coalesced in the last 20 years or so that a friend of mine calls White Guilt Porn. White guilt is itself a somewhat misunderstood phenomenon/problem, but White Guilt Porn's goal is to manipulate white people into feeling guilty about American slavery and racism so that they're emotionally moved by a movie. It also gives a false impression that we've overcome racism by making us feel less racist than the racists in the movie, who are always caricatures. The Help (a movie I liked in spite of itself) had this problem in a big way. Remember the Titans was one of the first I recall seeing. Even Amistad and Lincoln, pretty good movies about white people defending black people, had a few tablespoons of White Guilt Porn thrown in. 12 Years a Slave leaves these films in the dust because it lacks the main ingredient of the White Guilt Porn subgenre. Its intended audience doesn't exclude black people.

You see, the four movies I mentioned aren't about black characters. They have black characters in them, but those characters largely function to give the white characters an objective. The black characters tend not to accomplish much beyond walking through doors white people open for them. This is purposeful on the part of the producers.

Another purposeful tactic is that in these movies, you can immediately name who's a racist and who's not--good guys and bad guys. They consciously avoid confronting the reality that racists are people. They're us. Most of us are still racist (some more than others), even after seeing these movies. We don't change by watching them, because we never look at Bryce Dallas Howard eating poop and see ourselves. We're comforted by the clear message that we're more like Emma Stone.

My point is that 12 Years a Slave doesn't pander to white people. They're invited to the party, don't get me wrong, but this is a story about a black man overcoming something appalling and becoming a different person. The racists in it are incredibly human. They're played with immense subtlety and devotion by Michael Fassbender, Benedict Cumberbatch, Garrett Dillahunt, and Paul Giamatti to name my favorites. I particularly appreciate the Benedict Cumberbatch character because he means well, and he saves Solomon's life, but in the end he just isn't willing to confront the fact that he's doing something wrong. He's us.

But no one overshadows Chiwetel Ejiofor, and that's good. The movie relies on him and it pays off. He's vulnerable but voracious, titanic but subtle. I just want to kiss him and Steve McQueen on the mouth for this movie. What they put us through is tough to swallow. There are very few things that can make me wince, but I found myself cringing over and over because I loved these people and almost couldn't believe what they were going through. And what we see in the movie isn't exaggerated or explicit. It's tamer than a lot of slavery horror stories out there. But the honesty is so palpable it hurts--more than if it had embellished.

Stepping back from the heart of the material, this is also a beautifully built film. It's stripped down. It's never haphazard, accidental, or overcompensating. It makes Lincoln look like a Disneyland commercial. Hanz Zimmer shows that he's still got it. His score does so much with so little that you almost forget the sound and fury that signified nothing in Inception. And the screenplay is, no disrespect to Tony Kushner, the best 19th century American dialogue I've ever heard. It's poetic, it's meaty, it's raw. All of that at the same time. Win, John Ridley. Win.

Go see 12 Years a Slave--especially if you're white, because this one wasn't served up just for you.

Thor Could Have Been Mighty Bad

I was pretty lukewarm on the artistic merit of Kenneth Branagh's Thor. The script was okay, the acting was good enough, and the production design erred on the side of the 90s. Ken's camerawork is almost always shallow, and I think Thor is probably his worst showing yet in that department. Watch it and tally the number of times he uses dutch tilt--it's in the hundreds. On the other hand, I love it, because I have a massive soft spot for the character Thor. So here's hoping I'm not too biased talking about the sequel.

Thor: The Dark World has already grossed more in its opening weekend than the first film has to date, so maybe I'm not alone in thoroughly enjoying it. I disagreed with some reviewers who found the first hour to be slow, others who said humor saved the movie, or Roger Ebert's comment that it was visually a "step back from Thor." More than anything else, I left thinking, "This movie could have been so bad."

Think about it--it's a superhero movie set in space, on a pseudo-Medieval fantasy world with science fiction technology. The hero goes to Earth and participates in a contemporary comedy, then plans a heist, runs a blockade by winning an X-Wing dogfight, resolves a royal family drama, and then battles to save Earth from invading aliens. This is eight movies, not one. If you thought Krull was artistically torn between ripping off Star Wars and Lord of the Rings, this is like that with additional helpings of The Great Escape, Meet the Parents, Superman, The Tudors, and Independence Day.

Miraculously, it's pretty engrossing. I think the movie carves a dangerous but ultimately successful path through all these genres. Regular HBO director and Game of Thrones helmer Alan Taylor knows his priorities. Character comes first here. That's why, as some people bemoaned, the first hour of the movie is spent setting up for the payoffs during the second hour. It's basic storytelling. How ADD are we that we can't handle a little exposition? At least Taylor does what Spielberg and Scorsese can't bring themselves to do--he tells a story in 2 hours.

Taylor's also put a masterful touch on Asgard. Its people are rich and textured, finally given the attention needed to make them feel real. Branagh's Thor basically ignores the existence of a local population. We don't see many details of how this society might actually function, or who comprises it. In Thor: The Dark World, we visit pubs, prisons, battlefields, and get a little view of the other people in the Nine Realms. There are all sorts of interesting artifacts peppered in various shots that add depth and nuance to the world.

Ooooh, we're Vikings now.

And the acting's good. Natalie Portman plays a more defined and believable Jane Foster this time around. Her romance with Thor is, ironically, a little less predetermined in the sequel, which I liked. Branagh kind of accidentally sells women short in some of his movies, and I thought both Ms. Portman and Kat Dennings did much better under a director who believes that women have value outside of sexuality. Tom Hiddleston manages to breathe vital life into the movie without upstaging the Thor-Jane relationship. Anthony Hopkins, who had some great moments in the first movie, was going through the motions a little bit here, which is too bad. Chris Hemsworth delivers as Thor. He's settled into the character since his first go, so that's nice. To be fair, though, the most challenging part of his role is maintaining his physique.

Most Improved goes to the script. The story's tight, coherent, and has a balanced pace. It's funny but not too funny, dark but not too dark, and manages to play the characters for everything they're worth. Loki's at his most devious, but also his most vulnerable. That was a very satisfying arc, aided by some last-minute scene additions at the end of post-production. I loved seeing him and Thor try to figure out what their relationship is post-Avengers. Sure, Chris Eccleston's Malekith is a simple if forgettable villain, but I thought the way in which his threat presented itself both visually and mechanically was more than gratifying. There's a fight sequence toward the end that's particularly inventive.

