Board Games
Posted: Tue Sep 13, 2011 3:00 pm
James' thread about Dominion got me thinking that one of the big hobbies of mine outside of baseball stuff is board games. I wouldn't go so far as to say I'm a die hard gamer. I don't have any interest in board gaming conventions. Collectible card games like Magic have no draw to me. I'm not into regular sessions of long war games like Axis and Allies, Risk, or Diplomacy. I've only played Axis and Allies once, and live games of Diplomacy just 3 times, I think. I think it would be most accurate to say that I'm a fan of what some people call "German-style" board games. They're more complicated from a rules and stategy standpoint than the types of games we played as kids, but aren't as complex or time consuming as some of the games that are more like simulations (e.g. Axis and Allies).
Gaming to me is most fun when done with friends after a nice dinner at someone's house. To me, it's a more social activity than watching a movie.
Here then, is a list of games that I own, and a brief thought on each one. Click the links if you want more info about what the game is about. These are sorted in some combination of how frequently they get played now and historically, which relates somewhat to how much I like them, too.
Settlers of Catan - Introduced to me by a friend, this is the game that started me on this type of board gaming. I now own the Cities & Knights and Seafarers expansions, the 5-6 player expansions for all 3, the 2 player card game version, and a German book with a bunch of additional variants. Tremendous game in that it's simple to learn, easy to be good at, and has enough balance between luck and strategy to keep both casual and more serious gamers entertained. We'll often play without the robber to speed things up, but that does take away some of the player interaction. The card game is good for travelling, but does require some space to lay out your cards, so is a bit hard to play in a plane.
Ticket to Ride - Aside from Settlers, Ticket to Ride is probably the first game I reach for when introducing people to this type of board gaming. Like Settlers, the rules are simple and it has a good balance of luck and strategy, although a bit more on the strategy side than Settlers, IMO. It's fun to watch the game board gradually get filled with trains and there's good tension everytime someone builds in an area where you would like to. We have the 2-3 player Switzerland variant as well as the 1910 card set. When it's just my wife and I, we almost always play Switzerland. We haven't played with the 1910 cards much yet. We do have the card game version of this one as well, which we will take travelling sometimes. It's also not that great on a plane, but is fun if you can't take the full game along. I have played the European map as well, which is also very good, although I don't like the map itself as much. I do like that it includes tunnels (as does Switzerland), but don't much care for the train station concept.
Bohnanza - This game has become a favorite of everyone we've taught it to. We have the High Bohn Plus expansion, although only include it with experienced players. I think this expansion adds a lot to a game that is already a lot of fun to begin with. There's a huge amount of interaction in the form of trading due to the fact that you are forced to play your cards in the order you pick them up, and you almost never want to. The cards are quite fun, including a green bean who is busy puking and a red bean who's embarrassed to be naked.
Zooloretto - This game is fast joining Settlers and Ticket To Ride as a next choice to play with new gamers. It's a little more complicated to learn than either of those, and the strategy is a lot more difficult to master. The process of selecting animals is fraught with tough decisions as the game goes on. It's a lot of fun to build up your zoo and see the animals in it. My wife is particularly fond of the babies. This one has a bit of a cuteness factor, but not in a way that is enough to put anyone off.
Mahjong - My wife is Chinese-American, my dad grew up in Indonesia, and my folks lived in Thailand and Singapore before I was born, but I learned to play this while visiting a friend in Sweden. Go figure. This is not the tile matching game that you play on a computer, but a highly complex form of Gin Rummy with tiles. It's a huge gambling game in the far east (it's essentially their poker), but even without gambling on it, is quite addicting.
Robo Rally - A bit geeky in concept, this game is best with several players. The fact that you're programming robots to navigate a dangerous factory floor and don't have any idea what the other players are going to do leads to some pretty funny moments when all of a sudden you've been pushed into a laser, pit or simply in some totally wrong direction. And that assumes you actually got your orders entered in such a way that it does what you were hoping it would do. Great fun and easy to learn, but requires a little bit of spacial reasoning, which for some can be daunting.
Dominion: Intrigue - This is the newest game in our collection. See James' thread for more detail on what I think about it.
Carcassonne - We don't play this one nearly as much as we used to, but it's probably the easiest of these games to have totally unrelated side conversations while playing it. It's a tile placing game, and I really like watching the countryside unfold as the game progresses. We have the Inns & Cathedrals, Traders & Builders, and the River expansions. The River typically comes with the game (it did with ours) and is a great way to start the board off. We like all of them, but Traders & Builders added the most player interactivity as you now have incentive to close off another player's city. Fun game, and fun to look at.
