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Columns > Unplugged > GamerDad Unplugged: Christmas Shopping Guide
Video games are well and good but how about some boardgames for some real family entertainment?  In the beginning, games were not in an electronic form. Long before Pac-Man and Pong, there were board games like chess and Chutes and Ladders. We've come a long way from the arcade games in the 70s. In the world of computer and video games, there have been huge improvements in the graphical qualities, depth of play, and entire new genres have been developed. Board games have not stayed the same either. Particularly in the last ten years, board games have evolved and changed so that they are a far cry from the games of old. Today's board games are almost as far removed from moving a little metal shoe around a square playing field as today's platformers are from the original Donkey Kong. The following is a list of a few games to help holiday shoppers dip into this new era of board games. While there are certainly more games out there that might come highly recommended, almost any one of these would serve as a fine reintroduction to the world of board games. Most of these are quite family-friendly, but tend to play best with a minimum of three people. While they tend to have more rules than Monopoly or PayDay, an average middle school student shouldn't have any problem understanding the rules. Younger children should still be able to play, but would need someone to read through the rules for them, help explain them, and perhaps add in a little coaching from time to time. You probably won't find most of these games on the shelves at Wall Mart or even ToysRUs, but most of them could be found at a local game specialty store. I'd encourage you to check out and support your local game store for these and other recommendations. However, if none are to be found in your area, one of the best online board game retailers is Funagain Games. Their website has information and reviews about many games. They also import games from Europe and usually include an English translation of any non-English rules. If this short list of games isn't enough for you, you can browse the top 100 games as picked by Games Magazine for the past couple of decades. Here's a sample of highly recommended games to whet your appetite for modern board gaming. Each game is listed along with its U.S. publisher, manufacturer's suggested retail price, and the game designer(s). Family (Strategy) Games These games play best with a minimum of three people and usually a maximum of four or five. Settlers of Catan - Mayfair Games $38 Designer: Klaus Teuber One of the first German board games to become popular in the United States, Settlers of Catan has many game elements that help give this game a fresh, new take on family board games. The board is generated randomly by laying out hexagonal tiles to form an island surrounded by water. Players choose their starting positions and then turns consist of rolling the dice, collecting income in the form of resources, trading resources, and then purchasing new upgrades and buildings. Since all players collect resources whenever the dice are rolled, everyone has something to do even on other player's turns. The game is a nice mix of planning, luck, and bargaining skills. Playable by three or four people, there is an expansion out that allows games for up to six players. Two of the main games can be combined into a huge eight player game, but the game can begin to get unwieldy. The basic game is great fun and a classic, and several expansions (The Seafarers of Catan and The Cities and Knights of Catan) are also available that slightly change the gameplay, giving a yet another fresh twist to a very good game. Lord of the Rings - Fantasy Flight $45 Designer: Reiner Knizia One of the most unique board games of recent years, Lord of the Rings sets up to five players as Hobbits who must destroy the One Ring in Mount Doom. Since all the players are Hobbits, everyone wins or loses together. This creates a great atmosphere of cooperation as everyone struggles to help the party along and win the game. The game is played using cards as resources, a scoring track to monitor Sauron's progress, and a number of different game boards that must be passed in order to win the game. Each game board represents a different section of the books, such as Shelob's Lair, or Moria. During their turn, a player plays up to two cards to move pieces on the game board. There is one main path, and several side paths. While the main path must be completed to move to the next board, the side paths often give bonuses to the players and if the main path is completed with very little movement on the side paths, there are usually grave consequences. The game is brilliantly put together with the cards and full color game boards richly illustrating scenes and locals from the book. As the game progresses, cards and other resources begin to get scarce and the whole party often feels as if failure is just around the next corner. While the game is still fun if you are unfamiliar with the story, those who have read the books or seen the films will be pleasantly amazed at how well this game can recreate the tension and atmosphere of the original story. Even though it is sort of a "group solitaire" style game, there are enough random elements to create a game that can be played again and again. There are also two expansions available. The first adds in more cards to help the players, but also adds in a deck of cards with enemies that must be defeated while progress is