Why are the reviews mixed? My guess is that critics went in expecting The Dark World to be another generic sci-fi blockbuster like the poor showing we had this past summer. And, to some degree, there's no escaping that. It's a save-the-world story. We've had enough of those for one year. But what this has more than Pacific Rim or Man of Steel or Star Trek: Into Darkness is heart, nuance, and women that aren't objects. I'd put it up against any of the summer blockbusters, and against most of Marvel Studios' "phase one" films.

Pulp Fiction

I don't read much new fiction. Not that there isn't decent writing being published, there's just something special about reading something truly original. I like finding work that invented the tropes and cliches. In hindsight, this pursuit explains all of my phases of interest from pretty early on. It started with comic books and Shakespeare, then turned into an irrational Tolkien obsession, then a diligent foray into mythology and Norse sagas, and in more recent years it's introduced me to the pulps.

The influence of pulp fiction--not the Tarrantino movie, which oddly has nothing to do with actual pulp fiction--is everywhere, and it's a pretty bizarre phenomenon. When you realize the extent to which Hollywood movies, virtually all serial television, and most mainstream fiction are indebted to the pulps, it sort of changes your perspective on everything.

Here's the gist: from the 1890s to the 1950s, the only cheap fiction to get a hold of was published in the form of flimsy magazines with horribly sensationalist cover art. Most of them followed a detective, cowboy, or other hero through an adventure-of-the-month. They were usually the length of a short story or novella, told in a few pages every issue. Basically they were the Victorian equivalent of Clive Cussler or Dan Brown novels, but these were being written at a time when the genres were still in the process of conception.

Some of these genres were flat-out invented by pulp writers--hard boiled detective stories, super-heroes, sword and sorcery, and weird fiction (my favorite), to name a few. Their influence was even more far-reaching. Without them, film noir wouldn't have existed, and comic books, fantasy, and science fiction would be unrecognizable. Because they were often published in pieces, and authors centered their stories around a single character like Flash Gordon, Tarzan, or Buck Rogers, the pulps basically invented serial and episodic fiction as we know it.

There are three guys among the larger roster of pulp writers that I want to recommend: H.P. Lovecraft, Raymond Chandler, and Robert E. Howard. Each of these three changed the world in his own way, and interestingly they all struggled with some deeply seated emotional issues.

I'm including links to the text of my favorites. A great perk of reading pulp fiction is that the bulk of the good stuff is available online, since most of the magazine publishers neglected to renew the copyright within 28 years of publication.

H.P. Lovecraft

This guy is a master. He has one of the most unique and influential styles of any horror or science fiction writer. Stephen King bows to this guy as the father of the American horror genre. He's like Poe with a dash of modernity and a heavy helping of insane sauce. I personally think he invented the psychological thriller. Not everything he wrote is gold (especially the stuff published after his death), but he wrote five that will keep you up at night.

The Call of Cthulhu

Definitely his most popular, this is a short novella wherein a researcher walks you through the manuscript of notes he found in his dead uncle's estate. The notes involve several stories of a secret cult and the strange experiences that surround people's interactions with them. The evidence escalates in magnitude and credulity until the final showdown with the cult and the object of its worship.

Read it here.

The Shadow Over Innsmouth

Another cult story, this 70-page ditty is a long suicide note of a tourist who gets stuck in a fascinating but dangerous village in southern Massachusetts. He discovers its disturbing history and evades a midnight mobbing, only to find afterwards that he'll never truly escape the terror that rules over the villagers.

Read it here.

The Dunwich Horror

In this story, something horrifying is living at the Whately family's farmhouse, and a professor of the occult races the clock to stop their son Wilbur from unleashing it on the village of Dunwich.

Read it here.

The Rats in the Walls

There's nothing quite like this story's mad climax, when a man renovating his ancestral castle discovers something obscene beneath its foundations. This is probably Lovecraft's creepiest story, and the first one I ever read.

Read it here.

At the Mountains of Madness

If you've seen John Carpenter's The Thing, this story will feel familiar. It tracks the efforts of an antarctic explorer who's sent to investigate the disappearance of his science team, and his desperate struggle to survive what they uncovered. There was some talk about a movie adaptation by Guillermo Del Toro, but I think it's stuck in development hell.

Read it here.

Raymond Chandler

Of these three authors, Raymond Chandler was the only one who saw significant success during his life, and that was in all likelihood because his chosen genre was more established and mainstream. He wrote detective stories, but his were a new breed. He and Dashiell Hammett are credited as fathering the "hard-boiled" subgenre of detective stories, which eventually became the basis for film noir. Humphrey Bogart played Chandler's anti-hero--the L.A. private detective Philip Marlowe--twice on film.

Chandler was nominated for several Oscars for his screenplays, and has some of the snappiest dialogue you'll ever read. His trick was that he didn't rely on plot to carry the story. He worked the plot around what made captivating scenes. Genius. I can't get enough. Here are my three favorites.

The Big Sleep

This is the first Philip Marlowe novel. He's a private eye hired to get his hands on some incriminating photos of a General's daughter. Sounds simple. Things get crazy. It's all set in an L.A. cesspool where no one's up to good. It's a great first novel, and he wrote it because he got laid off by an oil company.

Read it here.

Red Wind

Mr. Marlowe here witnesses a murder by dumb luck while he's sipping a beer in a cocktail lounge. The plot continues to thicken right up to the end. This one's short, which is why I like it. It's efficient and entertaining. Here's the opening paragraph:

There was a desert wind blowing that night. It was one of those hot dry Santa Anas that come down through the mountain passes and curl your hair and make your nerves jump and your skin itch. On nights like that every booze party ends in a fight. Meek little wives feel the edge of the carving knife and study their husbands' necks. Anything can happen. You can even get a full glass of beer at a cocktail lounge.

Read it here.

The Long Goodbye

This isn't strictly a pulp publication, but it's so good I had to put in on here. Philip Marlowe helps a friend get out of L.A., and refuses to get any details about why the guy's running. The act of friendship lands him in the middle of a murder investigation and a web of intrigue. It has autobiographical elements, which is partly why it's so gripping.

Read it here.

Robert E. Howard

You may laugh, but Conan the Barbarian is just a great character. Whether he's performing a solo heist on an evil cult's lair, bedding beautiful queens, or just killing sorcerers (what he does best)--women want him, and men want to be him.