Guillotine - I first played this game while visiting my brother in Fontainebleau, which just seemed absolutely perfect. The game has Disney-like graphics and is really easy for newbies to pick up. Games are quick and there's a good amount of luck involved. Strategy is hard to plan (just grab the best noble you can at the time), but there's enough chaos involved and funny cards to keep you interested in it till the next game.
Thurn and Taxis - I like this game a fair amount but we don't play it that much. It feels a bit like a mix between Settlers and Ticket to Ride. It's a bit harder to learn, and plays very differently depending on the number of players. The 2 player game can quickly become one sided. The big knock on this game is that there's very little player interaction. At times it can feel like you're playing a solo game but there are other people playing on the same board with you.
Incan Gold - This game is essentially just a vehicle for the classic game theory problem of the Prisoner's Dilemma with a slight wrinkle. For that reason, I don't play it with just my wife that much anymore, but we absolutely love playing it with more people. You can finish a game in 15 minutes and get a bunch in that way. There's a fair amount of agonizing and accusations with more people, and it's all ultimately about how greedy/risky you are versus those you're playing against. Great game to take anywhere, too.
Munchkin - This is a spoof of dungeons and dragons, which if you like that game, you owe it to yourself to try this one. You fight monsters such as Maul Rats, Insurance Salesmen, and Santa with weapons like the sneaky bastard sword. There are tons of expansions for this game, although we only have the Unnatural Axe. We like this expansion a lot, but feel like we have enough cards for the game that there's no real incentive to get any more cards (the deck's already too big to easily shuffle in one go). The game can take a while if you're particularly mean before people have established their characters a bit, so we generally only play mean once someone gets close to winning or way ahead of everyone else. It can be a bit confusing at first for folks who have no background in fantasy, but they usually warm up to the great cards.
Lord of the Rings - This is a fascinating game and the only game I own that is a cooperative game. You set out as the hobbits across Middle Earth and have to work together to make it to Mount Doom and destroy the ring. The artwork is great, the game is true to the story as much as can be expected, and it's quite fun. Playing with different numbers of people affects the game, and you can play at different difficulty, but no matter how you do it, there's no guarantee you'll actually win. We probably win about 50% of the time we play, which is part of what makes it so fun. One word of advice... if you ever let your significant other play as Fatty Bulger, you will never hear the end of it.
Elfenland - Another game that has a fair amount of visual appeal, you try to visit all the cities in Elfenland using different types of elvish transport. You play off of the other players and the game mechanics mean that while there isn't often a tie (yes, ties are possible), it's usually quite close. It's not he first on my list, but fun to pull out now and then.
Lost Cities - Great little 2 player game, Lost Cities is quick to play and you usually play a few rounds and then tally up the points. It can be very agonizing debating whether or not to play a card to your own expedition or to discard and hope your opponent doesn't pick up your discard. All discards can be picked back up later, so you often don't know if a card will be useful later on. There's probably more luck involved in the game than it feels like, which is a good thing, IMO.
Masons - This was one of those games we bought when we weren't sure what to buy anymore. It's easy to set up and doesn't require all that much thinking, so we do pull it out occasionally when we want something a little different or we're just tired of the other stuff we've been playing. Good amount of luck and tactics (not really strategy).
Milles Bornes - The classic French racing card game, this one got a lot of play for a while and now only gets pulled out occasionally. For some reason, I always seem to have aggressive play backfire on me later in the game. I think this game just seems a bit simple compared to some of our other favorites.
Shear Panic - This game comes with ceramic sheep with colored dots on their back, which I always thought was just a game mechanic until I visited Ireland a few years ago and saw real sheep with colored dots on their backs! Anyway, the game is about rearranging sheep to meet one of four objectives, which change as you move throughout the game. This gives the game good balance and the fact that you have a limited number of moves which you can only use once throughout the game gives it a lot of strategy. I'm not really sure why this game isn't higher up our list, but it just isn't quite as fun as some of the others. Maybe we just play too slow or there's not enough funny/cute involved. Not a bad game, though.
Fluxx - I played this a lot with my roommate in college, and the changing nature of the rules and the objective means that you're never quite sure how close you are to winning until you're really close. And then you're not. Pretty simple game, but you do need to know the cards a bit as combinations of cards are what you need to win. It's brilliantly designed in that you can create card sets to just about any theme you might think of, which the makers of Fluxx have happily done for fun and profit.
Give Me The Brain - This is the only game we actively quote on occasion: "My area is moist!". It's goofy, it's silly, and will probably make you dumber. We're far too old and mature to play this anymore...
