Ah, the humble board game. For decades – centuries if you
count games like chess – the board game did sterling work in bringing families
together and providing entertainment and mental stimulation (before shattering
them apart with arguments over how to spell words in Scrabble or Auntie Joan’s Dick Move in Monopoly which is still controversial ten years later). In the
latter part of the 20th Century there was a drop-off in the
popularity of board games, largely attributed to the rise of video games and
television, but in the last few years board games have returned with a
vengeance.
You'll never need to play this rubbish again,
There are several reasons board games have returned to popularity,
some obvious, some less so. The number one influence, of course, is the
Internet. Crowdfunding sites like Kickstarter have allowed board games to be
created, funded and sold in a manner and scale that was impossible under the
old publisher model. The Internet has also allowed board game fans to find
other players and set up gaming groups, as well as spreading the word about
good games. YouTube videos and review sites like the excellent
Shut Up and Sit Down and podcasts
like
The Game Pit have allowed
players to see games in action before stumping up money for them. Message
boards and websites also provide rules clarifications, cheat sheets, player
aids and things to make the task of playing games much easier and reduce
arguments. In rarer cases there are also digital, directly-translated versions
of board games where players can hone their skills on the screen before
deploying them against other players. Most notably,
Pandemic,
Blood Bowl and
Space Hulk all have digital versions
where you can directly translate the rules from screen to board and back
again.
A slightly less obvious reason is the rapid and remarkable
decline in same-room multiplayer video gaming. Back in the 1990s groups of
friends could gather at houses to play Street
Fighter II tournaments or Mario Kart
championships. Split-screen gaming was a huge thing and, with no set-up time or
time spent puzzling over rule books, a tempting alternative to board gaming.
However, the last decade has seen a marked decline in same-room video gaming.
Technical limitations meant that modern consoles struggle to depict two
graphical displays of what is going on at an acceptable level of graphical
detail, making it preferable for people to play their games from their own
homes over the Internet. Although that’s still fun, it loses the social aspect
and enjoyment gained from being in the same room as your friends.
The main reason for why board gaming is back, though, is
also the most obvious one: there’s a lot of really good board games around,
engaging in a variety of themes and ideas, ranging from very easy and quick-to-play
and accessible titles for all ages to hardcore action games using lots of
miniatures and complex rules taking entire days to play. Here’s a few games
from the so-called “golden age” which might tickle your fancy.
For Beginners
Ticket to Ride
The ultimate introductory game for the new age of board
games, Ticket to Ride is pretty
straightforward: each player is a railroad magnate building new lines across
the United States. The longer the lines, the greater the reward but also the
risk one of your competitors might beat you to the pinch at the last minute.
You score points for longer lines, but also achieving the secret objectives on
your mission cards: the right combination of the right lines and cards can see
someone storm from behind to win the game at the last hurdle, making sure
everyone is involved right up to the last minute. A very simple game which
gains complexity and replayability from the interaction of its different
features and the mindsets of the players.
Ticket to Ride is
available in numerous different editions, such as ones featuring a map of
Europe or Britain, and others which add complexity by allowing you to set up
shipping routes as well.
Cosmic Encounter
An old-skool game (originally released in the 1970s), Cosmic Encounter has the players
portraying different alien races. Using a combination of diplomacy, bluffing
and military might, players have to establish colonies on each other’s planets.
Where the game becomes unpredictable is that you have no way of knowing what
special powers the other players might have, or what cards (granting bonuses to
attack, defence and diplomacy) they may be hoarding. Cosmic Encounter is extremely simple and fast to play, but with a
huge amount of variety thrown up by the different alien races and cards.
Pandemic
Four viruses are threatening civilisation, so the Centre for
Disease Control has to mobilise its best people to cure them and mop up the
after-effects. Pandemic is a
co-operative game where the players have to work together against the odds, and
the odds can be quite gruelling. It’s not uncommon for players to have a few
good rounds and think the situation is under control, and five minutes later be
sobbing as most of Europe is engulfed in an explosive chain reaction of
outbreaks.
Like Cosmic Encounter,
the game’s base mechanics are very simple but the replayability comes from the
interaction of the different characters (always pick the characters randomly,
as otherwise the game can become quite easy as players work out optimal
character combinations and just stick with those) and the ability cards they
pick up. Pandemic has two expansions
that add a lot of variety to the game, as well as its semi-sequel, Pandemic: Legacy, which is an altogether
more advanced game (I’d recommend not even thinking of tackling that until
you’ve mastered the original at its hardest difficulty level, with the
expansions).