If you've ever read a fantasy novel published after 1950, chances are it was heavily influenced by either Robert E. Howard or J.R.R. Tolkien. Tolkien himself reportedly "quite liked" the Conan stories, which is weighty praise. There's an argument to be made that Howard influenced Tolkien himself, despite their drastically different tones.

Of course, Howard also created the popular characters Kull of Atlantis and Solomon Kane.

Here are three Conan stories that will make you do some push-ups.

The People of the Black Circle

This is my favorite Conan story. It served as inspiration for the later sequences of the Schwarzenneger movie. It has an amazing tone, being both adventurous and creepy at the same time. In it, Conan kidnaps a queen to barter for his tribesmen's freedom, only to see her kidnapped again by a far more evil adversary. It paints the quintessential picture of a man with nothing but a sword and a loincloth battling cosmic forces far beyond his conception. And then he kills them all.

Read it here.

Rogues in the House

In this story, we see Conan as the unbridled anti-hero he plays best. He bashes his way through intrigue as he's caught between two powerful men trying to wrest control of a city. Great characters, lots of action.

Read it here.

Red Nails

Conan isn't Conan if he's not trying to make someone "his woman." Red Nails sees him charging into certain death to prove himself to the woman he loves. It's an adrenaline-pumping story with a side of brooding treachery and a couple strong female characters. Check it out.

Read it here.


Well there it is. We've looked at a father of modern horror, a father of film noir, and a father of mainstream fantasy. And they all wrote for the pulps. Hope you get a chance to look at these stories.

Some Kind of Gatsby

Yesterday I bought an audiobook of The Great Gatsby for $11.95. Tonight I saw the movie for a similar price. I don’t doubt that you’ll be able to tell which experience I preferred.

Luhrmann’s Gatsby bears all the hallmarks of his other movies: a sociopathic, almost manic momentum, a lavish production design, and a painstaking insistence that contemporary music is essential to making a classic accessible. I’m going to lead with the areas in which I thought the movie succeeded, since that takes a little more effort. It’s easy to pan an adaptation of a literary masterpiece, so I’m resisting the inclination.

Leo and Carey are a good Gatsby and Daisy, but she’s particularly good. It’s not an easy formula to assemble—privilege, grace, and an innocent irreverence all have to be tempered by a growing vulnerability and guilt about who she is. Ms. Mulligan navigates it with ease. Leo has his own moments to shine, which I thought he handled with admirable understatement, but don’t expect any new tricks you haven’t seen before. He calls often on his BA in Brow-furrowing, which he seems to think an honorary MFA in Acting.

The script (adapted by Luhrmann and some-guy-he-likes-to-write-with) does manage to capture the Gatsby-Daisy relationship, with particular emphasis on Gatbsy’s obsessive need to decisively erase the five years they lost while she was married to Tom. In some ways, if you can get that dynamic right, then everything else about the story falls into place. Luhrmann’s managed to pinpoint the important lines of the novel and fit them into the movie, even if his interpretation of them is questionable.

The costumes are gorgeous, the sets impressive, and every inch of the screen occupied by artifacts and wonders from the 20s, but I have to say that the way in which they’re displayed (i.e. editing, camera movement) does an injustice to the artistry of the design, not to mention the characters and nuance of the story. Luhrmann’s attention deficit—which he assumes his audience shares—doesn’t let a single iconic line breathe between jump cuts, cut-aways, and hip-hop tracks. He must subscribe to Jordan Baker’s innocuous comment that a large party is more intimate than a small one (spoiler alert—it’s not true). As a result, the whole package comes across as a two-and-a-half-hour attempt at inducing a heart attack. It worked in Moulin Rouge, but it doesn’t here.

Fitzgerald’s genius is in his ability to replicate the mystery of meeting someone new when he introduces his characters. There’s something enthralling about them, because it’s through their unconscious actions that you come to know them intimately over the course of the novel. Luhrmann makes the mistake of pegging characters from the very first moment you meet them, as if he’s afraid that some of their secrets might be lost on the guy dropping off in the back row. It makes them caricaturish and uninteresting. Jordan, Tom, Myrtle, her sister, and Wolfsheim suffer the most at the hands of this fallacy. The treatment of their character development reminded me of the year I found out what all my brothers’ Christmas presents were and couldn’t help pronouncing the information just before they commenced unwrapping them (“That’s the race car you wanted…That’s a batman figure! He goes underwater!” or, in this case, “That’s the loose mistress! That’s her loose sister!”). Sometimes you like to unwrap your own presents.

Of course, the characterizations in the novel formulate through the lens of Nick Carraway, our narrator. Because they’re his observations we’re reading, making a movie that attains any level of the book’s ingenuity requires an actor who can match Fitzgerald’s own wit, insight, and talent for withholding judgment. Tobey Maguire doesn’t come close. In case you haven’t seen any of his movies, he’s the 10-year-old in grown-up clothes. Despite his apocryphal declaration at the top of the movie that he “looks for the good in people,” his main activity throughout most of the film is to cast disapproving looks at other characters. He brings the depth and maturity of a vegetative eunuch.

But it’s Luhrmann’s fault, not only for casting him, but for missing the moral center of the story. He can’t seem to decide if the extravagant parties, the drinking, the sex, the excesses of an over privileged generation are good or bad. It’s all glorified throughout the movie (along with a healthy dose of executive producer Jay-Z’s own music—yup, you heard that right), so that when we’re left to discern the point of the story, we can’t decipher the argument presented.

The biggest example of this—and my most significant complaint about the movie—is that (spoiler alert?) Gatsby and Daisy have sex. Admittedly, the novel doesn’t specify that they don’t, but I personally consider it essential that their relationship remains unconsummated. And not just for the considerable romantic tension it creates. Gatsby’s distinct from the Long Island aristocracy, the wealthy crowd he’s trying to infiltrate. He’s “worth the whole bunch of them put together” precisely because he never commits adultery. He wants to do everything right. This is the guy that wouldn’t even invite Daisy to tea, let alone attempt to rebuild their relationship on the foundation of a betrayal. The belief that he can pull it off is a delusion, of course, but it’s a delusion that’s central to the story.

