Unplugged: 2006 Holiday Shopping Guide by Dr. Matt Carlson December 13, 2006

Two Player Games
It is always difficult to find a fast-playing two player game that provides a variety of options to players without resulting in a runaway win for one side or the other. San Juan is an excellent option. Very playable with two players, but also up to four, this simplified version of Puerto Rico has players using cards to simulate settling and developing a thriving town on the island.

Dragons of Kir by Future Magic Games
Dragons of Kir is a gem. Produced by a small company, it consists of four rectangular blocks representing dragons, a slew of wooden tiles, and a roll-up chessboard. The game starts with a home base on the board for each player. To play, players simply place a tile on the board and then four dragons move forward one square, possibly interacting with tiles that were previously placed on the board. A player loses by having a dragon collide with their home space. Part game part spatial puzzle, this game is great for the engineer or mechanically inclined person on your Christmas list.

While meaty enough to fall best into the advanced game category, Caylus can easily be played as a two player game.


Family Games
There are a wealth of great games that a family with older kids (10 and older) can play together. Some of the greats of years past include:
Settlers of Catan the classic game of trading, building, and development
Lord of the Rings where players cooperate to destroy the One Ring in this richly thematic game
Ticket to Ride can best be described as a train track link-making game where links are completed by collecting colored cards like Rummy. Quick to learn, it is great for non-gamers to play. A new version was released this year, Ticket to Ride: Marklin which adds a few more complications to make it even better for fans of advanced strategy games. There is also an expansion for the original, USA 1910 which is a great gift for any fan of the original.
Bohnanza is an excellent 3 to 7 player game based around trading, of all things, beans in bean fields.
Shadows Over Camelot is another cooperative game, where all players are knights of the round table trying to perform good honorable deeds. Unfortunately, one of the players just might be trying to stab everyone in the back!

Tsuro - by Wizkids
This elegant game has a georgeous far Eastern style and sports a fun game that can be played in 20 minutes or less by up to 8 players. The board is laid out as a grid, and on one's turn a player places a path tile from their hand on the grid directly in front of their player marker. This causes their marker, and any other player's marker adjacent to that square to follow the new path created. The goal is to move one's marker around and eliminate all the other players by forcing them down paths that end at the edge of the board or lead directly into an opponent.

No Thanks! - by Z-Man Games
This simple card game gives every player a few negative point chips which are spent in order to NOT take a face-up card (worth from 3 to 35 points) off the central deck. As players pass on a card, that card continues to gain negative chips until someone runs out of chips or simply chooses to take that card. Players thus collect cards throughout the game, spending and collecting chips along the way. Once all the cards have been distributed, the player with the fewest points wins. Collecting cards is sometimes not as bad as it sounds, as a run of several cards counts only as the lowest point total. The player with the LEAST points at the end, wins.

Abridged - by Out of the Box Games
Fans of Bridge should take note; this game is a simplified version that teaches all the basics of playing the game, without having to worry about Bridge's complicated bidding system. A great gift idea for any Bridge fan who is always trying to convert more fans into the hobby, it can also serve as an introduction to the game for younger players.

Fairy Tale - by Z-Man games
This cardgame manages to capture some of the fun of the ﾑdraft' method of playing collectible card games and packs it into a single deck of cards. Players begin with five cards, select one and pass the rest to their neighbor. Everyone then selects a second card from the four they receive and pass three cards on. This continues until everyone has selected five cards. Players then play three of their five selected cards on to the table and a new round of card selection begins. Once four rounds have completed and twelve cards have been played, players score points for cards that have been played. The cards interact in many different ways making the decision to keep or pass a particular card a difficult one. The advanced game has many layers of planning as well as some luck, while the beginning game is easily taught to game playing novices. As a single deck of cards, it is just the right size for a nice Christmas stocking stuffer.

Light Wargames
My past favorites continue to hold up well. As far as quick-playing wargames in the classic dice-fest style, nothing beats Nexus Ops by Avalon Hill. Available for $20 or less at many stores, it is a great game for the money. If cool plastic miniatures is your thing, Heroscape by Hasbro continues to be a great option. With piles of figures and expansions to choose from, this is a great ﾑfirst' battle game for kids. There are piles of expansions and terrain features available, but none of them are collectible making the game much easier on the family budget. Finally, Memoir ﾑ44 by Days of Wonder is an excellent choice for fans of history or of WWII. Players use terrain tiles to set up historic battles on a hexagon board and then resolve the battle through the use of command cards that help create a fog-of-war feel by restricting players to only use specific sections of the board on any one turn.