Flash Point
Flash Point is
another cooperative game. The players portray firefighters who are trying to
rescue people from a burning building. It’s important to get people out, but
it’s also necessary to keep putting the fires out. Ignore a growing fire for
too long and it may explode, causing a chain reaction that demolishes the
building around you. But ignore the trapped people for too long and they may
burn or choke to death. Expansions add more complexity (like multi-floor
buildings), but this is a reasonably simple game which is much more addictive
than it first looks. Watch out for players who insist on rescuing trapped
animals at the expense of their owners!
Settlers of Catan
Some people hold this game – originally released in 1995 –
as the forefather of the modern board game explosion. This is debatable but it’s
certainly one of the most popular board games of all time. The players are colonists
on an island and have to engage in diplomacy and resource-gathering to win an
economic war of attrition with the other players. It’s peaceful but
competitive, with excellent potential for humour revolving around how much wood
each player has at any given moment.
King of Tokyo
A lot of players of King
of Tokyo are disappointed when they discover the game isn’t about smashing up Tokyo like a board game version of Rampage. Instead, it’s about the
monsters getting into fights with one another over who gets to smash up Tokyo next.
An elegantly simply dice mechanic and premise belies the addictive replayability
that comes from the different powers each creature has and the cards you can
draw with extra abilities. An expanded sequel, King of New York, is also available.
For Intermediate Players
Axis and Allies
Another old-skool game (originally released in 1981), Axis and Allies has very simple rules.
However, the ways those rules interact with one another and the diverse battle
maps can give rise to extremely complex situations. The introductory game could
even be said to be a better fit for the introductory section above, but the
expansions raise the complexity of the game considerably.
The best achievement of Axis
and Allies, though, is how elegantly it replicates the set-up and outcome
of World War II, with the Axis players starting with enormous armies but poor
resources and immediately forced to expand or lose, with the Allies’ long-term
victory assured if they can weather the storm. However, the fun really kicks in
when players overturn the results of history and start going off the wall (the
German annexation of Brazil can be an unexpectedly effective move, for
example). There are more diverse and arguably interesting World War II games,
like Memoir 44, and certainly lots of
far more complex and hardcore wargames, but Axis
and Allies remains compelling for its grand vision of the whole war,
particularly with its later variant rules focusing on individual theatres.
Blood Bowl
A spin-off of the Warhammer
fantasy game, Blood Bowl is
nothing less than American football but with orcs, elves and dwarves (among
others) making up the teams. The result is a surprisingly rich and engrossing
game of blocks, passes, counter-strikes and breaks which at times becomes as
tense and engaging as an actual good sports game. The fact it’s all extremely
funny, with Games Workshop’s traditionally beautiful miniatures, helps a lot.
The video game Blood
Bowl II replicates the rules of the board game exactly, and may be worth a
look for those wanting to practice their ball control without any friends
around.
Star Wars: Rebellion
At first glance
Rebellion
looks like a wargame in space, except the Empire has Death Stars, Super Star
Destroyers, normal Star Destroyers, AT-ATs and ludicrous numbers of TIE
Fighters, whilst the Rebel player has a few X-wings and snowspeeders. But the
cleverness of the design kicks in when you send your Rebel agents to sabotage
Imperial production lines, halt fleets in their tracks by raising insurgences
across the galaxy and generally win support for the Alliance. The Empire wins
if it can find the Rebel hidden base, but this is much harder than it first
appears.
The result is a wonderfully asymmetrical game of warfare,
espionage and politics, all drenched in authentic Star Wars flavouring. The game’s key weakness is that it is
strictly a two-player affair only.
A Game of Thrones: The
Boardgame
Originally released in 2003 and based wholly on the books, A Game of Thrones replicates the mixture
of warfare, skulduggery, treachery and diplomacy from the novels as five
factions (six in the expansion) fight for control of the Iron Throne. Games can
be tense as players make alliances with other players, offering military
support in return for a mutual victory, but then the threat of a betrayal
arises. The game can induce paranoia between friends, but the result is one of
the tensest games in existence, a fine modern replacement for the likes of Diplomacy.
Arkham Horror
Some will argue this should be in the Advanced category, but
I contend that Arkham Horror is
actually a reasonably straightforward game that has been bloated to the point
of near-lunacy by a galaxy of (mostly unnecessary) cards, optional rules and
expansions. A kitchen table has not yet been built that can comfortably contain
a full game of Arkham with all the
expansions laid out.
Strip that away and you instead have a cooperative game
where a team of investigators has to stop one of the Elder Gods from arriving
on Earth through a magical portal in the town of Arkham. The setting’s theme is
not entirely respected – this is more Die
Hard With a Verichteraraberbuch than evoking Lovecraft’s atmosphere of
Earth-shattering horror, with you more likely to punch a Shoggoth in the face
than wet yourself to death – but with the right players in the right mood, the
game can be a huge amount of fun, helped by the batty (and cheerfully
unbalanced) characters you can play.