Money Tycoons - No link as this is a rip off of Monopoly that I invented along with a friend of mine when I was 12. It's a lot of fun (you can blow things up!), but it takes a while and my wife refuses to play because she thinks the game is evil (occasional extortion has occurred). It was resurrected in part by a grad school friend of mine who was intrigued by it, and I played it a lot at that time but not much since.
You're Bluffing - We own the Dutch "Koe Handel" version of this, and I actually didn't even know there was an English language version until trying to put this list together. Anyway, my wife doesn't like the whole bluffing/bidding concept, so we don't really play this much, but I like it. You have to adjust your strategy as the game goes on, and you're always at the mercy of how much your friends trust you.
Other Games I have played but do not own these (in order I like them):
Puerto Rico - I really thoroughly like this game. My wife does not. She is perfectly good at it, but it does require a fair amount of strategy. Most of the time, the best strategy isn't the one you think will help you the most but the one that will help everyone else the least. This is a frustrating way to play for many people, and does require some analysis on your turn. I ended up winning something like 10 or 12 games of this in a row against our regular gaming friends, and while I've since lost a few times, that kind of took some of the interest in playing out of it. It's not very cheap, and we have friends who have it, so there's not a lot of incentive to buy it for ourselves. That said, I think it's a brilliant game. I have not played with any of the expansions.
Dixit - Last summer I went to the Netherlands to visit my brother and we took a trip to Germany. While there, we figured why not buy the 2010 Spiehl Des Jahres (German game of the year) in Germany? How great would that be? Well, Dixit was it, and it was not cheap, but we bought it and played it and it was fascinating. It's unlike anything I had played before, yet an awful lot like things we've all played. It's a bit like a cross between Apples to Apples and Balderdash. It has huge creativity potential with the amazingly illustrated cards and I'm sure will play differently every time simply by playing with different groups of people. That said, I'm not sure it's something you'd play a lot, and you do need at least 4 people to make it interesting.
Alhambra - I've only played this a couple of times and it's been a while, but this is a very good game, too. There's a good amount of player interaction, luck, and strategy. Like Ticket to Ride, you have limited actions you can take each turn, so it's not too hard to learn, but there's more underneath the game mechanics than I probably understand yet. Definitely worth a serious look if you're looking for a game.
Niagara - This is a game that is always high on our "to buy" list, but we frequently end up trying something new. I like the way that you go through several rounds of having identical moves with everyone, but that for each turn, you can choose from those moves. The tension of falling over the falls is real and happens at least a couple of times every game. It would probably fall in the Elfenland role of a game we really like but don't play as much as some of our other games if we owned it.
Killer Bunnies - This game has gone way commercial with expansion packs galore. I've played it a bunch, but I can't say for sure which expansions were included. The cards are entertaining and geared towards kids, but the game is complex enough to interest adults. I have one major beef with this game, though. You spend the whole game trying to gather carrot cards in hopes that you end up with the one randomly selected one that is the winning carrot. I remember one game where one of my opponents had 19 of the 20 carrot cards, I had the other one, and no one else had any. I won the game because my carrot just happened to be the winning one, and while I was thrilled, it also felt kind of stupid. That said, that kind of randomness means that no matter how badly your game has gone, it doesn't take much to give yourself a chance to win.
Diplomacy - I don't really know how to classify this as anything other than a war game. The fact that there's no luck involved makes it different from all the other war games out there (at least the ones I've played). Best played online/via email since it takes a long time, as evidenced by our PEBA games started on this forum. That said, it is a lot of fun in person, too, but you're never guaranteed to finish.
Civilization - I've played this only once, and I'm not sure if I played this or Advanced Civilization, but any fan of Sid Meier's computer game of the same name owes it to themselves to play this at least once. This is one of those very long simulation type games, and it's basically a pre-cursor to the great work of Meier. It's also easy to see why the board game has limited, albeit cult-like, popularity and the computer game has mass appeal - it's just so complex.
"Kids" games (alphabetically)
Some of these you should know, others perhaps not, some may stir a trip down memory lane.
The aMAZEing Labyrinth - This sill occasionally gets some play in our house. It's kind of the bridge between what I'm terming here as "kids" games and the ones above. The play is simple yet needs a little planning to be good at. The pictures are fun. Best with 4 players.
Battleship - Great kids game. It's the intellectual version of Torpedo Run. I think it was designed by parents who wanted their kids to sit quietly for a half hour.
Doubletrack - I was given a hand-me-down of this game when I was in high school, where it really wasn't that interesting to me anymore, although I tried to play it several times. It seems that it tries to combine Sorry! with something more complex and just feels clunky. I think it would've been ok if I was several years younger.