For light wargames, 2006 has seen more expansions than entirely new games produced. There were several expansions for Heroscape including a very nifty castle expansion that includes a castle gate. Memoir ﾑ44 had its share of expansions including figures and rules for the Pacific Theater. Using nearly the same rules as Memoir ﾑ44, the game Command and Colors: Ancients by GMT Games has the designer creating a slightly more complex wargame with unit support and leadership units coming into play. This version of the game has a good heft-quotient as it contains hundreds of little wooden blocks representing various units from Carthage and Rome, including larger blocks representing elephant-mounted troops.

Two games I was unable to play this year, but have on my urgent ﾑtest drive' list are Twilight Struggle by GMT Games and BattleLore by Days of Wonder. Twilight Struggle is a recreation of the cold war between the US and the USSR that is implemented using an area control mechanism to represent hotspots around the world. Players maneuver to control these areas by playing cards which represent historical situations and events. Players can try to pull a coup or spark a revolt in an area but need to be sure never to accidentally start a nuclear war (and instantly lose the game.) If no other option is to your liking, spend a card and try to further your space program. BattleLore has Memoir '44 or Command and Colors style rules, but has a medieval or fantasy setting. It just released in December and has created quite a stir in the boardgame community with Days of Wonder promising to support the game with future options and expansions. The basic gameplay is similar to Command and Colors: Ancients, but has added options for each player to choose a starting war council which then affects how they can use Lore (magic) during the battle.



Advanced Games
For the experienced game player, the best and richest games are those that have a bit more thoughtful options to explore and take a bit of time to develop. The advanced games category contains those games that take two or three hours to play and may use up a good half-hour just to explain to a first time player. However, that time is rewarded with a deep, satisfying game experience for all those involved.
Puerto Rico by Rio Grande Games is perhaps the granddaddy of them all, it is consistently ranked as the best boardgame by hobbyists. During the game, players select roles which give all players an action, but a special bonus to the player who selected the role. There are multiple ways to obtain victory points but most are accumulated through building buildings to improve one's town or by shipping goods back to Europe.
Goa by Rio Grande Games is another good in-depth game of development and multiple paths to victory. Players first auction off tiles that provide them with resources which are used to upgrade various technologies, which can then provide access to even more resources. Points are scored at the end of the game based on what players have upgraded and to what level they have achieved..

Caylus by Rio Grande Games
This game was lauded as the next best thing when it appeared in the Fall of 2005. I was finally able to give it a go this past fall and it lives up to most of the hype. Players must manage their cash and their workers wisely in order to obtain resources which are then spent to build buildings or contribute to the work on the King's castle. Players score points in many different ways, opening up a wide variety of possible winning strategies. Playable by two players as easily as five (at about 20 to 30 minutes per player) this game is a must for any serious boardgamer's library.

Railroad Tycoon by Eagle Games
This game based around the popular computer game has players spending cash to lay track and connect towns in the Eastern half of the United States. Players eventually use their own tracks to move colored ﾑgoods' cubes into towns that have a demand for them. This increases players' income and helps them to purchase more track or even upgrade their locomotives. The game has a huge board and great little plastic pieces, making it visually appealing to help attract a non-boardgamer to the table. Eagle Games ceased production midway through the year, but the game is still widely available for purchase.

World of Warcraft by Fantasy Flight Games
Known for making huge-box games full of plastic pieces, Fantasy Flight has managed to capture much of the fun and spirit of the online computer game in a boardgame for two teams of players (1 to 3 on a side). Players travel around the board defeating monsters to solve quests which reward them with experience and gold. As players progress they will gain in power through levels, talents, spells, and equipment. The entire game is a race for each side to grow in power enough to be the first to defeat the final boss monster. If both sides take too long, the game goes into sudden-death mode where the two teams fight it out directly to determine a winner. With every character class in the game represented, this game may be just the thing to pull away an avid online gamer long enough to figure out that the kitchen does actually have a table and can be used to hold things other than the mail.

One final game to mention is Thurn and Taxis by Rio Grande Games. It won many awards this past year, but I have yet to have a chance to try it out. It is a middleweight game (bridging the Family and Advanced game categories) where players try to develop mail routes throughout Europe during the Middle Ages. It combines some aspects of set collecting with a few other mechanics to make a nice game that rewards forward planning but allows players a chance to expose themselves to the occasional risk.

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