Holiday Gift Idea: Board Games

Game titles below are linked to pages for those games on BoardGameGeek.com, an excellent resource where you can read reviews about and view pictures of thousands of games in their database, and chat in the forums with experienced and accomplished gamers of all stripes. The pictures here are also all from the 'Geek.

Party Games and Word Games

The term "party games" refers to silly, fairly simple titles best played with groups or teams. Popular party games of recent years include Pictionary or Outburst—why not try some new ones such as Apples to Apples, Catchphrase, or Wise and Otherwise? Hilarity is bound to ensue.

It's time for word game fans to move beyond basic Scrabble or Boggle. It's one small step to Super Scrabble—the same game but with a larger board and more tiles, and a slightly different distribution of letters. Quiddler is a card game for 1-8 players, where you spell words using the letters on the cards—but the words get longer with each hand.

Eurogames

Looking for something a little more challenging, with more decision-making and direct competition? Teens and adults may enjoy wandering into the wilderness of "eurogames," which usually have a strong theme and go beyond the simple "roll and move" mechanic. (Europe—especially Germany—leads the way in development of this kind of game, hence the nickname for the genre.) Three games deserve special mention as "gateways" for your entry into eurogaming.

Settlers of Catan: This was my entry into the world of more complex games. The board changes every game! You're trying to build roads, settlements, and cities with the meagre resources generated by each roll of the dice—but your enemy may block your path, and there's a robber who can swipe resource cards from your hand. Can you gather enough wood, brick, wheat, stone, and wool to build and trade your way to victory? This game is lots of fun, and an excellent first eurogame, for it combines many mechanics: building, resource management, and a modular board. It has several expansions and related games, including two with religious themes (Settlers of Canaan and Settlers of Zarahemla), but we usually play with just the base game. (Full layout of base game seen below.)

Carcassonne: In this game, you score points as you build cities, farms, and roads. Sounds similar to Catan, so far, but it's not—here you draw a tile and play it next to any already-played tile whose edge matches one of the four on the tile you hold. You can play nice, and only try to expand on your own properties—or you can be a scoundrel and force your opponent to count low-scoring items. There is a large family of Carcassonne games; we prefer to play with the Inns & Cathedrals expansion. (Game in progress seen below.)

Ticket to Ride: A beautiful board and fun plastic train pieces add to the fun of this game. Collect colored cards to spend on train routes on a map of the USA, and score extra points if you complete an unbroken line of trains from one point on your route ticket to another. As the map fills up, you'll have to find open routes—you may have to go from New York to Seattle through Dallas! Great for kids 8 and up. I recommend you start with the version with the US map as we did, but we have recently switched over to the Ticket to Ride: Europe version almost exclusively—it has a few new rules as well. (US map seen below.)

When you're ready to go deeper into the catalog of eurogames, you'll have many different themes and mechanics to explore. Try bidding and auction games with Ra, El Grande, or Princes of Florence. Take resource management to the max with Puerto Rico, or its little brother card game San Juan. Go on a quest with the Knights of the Round Table in the collaborative (and traitorous!) game Shadows Over Camelot. Build civilizations with Tigris & Euphrates. The list goes on and on; check out boardgamegeek.com for more.

Abstract Games and Wargames

The term "abstract games" usually refers to games where you're moving or placing pieces on a board according to a specific set of rules, without any extraneous items such as cards or dice. These games may be themed (i.e., pieces that look Egyptian or are otherwise styled) or not, but usually the theme is irrelevant to the rules. Some of these games actually have no board—the pieces themselves form the board when you place them. Chess and checkers are both abstracts.

Fans of abstract games such as chess might want to check out the titles available in Project Gipf. The six games in this series feature simple, un-themed pieces but complex rules. Hive looks similar to the Gipf games, with a more obvious theme (bugs!)—each kind of bug has its own rules for movement. And try the Tetris-like Blokus or the lasers/mirrors reflection game Deflexion for more abstract fun.

If you have the heart of a warrior and the patience of a saint, you may want to try some of the long hex-and-counter wargames such as Advanced Squad Leader. There is a large following for wargames like this, and I'm no expert, so I won't even try to give details—but I know that Multi-Man Publishing is a popular producer of hex-and-counter wargames. The closest I'll probably get to this kind of game is Memoir '44, which seems like a "lite" wargame, with several different scenarios to play through. But Multi-Man does have a game called Target Arnhem: Across 6 Bridges which is "free" (you pay $5 S&H when you order from their web site) and bills itself as an excellent beginner's hex-and-counter wargame.

Where to Buy Board Games

Many of the games mentioned here cannot be purchased at Target or even Toys'R'Us—they might have the party games and word games, but generally don't carry the eurogames or abstracts. For those, check out The Game Preserve, and there are two locations here in town: in the Fashion Mall at 86th and Keystone (317.571.9110), and on US 31 South at Stop 12 in Greenwood (317.881.4263). The Game Preserve has some eurogames, and many party and kids' games as well as a lot of miniatures (i.e., Warhammer 40K) and collectible card games ("CCGs" such as Magic: The Gathering).

Another good option in Indy is Boardroom Games in Broad Ripple (317.257.5149), in the little strip mall next to Broad Ripple High School, next to the wonderful Indian restaurant Shalimar (see IndyScribe review). Boardroom has a good selection of eurogames and abstracts (better than The Game Preserve, for both) and quite a few wargames, as well as some miniatures and CCGs. They also have the party games and word games such as SuperScrabble and Quiddler. I just purchased a mahjongg set there—I found a very nice set at a pretty good price.

You can also find these games for sale at several online retailers. They're usually cheaper when you buy online, but of course, you're giving up the instant gratification you get from going home with a new game in your hands! My favorite online game retailer is fairplaygames.com, which has a great selection, low prices, and fast shipping. Here are a few others:

• TimeWellSpent.org
• BoardsandBits.com
• GameSurplus.com
• Boardgames
• Amazon.com

Happy gaming!