Inner Circle - A hand-me-down, this game got a bit of play, but mostly from me just trying to figure out the mechanics of the optimal position to be in to win the game. Not a complex game and probably best for kids who are good at counting but are trying to learn to think ahead a few moves. It also didn't help that my copy was missing a few pieces.
Ker Plunk - I seem to recall that it was sometimes hard to get all the little sticks in without bending some, but it was fun to pull a stick and start hearing the marbles fall. You don't have to be very old to understand that marbles falling is bad.
Life - My wife and I always wanted this game growing up and neither of our parents would buy it for us, so we now have a copy. The description at BGG includes "Skill", although I'm not sure why. Still a fun family game, though.
Metropolis - My family had the original Australian version (we lived near Sydney when it was released), and I hope my dad still does somewhere. That said, it's not a very good game. As a kid I liked building up my city, but you spent a lot of time just rolling the dice in the hopes of making enough money to buy the next type of lot you needed. Even then I was bored easily with this.
Monopoly - Monopoly is mostly a game of chance, so it's best known in my house as the parts box for Money Tycoons. It's telling that my friend and I invented a game almost a trillion times better than Monopoly when we were 12.
Operation - Sadly, my primary recollection of this game is that our copy didn't work. To this day, I have no idea if it was a simple matter of my parents removing the batteries.
Scooby-doo! Where Are You? - I absolutely loved this game when I was around 10 years old and hope my dad still has it in a box somewhere. It's just as campy as the cartoon was.
Scotland Yard - I bought a used copy of this a few years ago as I had heard a lot about it but never played it. It's a bit too simple for me as an adult, as Mr. X should really never be caught if he's paying enough attention and planning accordingly.
Stratego - I was at the height of my Stratego prowess in 6th grade, going head-to-head almost daily with the smartest kid in my class. He went on to become valedictorian of our high school and attend Harvard. I went on to... well, never mind.
Torpedo Run - My copy of this did not survive my adolescence. Firing at enemy ships as fast as my little fingers could pull back the trigger, I can't imagine a much more entertaining game for a pre-teen boy. Watching parts of ships go flying into the air on a direct hit was so rewarding I didn't even care if I was playing against anyone!
Party Games: Designed for groups of people, ranked in order I like them.
Balderdash - I don't own this but I do own Beyond Balderdash, which adds some categories (movies, dates, people, and initials) in addition to just words you've never heard of. I like Beyond Balderdash a little better, as the various categories breaks up the monotony of just doing word definitions while still giving those occasionally. Plenty of chance for ridiculous creativity.
Scattegories - My favorite part of this game is arguing for the absolutely ridiculous answers I put down, such as "eggplant" for a term of endearment (successfully, argued, thanks very much!). I tend to think I like this game a lot more than most people I've played it with.
Apples to Apples - I just played this week again and was reminded that this is a fun game. I wish there weren't quite so many people, and playing it with people who are have significantly less education can be frustrating, but as long as you can read you should be able to play. It can get old quickly if people aren't into it, but that's probably true for a lot of party games.
Taboo - This game has caused two significant arguments in my marriage. First, I pronounce the word "taboo" a bit differently than most Americans. Second, my wife had a Dr. Seuss's My Book About Me book filled out for her as a birthday gift by some friends in college, and where it says "I can make a sound like a...", they filled in "taboo buzzer". Some things never get old. I like this one a fair amount, in part because I'm decent with synonyms.
Trivial Pursuit - I went old school on the link, but any version is fine with me. The questions on some of the older versions are quite dated, so that's a bit sad. That said, I don't think any other trivia game has come close to how good this one is. Probably a toss up between this and Taboo for me.
Guesstures - This is better than Charades in that the time limit and extra words means you don't bother as readily with all that silly first word second syllable nonsense and just try to get to the core of the word. That said, it's also silly to buy a game that you can kind of just play by making up your own words.
Loaded Questions - This is as much a getting to know you game as it is a party game. Doesn't quite have the spontaneous fun aspect of the other games, but can be fun when playing with people you're interested in getting to know better. I kind of think it's a good team building game, which makes it sound more boring than it is.
Cranium - This game was a huge draw when I first played it and then it just fizzled. The replay value died off prett quick for me, but I do like the idea of having several different categories to go through and several different types of questions to answer. My favorite was always the sculpting.
Tribond - Not enough replay value to rank higher, but a nice concept. Just needed way more cards. Fun once in a while.
