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
No comments:
Post a Comment