Once that happened, I knew what Luhrmann’s trouble was. To him, love is sex. And yet he delightfully uses sexuality to paint the flappers as aimless and perverse. It sends a mixed message. The excesses of the 1920s really pale in comparison to those of our time, though, so in order to appropriately shock us, Luhrmann has to amp up the moral deterioration to notch 11. He turns the party at Myrtle’s sister’s into an all-night heroin bender (actually, they’re drinking…champagne?) with everyone flailing in their underwear watching the neighbors have sex. If you pay attention, Gatsby is a very moral book, but it manages to be so with a healthy lack of self-righteousness. The movie is morally confused and, ironically, self-righteous nonetheless.

If nothing else, Luhrmann’s Gatsby serves as an exhaustive compilation of plot spoilers for the novel. If you don’t fancy just reading the book, pick up the audio version read by Anthony Heald in the iTunes store. It’s every bit as entertaining, and not much longer than the movie itself.

Games I Played in 2012 (Part 2: The Best)

This is Part 2, the top 17 games I played in 2012.
(Jump back to Part 1 here)


17. MR. JACK
Competitive Strategy Game (30 minutes, 2 players)
Nerd Factor: 2

This was a great two-player game that employs tricky strategy more than thematic immersion. One player is Jack the Ripper, the other is the detective trying to catch him before he flees the scene. The board is a hex-grid of Whitechapel (definitely not drawn from any real maps of the district--it's very cartoony) containing a slew of characters. Jack and the detective can use the characters in various ways, trying to elude or catch the other. If only catching Jack the Ripper had been as easy in actual history as it is in this game. The odds seem to pile in favor of the detective, my biggest complaint about Mr. Jack. I hear there are expansions and an alternate version, New York. These probably make the game more complex and thus more enjoyable. Playing it once didn't reveal as much intrigue as I would have liked. I've heard Letters from Whitechapel does the job better, but as long as it's out of print and expensive, I guess Mr. Jack will do.

16. SUMMONER WARS
Competitive Deck-Building/Tactical Combat Game (30-50 minutes, 2-4 players)
Nerd Factor: 7

This game, like Dominion below, is a self-contained deck-building game. In it you're collecting spells and armies--something like Magic: the Gathering. The unique element of Summoner Wars is how the cards are played. The board contains a grid, on which you play summoned armies and creatures, who can then move around and fight in tactical combat. It's an interesting blend, and the mechanics are simple. Not really worth it, though, unless you delve into expansions. The game comes with the board and two sets of cards (two different races). You can buy more races to fill out the experience, which is the only intelligent thing to do if you really want to play this game.

Rather than buy the physical game myself, I resorted to the free iPad app, which is disappointingly limited without in-app purchases of expansion material, but satisfied me until I lost interest. I'd play it again, for sure, but I don't think I'd buy it.

15. MANSIONS OF MADNESS
Cooperative Exploration/Mystery Game (2-3 hours, 2-5 players)
Nerd Factor: 7

This is a game from Fantasy Flight, my personal favorite board game company. It's a spin-off of Arkham Horror (see number 1 below) that takes the game to closer quarters. In Mansions of Madness, your investigators are exploring a building (or wilderness, if you get the Call of the Wild expansion), trying to resolve one of many pre-written mystery scenarios. Sometimes you fight monsters, most of the time you wander the house trying to get to the next clue before the Keeper kills you. The stories are based on the mythos developed by the Horror writer H.P. Lovecraft.

At first glance, the game looks a lot like Dungeons & Dragons. One player acts as "Keeper," playing the evil forces that your investigators face. It should have a Nerd Factor of 9, except that for some inexplicable reason, some of my less nerdy family members like this game a lot, especially the women. My guess is that it's less about fighting monsters, so it appeals to a broader range of players. It isn't fantasy, which helps limit the nerd factor, and you don't speak in character, which helps even more.

There are two reasons why this isn't higher on my list: 1) the written scenarios aren't very interesting or well written, especially compared to Lovecraft's own writing, which is mostly phenomenal; and 2) Unless you're the Keeper, very little happens during the game considering the playtime. In Arkham Horror, you're facing similar threats, but on a citywide scale. The stakes are higher and every turn's encounter is like an entire game of Mansions.

What Mansions has going for it is that the complex rules are all placed in the hands of the Keeper. The other players need keep track of very little, which is great for playing with newer, less nerdy friends or family. Arkham Horror, on the other hand, is complex for everyone.

Considering what I think of the writing in the game, I would never drop the $80 for it (it comes with a whole army of plastic miniatures, cards, map, and tokens), especially when you realize the limited scope it has. There are only two handfuls of scenarios to play in the base game, which means that for 80 bucks you get ten or so evenings of gaming. And that's it until you buy an expansion, which is similarly limited. I just don't like that business model.

14. BOHNANZA
Competitive Economic Card Game (20-40 minutes, 2-7 players)
Nerd Factor: 2

Bohnanza is the epitome of a bartering game. You lay down cards that represents bean crops, and spend the game haggling and bartering for your particular brand of bean. Its gameplay is tightly designed around forcing you to make choices that help or hinder one another. This isn't one to play with a full group of passive players. They can slow things down and make it frustrating, but having one or two in the game actually makes it more interesting.

13. BANANAGRAMS
Competitive Tile-Placement Game (10-40 minutes, 2-8 players)
Nerd Factor: 1

If you haven't played Bananagrams, do it. It's like speed Scrabble, but you're only making the crossword with yourself. There are no points, the victory just goes to whoever can use up all their letters in a legal crossword first. Great for kids and adults alike, although 7-year-olds are unlikely to stand a chance against adults. The game's cheap and the heavy plastic tiles slide nicely over most surfaces. I fell in love with this game when I realized Bethany would play it with me and often beat me (as opposed to Scrabble).

12. LORDS OF WATERDEEP
Competitive Economic (kind of thematic) Game (30 minutes to an hour, 2-5 players)
Nerd Factor: 5

This game should have a Nerd Factor of 3, but it was made by Wizards of the Coast, and uses the intellectual property of Dungeons & Dragons, and so gets an automatic boost to 5. I've considered taping something over the D&D title on the bottom of the box there, just so I can play it with more people.

It's very reminiscent of Euro-style economic games like Puerto Rico and Caylus, but where those games lack any kind of setting or story, Lords of Waterdeep piles on far more setting than is necessary. If you're familiar with the world of the Forgotten Realms, or with dark elves and adventuring parties, that knowledge will do nothing for your chances of winning the game, but it will make you like this game a lot more. My chief complaint is that (unlike the best thematic games) none of the story elements affect the game very much.  It's a classic re-skin.