Pictionary - Despite being decent at drawing, I'm not a fan of this. I just think it's not as expressive as the word or charade type games.
Catch Phrase! - I'm really not much of a fan of this one. I think it tries to be too complex and the whole pass the hot potato thing to me just makes it feel really random.
The Bowl Game* - This was the name given to our version of a Charades/Taboo combination game that I played in college. Before the game would start, everyone would write 5 nouns on a small slip of paper, and you'd put them into a big bowl. You'd then take turns having 2 minutes trying to first get the teams to guess the words in charades fashion, then guess them again in taboo fashion. I've spent a lot of time trying to think of the perfect 5 words for such an entry, and I'm convinced that "stud muffin" is one of them.
* - I'm not ranking this, but if I were, I'd put it at the top of the list.
Gaming to me is most fun when done with friends after a nice dinner at someone's house. To me, it's a more social activity than watching a movie.
Here then, is a list of games that I own, and a brief thought on each one. Click the links if you want more info about what the game is about. These are sorted in some combination of how frequently they get played now and historically, which relates somewhat to how much I like them, too.
Settlers of Catan - Introduced to me by a friend, this is the game that started me on this type of board gaming. I now own the Cities & Knights and Seafarers expansions, the 5-6 player expansions for all 3, the 2 player card game version, and a German book with a bunch of additional variants. Tremendous game in that it's simple to learn, easy to be good at, and has enough balance between luck and strategy to keep both casual and more serious gamers entertained. We'll often play without the robber to speed things up, but that does take away some of the player interaction. The card game is good for travelling, but does require some space to lay out your cards, so is a bit hard to play in a plane.
Ticket to Ride - Aside from Settlers, Ticket to Ride is probably the first game I reach for when introducing people to this type of board gaming. Like Settlers, the rules are simple and it has a good balance of luck and strategy, although a bit more on the strategy side than Settlers, IMO. It's fun to watch the game board gradually get filled with trains and there's good tension everytime someone builds in an area where you would like to. We have the 2-3 player Switzerland variant as well as the 1910 card set. When it's just my wife and I, we almost always play Switzerland. We haven't played with the 1910 cards much yet. We do have the card game version of this one as well, which we will take travelling sometimes. It's also not that great on a plane, but is fun if you can't take the full game along. I have played the European map as well, which is also very good, although I don't like the map itself as much. I do like that it includes tunnels (as does Switzerland), but don't much care for the train station concept.
Bohnanza - This game has become a favorite of everyone we've taught it to. We have the High Bohn Plus expansion, although only include it with experienced players. I think this expansion adds a lot to a game that is already a lot of fun to begin with. There's a huge amount of interaction in the form of trading due to the fact that you are forced to play your cards in the order you pick them up, and you almost never want to. The cards are quite fun, including a green bean who is busy puking and a red bean who's embarrassed to be naked.
Zooloretto - This game is fast joining Settlers and Ticket To Ride as a next choice to play with new gamers. It's a little more complicated to learn than either of those, and the strategy is a lot more difficult to master. The process of selecting animals is fraught with tough decisions as the game goes on. It's a lot of fun to build up your zoo and see the animals in it. My wife is particularly fond of the babies. This one has a bit of a cuteness factor, but not in a way that is enough to put anyone off.
Mahjong - My wife is Chinese-American, my dad grew up in Indonesia, and my folks lived in Thailand and Singapore before I was born, but I learned to play this while visiting a friend in Sweden. Go figure. This is not the tile matching game that you play on a computer, but a highly complex form of Gin Rummy with tiles. It's a huge gambling game in the far east (it's essentially their poker), but even without gambling on it, is quite addicting.
Robo Rally - A bit geeky in concept, this game is best with several players. The fact that you're programming robots to navigate a dangerous factory floor and don't have any idea what the other players are going to do leads to some pretty funny moments when all of a sudden you've been pushed into a laser, pit or simply in some totally wrong direction. And that assumes you actually got your orders entered in such a way that it does what you were hoping it would do. Great fun and easy to learn, but requires a little bit of spacial reasoning, which for some can be daunting.
Dominion: Intrigue - This is the newest game in our collection. See James' thread for more detail on what I think about it.
Carcassonne - We don't play this one nearly as much as we used to, but it's probably the easiest of these games to have totally unrelated side conversations while playing it. It's a tile placing game, and I really like watching the countryside unfold as the game progresses. We have the Inns & Cathedrals, Traders & Builders, and the River expansions. The River typically comes with the game (it did with ours) and is a great way to start the board off. We like all of them, but Traders & Builders added the most player interactivity as you now have incentive to close off another player's city. Fun game, and fun to look at.