maintained on the main game board. It is not necessary at all to enjoy the main game, but can spice things up for players that think they've gotten too good at the standard game. The second expansion available includes more helpful cards for the players, but also creates a new player position as the Saruman character. While it is great for those who enjoy the game and the story, this significantly changes the feel of the game, since everyone is no longer on the same team. Carcassone - Rio Grande $20 Designer: Klaus-Jurgen Wrede There are a whole crop of recent games based on picking up tiles and placing them down in the center of the table to create a changing game board. Detractors might consider it extreme dominoes, but these games go far beyond that simple description. One of the best tile placing games is Carcassone. Tiles show depictions of farmland, cities, rivers, roads, and monasteries. Draw a tile and place it on the center of the table to match any sides adjacent to previously played tiles. After placing a tile, you may also play one of your markers to claim a segment of road, city, farm, or monastery. Whenever a road, city, or monastery is completed, you score points and get your marker(s) back. Since your supply of markers is very limited, you have to use them sparingly. While placing markers to claim farmland can score a high number of points, you must leave farmland markers in place for the entire game. They only score at the end. Reaching a delicate balance of using and scoring your markers while avoiding moves that give points to your opponents is tricky proposition and is what makes the game entertaining. As other great games on this list, there are expansions available, and even a remake or two with a slightly different theme. In general, they add some variation to the game for game players who have played the original game over and over again. However, the expansions are not needed to enjoy the original game, which quite easily stands on its own excellent merits. Axis and Allies - Hasbro / Milton Bradley $45 Designer: Larry Harris While it much more of a vintage game than others on this list, not everyone is familiar with this classic simplified wargame. Designed to somewhat recreate World War II, it can most easily be described as a sort of "Risk-plus". Dice are rolled to resolve combat in a simple way, but with a few twists that make it more complex than Risk. Instead of all army pieces having the same capabilities, as in Risk, in Axis and Allies each type of piece has advantages and disadvantages. Tanks can move farther and attack better than infantry, but infantry are much cheaper to build, etcà All nations aren't created equal, as in Risk, but are given a value representing their GNP to provide players with income at the end of their turns. With five nations represented, Japan and Germany allied to fight against the US, England, and Russia, there is a nice element of cooperation to the game. Newer players can be given a country allied with more experience players so they can receive unbiased advice. With a large, colored game board, and hoards of cute little plastic pieces representing each unit type, a game in progress is pretty to look at and will tap into any army-men nostalgia held by the players. While not a game for everyone, Axis and Allies is a great baby step forward in complexity for a gamer who enjoys a game like Risk and might need something just a little bit more challenging. Party Games These games can accommodate groups, up to seven or more players. Bohnanza - Rio Grande / Amigo $16 Designer: Uwe Rosenberg Bohnanza, or as those who played the original German version call it: "The Bean Game", is a fun little game where each player is a bean farmer. Played with cards, each player has cards in their hand representing different types of beans. You have two bean fields. Each field can hold only one type of bean card, but as many cards of that type as you can fit. In an interesting twist, the cards in your hand are kept in the order they are drawn, since, at the start of your turn, you plant the bean card (or two) from your hand that have been in your hand the longest. If that means you have to get rid of beans in one of your two fields to plant the new type, so be it. You also have to reveal two cards from the main deck and either trade them away or plant them immediately. The more beans you have in a field, the more they're worth once you sell them. There are many types of beans, and their value differs according to how many cards exist for that type of bean. At the end of the game, the player with the most gold wins. Strategy comes into play in all the possible trading interactions with other players. You are often forced to sell off a field early in order to make room for a new type of bean, so often there are bargains to be had when a player is desperate to get rid of a troublesome card. The game is easy to play, fairly fast moving, and can accommodate up to seven players. The cards are cute little pictures of outlandish bean-shaped cartoon characters. Some of the fun of the game is in renaming each bean type to a name of your own choosing. Apples to Apples - Out of the Box Publishing $20 Designer: Matthew Kirby & Mark Alan Osterhaus This is the perfect massive party game. It allows almost any number of people, I would expect the game would slow down at around 20 people, and you'd begin to run out of cards at about 30 or 40 people. Basically, one player is a judge. That player flips over a category card that reads something like "love" or "squishy". Then all the other players quickly choose a