That having been said, the game itself is fun and simple. You're a Lord of Waterdeep (don't get lost, now) trying to make your faction the most powerful in the city. To do so, you build buildings and send adventurers on quests as if they were resources. The more quests you complete and buildings you build, the more victory points you get. Very simple.

The board, die-cut cards, and pieces are gorgeously designed, but probably the best part of the game for me is the use of a Euro-style system where you send your agents (all Carcarssonne-like) to claim buildings in the city to use for your glory-building purposes. Since each building grants you different resources and benefits, every turn's a race to grab the best or most appropriate buildings in town. It makes the game run smoothly and increases player interaction. I just think that for $35 I could have bought a little more heft. Similar Euro games are ten or fifteen bucks cheaper, but I guess they don't have all the lavish (read: pointless) art.

11. PANDEMIC
Cooperative Euro-style Strategy Game (1 hour, 2-5 players)
Nerd Factor: 3

Pandemic is a blast. It's scary, fun, and you're in it together, which always makes for a change of pace. In it, each player takes the role of a specialist fighting the outbreak of several global pandemics. The specialist you choose determines the role you'll play in the game, because you'll have a vital signature ability that can make or break your team. Watching the colored tokens of each disease pile up on cities across the world gets your blood pumping, and the game never lets up until the dramatic conclusion, where you either vaccinate and prevent every pandemic, or you get overrun and lose as a team.

This game looks and feels thematic, but conducts itself like a clever Euro game. Its only flaw is that the difficulty increases with additional players, so it's not necessarily the game you'll want to whip out when you have four new players coming over. I lost my first game in that exact scenario. This is a weakness in the mechanics of the game, but I wouldn't change them, because their operation is exactly what makes the game what it is. And in the end, a loss for everyone can still be fun.

10. DOMINION
Competitive Deck-Building/Economic Card Game (30 minutes to an hour, 2-4 players)
Nerd Factor: 5

I have extremely mixed feelings about this game, but in the end it's very fun, which is, I guess, the best measure. First of all, it features some of the worst graphic design I've ever seen in a game, not only because the title art is lame, but because it makes it look like a little kid's game, which it isn't. The box recommends ages 10 and up, but I think it appeals more to older players (teen or young adult). The rulebook would be extremely useful to any graphic design class as an example of what to never do. It's an abomination. The cards, however, are pretty good looking, and their art is great. It's like the box and rulebook are from a different game than the cards are.

As a deck-building game, Dominion has every player creating his own deck, from which you draw cards to play. On your turn you can buy more cards to put in your deck (increasing the likelihood that you'll draw them later in the game) or play attacks against your opponents. If it sounds like Magic: the Gathering or Yu-Gi-Oh, that's because it involves a lot of the same ideas. What's really intelligent about Dominion, though, is that it puts all of the fun of buying cards to assemble your deck right into the game itself. And all of the cards come with the game, so you don't need to spend money on booster packs. The whole idea of creating a custom deck every game is interesting, and makes the game unique every time. There are 25 card sets in the base game of Dominion, and you only play with 10 available in each game, so there's a lot of replay value here.

9. TICKET TO RIDE
Competitive Economic Game (1-2 hours, 2-5 players)
Nerd Factor: 3

This is a really popular game, so I won't say much about it. I like it quite a bit, but I wish it were shorter. See Transamerica in Part 1 for a similar, shorter (but less interesting) game. The iOS version goes a long way to improving the pace, but I find it also makes returning to the physical game less fun. I like the European Map best, since it offers more of a challenge. Germany (I think it's the original?) is really interesting, and the most unique of the various maps I've played.

8. SPADES
Competitive Card Game (30 minutes, 4 players)

I can't believe I've never played this game until this year. I guess my family didn't play a lot of different card games (Cribbage kind of dominated that scene). In any case, I played this on New Year's Eve and fell in love. By far the most intriguing thing about the game for me is that you need to figure out the best moment to lose a trick. It's a unique element of the game that really grabbed my attention. I did pretty well my first game, I might add.

7. SCRABBLE
Competitive Tile-Placement Game (1-4 hours, 2-4 players)
Nerd Factor: 4

I love Scrabble. So do a lot of other people. The only reason I put the Nerd Factor at 4 is that there are conventions and professional leagues. Also you'd be amazed how hard it is to convince someone to sit down with me to a game of Scrabble. I've been driven to Words With Friends on my iPad, which is too easy, and out of vogue now too.

6. CRIBBAGE
Competitive Card Game (30 minutes to an hour, 2-6 players)
Nerd Factor: 2

I don't know when I first played Cribbage, since it's been in my mom's family for as long as her parents can remember. I do, however, recall in detail the first time I beat my juggernaut of a grandfather. He was very gracious.

For those under the age of 60, Cribbage is a card game in which you play three phases every turn with the same hand, then count your points on the peg board. It's about getting combinations of 15, doubles, runs, and the like. Very fun, and very good for learning to perform single-digit arithmetic at the bat of an eye. I'll play it with anyone, any time. In fact you can play without the pegs and board if you have a way to keep score (you'll never manage it in your head). Here are the rules. You can play with 2-6 players, but one-on-one is the best.

My favorite thing about Cribbage is that there's an informal jargon to which serious players conform, including the order and phrasing of claiming your points. The above hand is "15 two, 15 four, 15 six, 15 eight, 15 ten, 15 twelve, 15 fourteen, 15 sixteen, four are 28, and one for his nob." At 29 points, it's the highest-scoring hand you can get in the game. You'd be surprised how long you can stare at five cards trying to figure out if they work out to give you any points. It's a lot more interesting than scoring poker.

5. ACQUIRE
Competitive Investment/Tile Placement Game (40 min to an hour, 3-6 players)
Nerd Factor: 2

Josh Tumblin exposed me to Acquire, which apparently has been around forever. He pitched it as "Monopoly, except fun." I instantly fell in love with it, and Bethany got it for me for my birthday. The goal of the game is to build hotel chains and come out with the most money. You do it by placing tiles on a grid to enlarge the hotel chains, then buying stock (which appreciates in value as the hotels get bigger). When hotels on the grid touch, the larger hotel buys out the smaller one, and the primary and secondary shareholders get a big bonus. So you do a lot of card counting as your opponents load up on stock in the various companies on the board, hoping for a big payoff.

This game does a great job of simulating investment without trying to replicating it with complex rules. You never know what company's going to grow, or in which direction, but if you play your (literal) cards right, you'll get on top of the market.