Guillotine - I first played this game while visiting my brother in Fontainebleau, which just seemed absolutely perfect. The game has Disney-like graphics and is really easy for newbies to pick up. Games are quick and there's a good amount of luck involved. Strategy is hard to plan (just grab the best noble you can at the time), but there's enough chaos involved and funny cards to keep you interested in it till the next game.
Thurn and Taxis - I like this game a fair amount but we don't play it that much. It feels a bit like a mix between Settlers and Ticket to Ride. It's a bit harder to learn, and plays very differently depending on the number of players. The 2 player game can quickly become one sided. The big knock on this game is that there's very little player interaction. At times it can feel like you're playing a solo game but there are other people playing on the same board with you.
Incan Gold - This game is essentially just a vehicle for the classic game theory problem of the Prisoner's Dilemma with a slight wrinkle. For that reason, I don't play it with just my wife that much anymore, but we absolutely love playing it with more people. You can finish a game in 15 minutes and get a bunch in that way. There's a fair amount of agonizing and accusations with more people, and it's all ultimately about how greedy/risky you are versus those you're playing against. Great game to take anywhere, too.
Munchkin - This is a spoof of dungeons and dragons, which if you like that game, you owe it to yourself to try this one. You fight monsters such as Maul Rats, Insurance Salesmen, and Santa with weapons like the sneaky bastard sword. There are tons of expansions for this game, although we only have the Unnatural Axe. We like this expansion a lot, but feel like we have enough cards for the game that there's no real incentive to get any more cards (the deck's already too big to easily shuffle in one go). The game can take a while if you're particularly mean before people have established their characters a bit, so we generally only play mean once someone gets close to winning or way ahead of everyone else. It can be a bit confusing at first for folks who have no background in fantasy, but they usually warm up to the great cards.
Lord of the Rings - This is a fascinating game and the only game I own that is a cooperative game. You set out as the hobbits across Middle Earth and have to work together to make it to Mount Doom and destroy the ring. The artwork is great, the game is true to the story as much as can be expected, and it's quite fun. Playing with different numbers of people affects the game, and you can play at different difficulty, but no matter how you do it, there's no guarantee you'll actually win. We probably win about 50% of the time we play, which is part of what makes it so fun. One word of advice... if you ever let your significant other play as Fatty Bulger, you will never hear the end of it.
Elfenland - Another game that has a fair amount of visual appeal, you try to visit all the cities in Elfenland using different types of elvish transport. You play off of the other players and the game mechanics mean that while there isn't often a tie (yes, ties are possible), it's usually quite close. It's not he first on my list, but fun to pull out now and then.
Lost Cities - Great little 2 player game, Lost Cities is quick to play and you usually play a few rounds and then tally up the points. It can be very agonizing debating whether or not to play a card to your own expedition or to discard and hope your opponent doesn't pick up your discard. All discards can be picked back up later, so you often don't know if a card will be useful later on. There's probably more luck involved in the game than it feels like, which is a good thing, IMO.
Masons - This was one of those games we bought when we weren't sure what to buy anymore. It's easy to set up and doesn't require all that much thinking, so we do pull it out occasionally when we want something a little different or we're just tired of the other stuff we've been playing. Good amount of luck and tactics (not really strategy).
Milles Bornes - The classic French racing card game, this one got a lot of play for a while and now only gets pulled out occasionally. For some reason, I always seem to have aggressive play backfire on me later in the game. I think this game just seems a bit simple compared to some of our other favorites.
Shear Panic - This game comes with ceramic sheep with colored dots on their back, which I always thought was just a game mechanic until I visited Ireland a few years ago and saw real sheep with colored dots on their backs! Anyway, the game is about rearranging sheep to meet one of four objectives, which change as you move throughout the game. This gives the game good balance and the fact that you have a limited number of moves which you can only use once throughout the game gives it a lot of strategy. I'm not really sure why this game isn't higher up our list, but it just isn't quite as fun as some of the others. Maybe we just play too slow or there's not enough funny/cute involved. Not a bad game, though.
Fluxx - I played this a lot with my roommate in college, and the changing nature of the rules and the objective means that you're never quite sure how close you are to winning until you're really close. And then you're not. Pretty simple game, but you do need to know the cards a bit as combinations of cards are what you need to win. It's brilliantly designed in that you can create card sets to just about any theme you might think of, which the makers of Fluxx have happily done for fun and profit.
Give Me The Brain - This is the only game we actively quote on occasion: "My area is moist!". It's goofy, it's silly, and will probably make you dumber. We're far too old and mature to play this anymore...