A more recent version of the game, Eldritch Horror, expands the threat to a global level whilst
dialling back some of the unnecessary bloat of the prior game.
Forbidden Stars
A Warhammer 40,000
space strategy game, Forbidden Stars
is no longer being made but there are a few copies still out in the wild, so
grab one if you can. This is, similarly to Star
Wars: Rebellion (with which it shares a few mechanical similarities), a
strategy game with different races fighting to win. Unlike Rebellion, Forbidden Stars
is suitable for 4 players and is less asymmetrical, with the races having
approximately comparable abilities and skills. What makes the game more
interesting are the hidden objectives which you have to race to achieve,
sometimes requiring you to have to cross half the galaxy through hostile
territory with opposing players unsure of what you are
doing. Warp storms which close down routes across the board also add to
tactical complexity.
But if you want to smash your friend’s Ork battle fleet and
land your Space Marine legions (backed up by Titans) on his largest colony
world for the hell of it, you certainly can do that as well. Forbidden Stars is also a fine, somewhat lighter
alternative to Twilight Imperium for
those who don’t have entire weekends they can sink into playing one game.
For Advanced Players
Twilight Imperium
The grand-daddy of big strategy games, Twilight Imperium comes in an insanely-sized box, takes a while to
set up and sucks entire days away as players struggle to take control of a star
cluster and fend off several other players. The board game equivalent of video
games like Master of Orion and Stellaris, Twilight Imperium isn’t mechanically the most complex game around,
but it is one of the longest (even a brief game can take 4-5 hours, and long
ones can consume entire weekends). The time-destroying nature of Twilight Imperium and its massive size
can be overwhelming and off-putting, but a single game of Twilight Imperium can also generate stories and anecdotes your
players will be talking about for years. Rewarding, but not for the timid.
Space Hulk
A spin-off from the Warhammer
40,000 science fantasy universe, Space
Hulk is the original game of tense, nerve-shredding horror. One player has
to direct their squad of Terminator Space Marines through the creaking,
claustrophobic halls of a derelict spacecraft, the other has to assault them
with a seemingly never-ending flood of ravenous alien horrors. The game can be
brutal and often unfair, but replays soon reveal clever strategies and tactics
to win (although, of all the games listed here, this is the one that is most reliant on the luck of the dice roll).
The reason I put this in the Advanced section isn’t because
it is mechanically complex - it’s actually pretty straightforward – but because
it can be gruelling and unfair to the point of playing it can make you wonder
if you are a masochist. This is certainly not a game for children or those with
short tempers. But beating the game and achieving a tricky mission objective
against the odds is an unbeatable high.
Descent: Journeys in
the Dark
Descent is a
dungeon-exploring game which, if you play it as a one-off adventure, is
reasonably straightforward. The game’s complexity and addictive nature comes
from its campaign mode, which unfolds over multiple games with your heroes and
the bad guy, the Overseer, becoming more powerful and better-equipped between
adventures. The beautiful miniatures and seemingly endless array of tokens are
decidedly moreish and the expandability of the game is second to none. Many
modern board games revel in the tactile, physical experience of having lots of
tokens, models and things to play
with and move around the board, but none have nailed that aspect quite as well as
Descent.
Descent’s key
weakness is that it attempts to replicate the appeal of roleplaying games like Dungeons and Dragons in a boardgame
setting, but arguably does not do so as elegantly as the much older Hero Quest or Warhammer Quest, and it does raise the question of why you simply
don’t play D&D instead. Then you
see the latest miniature your Overseer has bought and painted for the game for the next dungeon, which you need to beat to complete the campaign, and
you realise why.
The games I’ve mentioned here only scratch the surface of what’s
out there. There are also games like Quadropolis
and Suburbia which can scratch that
desire to build your own city, or Lords
of Waterdeep which allows you to manage a fantasy metropolis. There are
very quick-and-simple games like Love
Letter and Cthulu Dice or more
sprawling epics like Silver Tower.
And there’s also zombie games, like Zombiecide
and Last Night on Earth. In fact,
there’s lots of zombie games, it’s a thing at the moment. If you’re not willing
to splash out on a big board game (and to be fair they can be expensive,
although rarely much more so than a video game), there’s usually lots of gaming
groups around where you can drop by and see games in action and see what takes
your fancy. It’s an interesting time for the field and surprisingly engrossing
once you get involved with it.
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