I don't have any complaints about this game, but it's quiet, and that might bother some people who like to barter or socialize during play. I've never played it with less than four people, but I imagine it's a much simpler game if you do it with only three players. It would be really easy to keep track of their stock, so there would be less mystery or guesswork as to who's got the most in what companies. But it's a game I can play with my friends who like money, and the nerd factor's low, so to me it's one of the centerpieces of my collection.

4. TWILIGHT IMPERIUM
Competitive Thematic Game (3-4 hours, 2-6 players)
Nerd Factor: 7

Bethany got this for me for Christmas. It's kind of a blend of lots of different game types. Certain elements are very Euro, but the battle mechanic is pretty much like Axis & Allies. Every game you make a unique galaxy map made of hexagonal tiles. You pick one of the 10 races (space lions!) and try to take the imperial throne through whichever means suit you best: war, politics, trade, exploration, or a little of all four. It's pretty straightforward in terms of the goal. Get 10 points and you win.

In our first game, I played the Naalu Collective, a nation of psychic snake-women who get to go first every turn as their special ability (there are ways for other players to counteract this). I won the game without really fighting a single significant battle against the other players. I was sold.

Every turn each player chooses one of the eight Strategy Cards that give you a special ability, and therefore a specific focus for your actions that turn. It drives the game forward with a steady momentum and makes this more interesting along the way. Every turn you look forward to which card(s) you'll pick, hoping no one else nabs them first. Players form a Galactic Council, and at different points of the game vote on rules changes or other "political" decisions that affect how things will proceed to the end. It really succeeds in making the thematic elements of the game come alive, despite its macro scale of galactic war.

The only thing that disappointed me was the complexity of the rules. It has a steep learning curve. Some of the misunderstandings that happened during the setup of the board ended up determining the winner, which, although it worked to my advantage, was unfair and interfered with our fun. Next time won't be so easy for me.

The biggest problem with conquest games like Risk, Diplomacy, and A&A is that you have to slowly eliminate other players through battling them a single territory at a time. Not in Twilight Imperium. In this game warfare is a means to an end (victory points), not the end in and of itself. Very smart design choice. It makes the game shorter and more interesting in its own right. It doesn't feel like space Risk, which was my biggest fear.

3. CARCASSONNE
Competitive Tile Placement Game (20-30 minutes, 2-5 players)
Nerd Factor: 3

Carcassonne is a Euro-style game that might look like it's for kids. Don't be fooled. It's simple enough to teach to a kid, but its strategic complexity is mind-blowing. I've seen it on shelves since I was in high school, but the art and design didn't draw me. Recently I noticed its presence on just about every list of top board games out there. Still suspicious, I put it off and decided not to believe the hype. I was a fool!

In the game, you place tiles on a table. The tiles have roads, cities, cloisters, or a combination of these structures on them. As you connect your tiles to the others, the roads, cities, and cloisters grow in size. To get points, you claim structures by placing little follower tokens on them. As the structures grow, your potential payoff increases. Once a structure you've claimed is finished, you get the points based on its size, and you get your token back to claim something else. So simple. So addictive. I've played it probably more than 40 times in the last 4 months (see below).

If you're still suspicious, there's a beautiful iPad app for $10 (the physical game is around $25), which has the full game, with pass-and-play, online multiplayer, and (intelligent) computer opponents so you can play by yourself.

NOTE: The name is pronounced car-cuh-SON, as in the place in France, not car-CA-sun-ee. Good gracious.

2. CHESS
Competitive Strategy Game (as long as you want, 2 players)
Nerd Factor: 4

Love it. Nothing more to say.

1. ARKHAM HORROR
Cooperative Thematic Game (1-4 hours, 1-8 players)
Nerd Level: 6

This is a game for 1-8 players (yes, you can play it by yourself, and it's still fun) in which a group of 1930s characters race around a New England city cooperatively trying to stop an alien god from rising and destroying the earth. I flirted with buying it for about nine months before I caved. It has nothing to do with Batman, which is the question I get from everyone I tell about it. And my comic book friends all regularly call it Arkham Asylum by mistake.

It's based on the works of H.P. Lovecraft, a genius who's associated with some of the most nerdy fans you'll ever meet. Lovecraft is like the Stephen King of the 20s. His fiction (mostly short stories) is considered to be the foundation of the American horror genre. If you've heard of Cthulhu, he comes from Lovecraft. And in this game you can punch him in the face.

The game's not entirely concerned with making a perfect, balanced, quick experience. It's more about the story that unfolds through encounter cards that are read aloud to each player as they visit the various locations around the city of Arkham, collect clues, weapons, occult spells, and fight monsters. I've played it with a lot of people (gamers and otherwise), and most love it. Someone with trouble learning rules may not take to it: the rulebook's over 20 pages.

The complicated rules are the biggest contributor to the playtime. With a few friends who really know the rules, I've played in 40 minutes. With new players, however, the game more often took between 2 and 4 hours. This is ironic, because the people who have trouble learning the rules are the ones who get antsy about the playtime, but they're the ones that make it take so long. I've had to be judicious about who to suggest this game to. But 9 out of 10 have liked it, so if you like a game with ambiance and a cooperative goal, and if you don't mind spending a couple hours on a game, go for Arkham Horror.

There are lots of pieces and cards (all high quality and beautifully designed), so its $40 price tag is well worth the size of the game, but the box comes with no way to package everything. I bought one of these at Wal-Mart.

The large box expansions for the game make it significantly better, if a little more complex. I particularly recommend the Dunwich Horror Expansion.

Added Note: I played a solo game of Arkham Horror last night and was not able to punch Cthulhu. I got my butt handed to me, and it was still a blast.

Games I Played in 2012 (Part 1: The Bottom)

I've played a lot of board games this year, and many of them for the first time. I can thank Josh Tumblin and Brandt Stiggins for exposing me to most of them, but for reasons beyond that I've just been really game-crazy in the last year--more than usual, anyway. Here's a list. I threw some more games on there that I had played before this year, since this is the first time I'm doing this. Farther down, for those interested, I'll throw out some of my thoughts on each one.

These are in a vague order of preference. All of them are board or card games that you would find at any game store.