Money Tycoons - No link as this is a rip off of Monopoly that I invented along with a friend of mine when I was 12. It's a lot of fun (you can blow things up!), but it takes a while and my wife refuses to play because she thinks the game is evil (occasional extortion has occurred). It was resurrected in part by a grad school friend of mine who was intrigued by it, and I played it a lot at that time but not much since.
You're Bluffing - We own the Dutch "Koe Handel" version of this, and I actually didn't even know there was an English language version until trying to put this list together. Anyway, my wife doesn't like the whole bluffing/bidding concept, so we don't really play this much, but I like it. You have to adjust your strategy as the game goes on, and you're always at the mercy of how much your friends trust you.
Other Games I have played but do not own these (in order I like them):
Puerto Rico - I really thoroughly like this game. My wife does not. She is perfectly good at it, but it does require a fair amount of strategy. Most of the time, the best strategy isn't the one you think will help you the most but the one that will help everyone else the least. This is a frustrating way to play for many people, and does require some analysis on your turn. I ended up winning something like 10 or 12 games of this in a row against our regular gaming friends, and while I've since lost a few times, that kind of took some of the interest in playing out of it. It's not very cheap, and we have friends who have it, so there's not a lot of incentive to buy it for ourselves. That said, I think it's a brilliant game. I have not played with any of the expansions.
Dixit - Last summer I went to the Netherlands to visit my brother and we took a trip to Germany. While there, we figured why not buy the 2010 Spiehl Des Jahres (German game of the year) in Germany? How great would that be? Well, Dixit was it, and it was not cheap, but we bought it and played it and it was fascinating. It's unlike anything I had played before, yet an awful lot like things we've all played. It's a bit like a cross between Apples to Apples and Balderdash. It has huge creativity potential with the amazingly illustrated cards and I'm sure will play differently every time simply by playing with different groups of people. That said, I'm not sure it's something you'd play a lot, and you do need at least 4 people to make it interesting.
Alhambra - I've only played this a couple of times and it's been a while, but this is a very good game, too. There's a good amount of player interaction, luck, and strategy. Like Ticket to Ride, you have limited actions you can take each turn, so it's not too hard to learn, but there's more underneath the game mechanics than I probably understand yet. Definitely worth a serious look if you're looking for a game.
Niagara - This is a game that is always high on our "to buy" list, but we frequently end up trying something new. I like the way that you go through several rounds of having identical moves with everyone, but that for each turn, you can choose from those moves. The tension of falling over the falls is real and happens at least a couple of times every game. It would probably fall in the Elfenland role of a game we really like but don't play as much as some of our other games if we owned it.
Killer Bunnies - This game has gone way commercial with expansion packs galore. I've played it a bunch, but I can't say for sure which expansions were included. The cards are entertaining and geared towards kids, but the game is complex enough to interest adults. I have one major beef with this game, though. You spend the whole game trying to gather carrot cards in hopes that you end up with the one randomly selected one that is the winning carrot. I remember one game where one of my opponents had 19 of the 20 carrot cards, I had the other one, and no one else had any. I won the game because my carrot just happened to be the winning one, and while I was thrilled, it also felt kind of stupid. That said, that kind of randomness means that no matter how badly your game has gone, it doesn't take much to give yourself a chance to win.
Diplomacy - I don't really know how to classify this as anything other than a war game. The fact that there's no luck involved makes it different from all the other war games out there (at least the ones I've played). Best played online/via email since it takes a long time, as evidenced by our PEBA games started on this forum. That said, it is a lot of fun in person, too, but you're never guaranteed to finish.
Civilization - I've played this only once, and I'm not sure if I played this or Advanced Civilization, but any fan of Sid Meier's computer game of the same name owes it to themselves to play this at least once. This is one of those very long simulation type games, and it's basically a pre-cursor to the great work of Meier. It's also easy to see why the board game has limited, albeit cult-like, popularity and the computer game has mass appeal - it's just so complex.
"Kids" games (alphabetically)
Some of these you should know, others perhaps not, some may stir a trip down memory lane.
The aMAZEing Labyrinth - This sill occasionally gets some play in our house. It's kind of the bridge between what I'm terming here as "kids" games and the ones above. The play is simple yet needs a little planning to be good at. The pictures are fun. Best with 4 players.
Battleship - Great kids game. It's the intellectual version of Torpedo Run. I think it was designed by parents who wanted their kids to sit quietly for a half hour.
Doubletrack - I was given a hand-me-down of this game when I was in high school, where it really wasn't that interesting to me anymore, although I tried to play it several times. It seems that it tries to combine Sorry! with something more complex and just feels clunky. I think it would've been ok if I was several years younger.