card from their hand that exemplifies the category. Since you only have five cards to choose from, you might have quandaries like: "Is Elvis more squishy than the Eiffle Tower?" or "Which is more tasteless, the Korean War, or a Shark?". Once players choose a card, its placed facedown in the center of the table. The last player to choose a card and place it down has to pick it back up. This lends a time element to the game. Then the Judge takes all the cards and decides which card, IN HIS OR HER OPINION, best fits the category. The player who put down that card gets the category card and the role of the judge passes to the judge's left. To win, you need to collect three category cards. Since the judge's opinions are always final, it helps to know your opponents. Some judges just happen to feel that Madonna is a great fit for the "Expensive" category, even if another player plays the "Diamond Ring" card. The game is easy to learn and players can even join or leave in the middle of the game without disrupting anything. Expansions are available if you get bored of the original set of cards included in the game. There are even blank cards provided for you to customize things a bit. Rage - Amigo $10 Rage is a trick-taking card game along the lines of Bridge, Spades, or Euchre - given a hand of cards, predict how many tricks you are likely to take that round. However, Rage is unique in that its deck has six different suits, each numbered 0-15, and 12 special cards. Since there are so many cards, it can be easily played with up to 10 players. Games with significantly fewer players are played by removing a suit or two. The special cards further add to the game by adding or subtracting points for a specific trick, or outright changing the trump suit for the rest of the round. The randomness of the special cards helps to make the game more palatable for non-card sharks. The large deck size makes it a nice game for larger groups. The two combine to make this game highly recommended to card playing groups. Unfortunately, the game is currently only produced in German. However, there is no German on any of the cards, just numbers and colors. A rule translation is also easily available on the web, or often included with a purchase of the game if it's purchased in the United States. 2-Player games While many games _can_ be played with only two players, here are a few that are designed just for two players. Settlers of Catan Card Game - Mayfair Games $20 Designer: Klaus Teuber The board game spawned a card game that is one of the better two player games around. Since it is based around the same themes as the board game, the card game is a little complex to pick up if you haven't already played the original. However, it pays off in interesting strategy. Draw cards from one of five stacks of cards to build up your holdings. Roll a die to receive resources used to play your cards. There are also abilities that let you look at the stacks of cards and a good player will remember which cards are in which piles and use that to their advantage when drawing. The only drawback occurs towards the end of the middle game when it is rare for a player who is behind to be able to catch up. There is also a set of expansion cards available. The English expansion is actually a collection of several expansions produced in German, and can give this exceptional two player card game even longer lasting appeal. Lord of the Rings: The Confrontation - Fantasy Flight Games $20 Designer: Reiner Knizia Best described as a game of mini-Stratego, this small two player game comes with a small game board played in a diamond shape from corner to corner, eight or so playing pieces per side, and a small deck of special abilities for each side. One player is the side of good and controls cards and pieces that represent the characters on the side of good from the story. The evil player controls pieces such as orcs, wargs, and a balrog to try to defeat the good player. When two pieces meet in adjacent squares, cards are played, the identities of the pieces are revealed and added to the card values, and the losers piece is removed from the game. In general, the good player has more flexible piece abilities and special abilities, while the evil player has more powerful pieces. To win, the good player just has to get a single piece across to the enemy corner, while the evil player has to defeat most of the good pieces to win. Faster to set up and play than Stratego, this game is a fun little two player game that provides a good selection of strategic choices. Dvonn - Rio Grande $30 Designer: Kris Burm A game that could best be compared to the abstract strategy of checkers. Starting with a game board and some nice heavy plastic stacking pieces you try to create and control the tallest stacks of pieces. On your turn you are required to move one stack of pieces under your control. Stacks are controlled if the top piece is your color. However, stacks must move exactly the same number of spaces as their height. They also must land on an existing stack. This results in a very fluid game at the start as all the stacks have a size of one, and a very restrictive game at the end as there are fewer and fewer valid moves left. Definitely more of a thinking game like chess or checkers, the game is still quite fun due to the very fluid middle game. Since even one piece can change the possession of the tallest stack, and players are forced to make a move even if they don't want to, the game can have significant reversals of fortune at the very end.
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