1. Arkham Horror
2. Chess
3. Carcassonne
4. Twilight Imperium
5. Acquire
6. Cribbage
7. Scrabble
8. Spades
9. Ticket to Ride
10. Dominion
11. Pandemic
12. Lords of Waterdeep
13. Bananagrams
14. Bohnanza
15. Mansions of Madness
16. Summoner Wars
17. Mr. Jack
18. For Sale
19. Gang of Four
20. Lost Cities
21. Diplomacy
22. The Great Dalmuti
23. Uno
24. Pass the Pigs
25. Transamerica
26. Cartagena
27. Liar's Dice
28. No Thanks
29. Risk (and Lord of the Rings Risk, Trilogy Edition)
30. Quelf
31. One Hundred
32. Monopoly
33. Apples to Apples
34. It Came to Pass

I'm going to talk about these in reverse order, working up to my favorites. There's really only one game on this list that I didn't like. See number 34. The others are great games, depending on the occasion, but some are better than others. This post goes through the latter half (18-34 on the above list). Part 2 goes through the first half, from Mr. Jack to the best game I played in 2012: Arkham Horror.

In the descriptions below, I'm including a Nerd Factor. The scale is 1 to 10, where 1 is a party game you could play with the least nerdy people you know (my brother-in-law Brandt is now my go-to non-nerd), and 10 is Dungeons & Dragons.


34. IT CAME TO PASS
Competitive Card Game (30-60 minutes, 2-8 players)
Nerd Factor: 1

This is hands down the worst game I've ever played. It's Mormon Uno, mixed with Slap Jack, the Great Dalmuti, and stupid. It's out of balance and extremely frustrating when the luck turns against you. You're trying to get rid of the cards in your hand before someone passes. Actually, I don't even want to talk about it anymore. It caused my brother Karl's breakup with the girlfriend who showed it to us.

33. APPLES TO APPLES
Competitive Party Game (30 minutes, 4-10 players)
Nerd Factor: 1

You'll notice a couple other party games like this before we get to my favorites. I realize that my personal nerd factor is beyond 10, so forgive me if I don't hold these games in as high esteem as some others. I like Apples to Apples, but it isn't my favorite, and it seem to be pretty hit or miss in terms of fun.


32. MONOPOLY
Competitive Economic Game (2+ hours, 2-8)
Nerd Factor: 5

I have some pretty fond memories of Monopoly, but most of them linger from days when I knew nothing about what makes a good game. There's almost nothing good about this game except nostalgia. Worst of all, it works by elimination like Risk, so there really isn't a winner, only the last player left when everyone else loses, which is a silly way to determine victory in my opinion. That's not to say it's never fun, but I'd almost always play something else instead, based on playtime alone.


31. ONE HUNDRED
Competitive Dice-Rolling Game (20 minutes, 2+ players)
Nerd Factor: 1

There are a few variations on this game that I've heard of, but when I played, we rolled dice until someone got doubles, at which point they grabbed a pen and paper to begin writing from 1 to 100 in a column. As the other players continue rolling, whoever rolls doubles can grab the paper and pen and begin writing their own column. The first column to reach 100 wins. It's simple, and mostly fun for the scrambling and rough-housing involved with grabbing the paper from each other.

30. QUELF
Competitive Party Game (1 hour, 3-8 players)
Nerd Factor: 1

This game is insane in the best possible way. It's like a mix between Curses, Cranium, and Candyland. Not my first pick every night, but it's never dull. Here are some highlights: Sarah making snorkeling gear out of random trash in the apartment, McKenna refusing to make eye contact with me so she wouldn't have to look at me and say "Now you're mine," and Bethany shouting "I need my pills!" every time she took a swig from her water bottle.

29. RISK
Competitive Conquest Game (3+ hours, 2-6)
Nerd Factor: 5

This game is infamous, and I'm sure a lot of people would place it higher on this list. But I don't love it. The playtime and the amount of merciless luck ruins it for me. Still, I'll engage here and there if that's what people want to play. I prefer the Lord of the Rings Risk, because it adds some thematic elements to the game (even still, I would almost always play Ares Games's War of the Ring over LOTR Risk).

In my opinion, the only way to play Risk (other than at an endless all-nighter party) is on the computer. I've still got Risk II on my PC, and I can do a game in an hour, which is a miracle.

28. NO THANKS
Competitive Card Game (20 minutes, 3-5 players)
Nerd Factor: 1

This game would be great for small parties, since the social element becomes half the strategy. There's a deck of 33 cards that each have a number from 3-35. At the start of the game, you blindly remove nine cards from the run. This makes the main action of the game exciting, since you're attempting to create runs of your own without knowing which numbers your opponents have and which numbers have been removed from the game altogether. Every turn a card's placed in the center of the table, and players decide whether to take it or say, "No, thanks." If you decline, you place a chip on the card. Once you have no chips left, you have to take it (along with all the chips that were placed on it during the game.

At the end of the game, you get points (which you don't want) for the values of the cards you took, unless the card is part of a run, in which case you only take points for the lowest card in the run. The number of chips you've collected is subtracted from your point total. Player with the least points wins.

I liked this game, but it was almost too simple for me. I don't have a great bluff, but I'm sure I could get better at it.

27. LIAR'S DICE
Competitive Dice-Rolling Bluff Game (15 minutes, 2-6 players)
Nerd Factor: 1

Good, classic game. I played the Pirates of the Caribbean promotional version called "Pirates Dice," which made me kind of cranky, but the game itself is sly and fun. Everyone starts with five dice they roll under a cup. The first player chooses a number from 1-6, then bets how many dice on the entire table have rolled it. Going around clockwise, players up the bet, either by the number of dice or by the result on them. "Five twos" can become "six twos" or "five threes," for example.

The best part of the game is putting on the act, bluffing or flat out lying to get people to up the ante too far. When someone's turn comes around, they can call the bet. Everyone shows their dice, and if the bet is equal to or less than the amount actually on the table, the caller loses. If the caller is right, however, to mistrust the bet, he wins. It's good stuff, but there's no need to shell out for Disney merchandise if you want to play. Just grab a cup and some dice (they sell five Bicycle dice for a buck almost anywhere).

26. CARTAGENA
Competitive Euro-style strategy game (45 minutes, 2-5 players)
Nerd Factor: 3

This game was a little clunky for me, but had some really interesting hidden complexity. I'd like to play it again, if nothing else to decode it a little more. The setup is that you have a long single-file track of symbols. You're trying to get all six of your pirates to safety at the other end of the track, and you do it by playing cards with symbols matching the track. If you play a pistol, you move any of your pirates to the nearest pistol on the track. If the closest symbol of the correct type is occupied, you go to the next one. Sometimes you leap far ahead, and at other times you move one space.

The strategy comes in choosing when to move backward, because if you move a pirate back to the nearest occupied space behind him, you draw a card. This is the only way to get more cards, so you're constantly moving back and forth, trying to fill up your hand so you can spend it. It makes for an odd dynamic in a two-player game, but I imagine a five-player game would be better.

25. TRANSAMERICA
Competitive Tile-Placement Game (30 minutes, 2-6 players)
Nerd Factor: 2

This game is similar to Ticket to Ride, except it takes less than half the time. There are no cards to play, just racing to place tracks along a grid that covers the US map. First one to connect to all his or her cities wins the round (about five minutes in length), and the others lose points based on how far away they were from their goal. You keep playing rounds like this until someone hits zero points. The player with the most points wins.

This game plays fast and fun. If you snooze, you lose. I like its simplicity and that there's a grid you lay tracks on, rather than set routes (as in Ticket to Ride). It might depend just a little too much on your destination cities, because a lucky draw can make your job a lot easier during a given round. It's a great game, especially if your kids are too young for Ticket to Ride, or you want to be done in 30 minutes.

24. PASS THE PIGS
Competitive "Dice"-rolling Game (As long as you want, 2+ players)
Nerd Factor: 1

In this absolutely ridiculous game, you roll pigs as dice, and the position in which they land scores you points, based on the improbability of the position. Each position has a name ("Sider," "Snouter," "Trotter," "Razorback," and the formidable "Double leaning jowler"), which is where most of the fun of the game comes in.

The only reason this isn't higher on my list is that its fun is completely dependent on the speed with which you play and the personalities of those playing. It can be really dull if not handled right. If everyone gathers and chatters like 1940s boxing patrons, it's a blast.

23. UNO
Competitive Card Game (30 minutes, 2-10 players)
Nerd Factor: 1

I like Uno as much as the next guy, but I rarely play it when I have more interesting options. There's a boatload of luck involved, but it is possible to be "good" at the game, which is as much as you can ask of it.

22. THE GREAT DALMUTI
Competitive Card Game (As long as you feel like it, 4-8 players)
Nerd Factor: 1

This is a really accessible card game that you can play with anyone, and for that alone it's great. The rules say up to eight players, but I bet you could get away with 10 if you really wanted to. The concept behind it is well known, but not everyone's heard it under this name. The idea is that you have two peons, who at the beginning of the hand have to give their best cards to the Great and Lesser Dalmuti, the two players who won the last hand. It can be fun and can also be a little miserable, depending on how long you languish as a peon. But even then, it's unpredictable and never boring.

This game taught me something about games. In a game like Risk, where players are eliminated one by one, the losers have to sit out while the game continues, sometimes for hours. In Dalmuti, however, the winner exits the game first and so gets to enjoy a little breather to savor the victory while the other players slog it out for second, third, fourth place, etc. That's a better mechanic than eliminating losers early.

21. DIPLOMACY
Competitive War/Negotiation Game (4+ hours, 2-6 players)
Nerd Factor: 7

Oh, Diplomacy. I love and hate you.

This game is infamous for its playtime, which will stop anyone who's not a nerd from playing with you. My first game took about 6 hours, at which point two other players and I declared a three-way truce and ended the game. You can do that at any point in the game, which is a life-saver because otherwise it would go for days. My second game took about 4 hours, at which point very little had happened because of some learning curve issues, so we ended the game without any players being eliminated. My third game was played over the course of months, with one turn passing every day or so. That was enjoyable and realistic, but not very exciting.

There are no dice or cards in Diplomacy, just the rules and your mind. Every turn, players write down orders for their troops, attempting to take over Europe and control as many supply depots as possible. The orders are resolved simultaneously through complex and arcane methods. No two armies can occupy the same region, so you spend a few minutes between each turn trying to secretly negotiate your enemies into doing what suits your purpose.

What I can say about this game is that it fully embraces the wonders and flaws of a strategic war game. It's a great playground for devoted strategists (which accounts for the zealots who play it) and can be fun and exciting if done right. Definitely best served with people who know the complex rules well.


20. LOST CITIES
Competitive Euro-style Card Game (10-20 minutes, 2 players)
Nerd Factor: 2

This is the card game (which came first), not the full scale version with a board. I really enjoyed it, mostly for the beautiful art on the cards, and for the short playtime. Like all the best Euro games, it's deceivingly complex. Both players have five different ruins they can "explore" by creating a stack of cards of the appropriate color on their side of the ruin. You create your stack by first drawing once from the deck, then placing one card down in a stack. Once you lay a card down, the next in that stack has to have a bigger number value. At the end of each short round, you count up the number values of each stack of cards, then subtract 20. You get that many points, positive or negative. Add up all stacks (up to five) and you have your score for that round.

The trick comes in with the unnumbered cards you draw: "exploration" cards that multiply the final score of each stack by 2, 3, or 4. You have to place them first in any given stack, so if you play two white exploration cards below the Himalayas, the final result is multiplied by three. Say you come up short on that color mid-game. If you don't get over 20, your going to have a negative number multiplied by three. You're toast.

Additionally, you can choose to discard a card face-up from your hand onto the ruin instead of playing a card onto your stacks. From there any player can draw the discarded cards rather than draw from the deck

Interestingly enough, you can play this simple game with a normal 52-card deck. Use the suits as the ruins, but you only get 4 colored stacks instead of 5. Use the face cards and ones as exploration cards.

The game, however, costs 20 bucks, so it's up to you if it's worth buying for the art, which is distinctive and cool.

19. GANG OF FOUR
Competitive Card Game (30 minutes, 4 players)
Nerd Factor: 2

I liked this game, but it was a lot like Phase 10 mixed with the Great Dalmuti. Better than both of those, but not a perfect game. The deal kind of determines everything, but I guess a skilled player could get past a bad hand and win. Not I.

18. FOR SALE
Competitive Economic Card Game (20 minutes, 3-6 players)
Nerd Factor: 2

This was a really unique game that plays in two parts. First players bid on a series of properties with a numerical value from 1-35, 35 being the most valuable. The second part of the game consists of players trying to score a profit on those properties by competing for checks made out to various amounts. There's a good deal of strategy involved, and lots of chances for bluffing, intimidating, etc. It clicked with me right away.



The list continues in Part 2