Inner Circle - A hand-me-down, this game got a bit of play, but mostly from me just trying to figure out the mechanics of the optimal position to be in to win the game. Not a complex game and probably best for kids who are good at counting but are trying to learn to think ahead a few moves. It also didn't help that my copy was missing a few pieces.
Ker Plunk - I seem to recall that it was sometimes hard to get all the little sticks in without bending some, but it was fun to pull a stick and start hearing the marbles fall. You don't have to be very old to understand that marbles falling is bad.
Life - My wife and I always wanted this game growing up and neither of our parents would buy it for us, so we now have a copy. The description at BGG includes "Skill", although I'm not sure why. Still a fun family game, though.
Metropolis - My family had the original Australian version (we lived near Sydney when it was released), and I hope my dad still does somewhere. That said, it's not a very good game. As a kid I liked building up my city, but you spent a lot of time just rolling the dice in the hopes of making enough money to buy the next type of lot you needed. Even then I was bored easily with this.
Monopoly - Monopoly is mostly a game of chance, so it's best known in my house as the parts box for Money Tycoons. It's telling that my friend and I invented a game almost a trillion times better than Monopoly when we were 12.
Operation - Sadly, my primary recollection of this game is that our copy didn't work. To this day, I have no idea if it was a simple matter of my parents removing the batteries.
Scooby-doo! Where Are You? - I absolutely loved this game when I was around 10 years old and hope my dad still has it in a box somewhere. It's just as campy as the cartoon was.
Scotland Yard - I bought a used copy of this a few years ago as I had heard a lot about it but never played it. It's a bit too simple for me as an adult, as Mr. X should really never be caught if he's paying enough attention and planning accordingly.
Stratego - I was at the height of my Stratego prowess in 6th grade, going head-to-head almost daily with the smartest kid in my class. He went on to become valedictorian of our high school and attend Harvard. I went on to... well, never mind.
Torpedo Run - My copy of this did not survive my adolescence. Firing at enemy ships as fast as my little fingers could pull back the trigger, I can't imagine a much more entertaining game for a pre-teen boy. Watching parts of ships go flying into the air on a direct hit was so rewarding I didn't even care if I was playing against anyone!
Party Games: Designed for groups of people, ranked in order I like them.
Balderdash - I don't own this but I do own Beyond Balderdash, which adds some categories (movies, dates, people, and initials) in addition to just words you've never heard of. I like Beyond Balderdash a little better, as the various categories breaks up the monotony of just doing word definitions while still giving those occasionally. Plenty of chance for ridiculous creativity.
Scattegories - My favorite part of this game is arguing for the absolutely ridiculous answers I put down, such as "eggplant" for a term of endearment (successfully, argued, thanks very much!). I tend to think I like this game a lot more than most people I've played it with.
Apples to Apples - I just played this week again and was reminded that this is a fun game. I wish there weren't quite so many people, and playing it with people who are have significantly less education can be frustrating, but as long as you can read you should be able to play. It can get old quickly if people aren't into it, but that's probably true for a lot of party games.
Taboo - This game has caused two significant arguments in my marriage. First, I pronounce the word "taboo" a bit differently than most Americans. Second, my wife had a Dr. Seuss's My Book About Me book filled out for her as a birthday gift by some friends in college, and where it says "I can make a sound like a...", they filled in "taboo buzzer". Some things never get old. I like this one a fair amount, in part because I'm decent with synonyms.
Trivial Pursuit - I went old school on the link, but any version is fine with me. The questions on some of the older versions are quite dated, so that's a bit sad. That said, I don't think any other trivia game has come close to how good this one is. Probably a toss up between this and Taboo for me.
Guesstures - This is better than Charades in that the time limit and extra words means you don't bother as readily with all that silly first word second syllable nonsense and just try to get to the core of the word. That said, it's also silly to buy a game that you can kind of just play by making up your own words.
Loaded Questions - This is as much a getting to know you game as it is a party game. Doesn't quite have the spontaneous fun aspect of the other games, but can be fun when playing with people you're interested in getting to know better. I kind of think it's a good team building game, which makes it sound more boring than it is.
Cranium - This game was a huge draw when I first played it and then it just fizzled. The replay value died off prett quick for me, but I do like the idea of having several different categories to go through and several different types of questions to answer. My favorite was always the sculpting.
Tribond - Not enough replay value to rank higher, but a nice concept. Just needed way more cards. Fun once in a while.
Pictionary - Despite being decent at drawing, I'm not a fan of this. I just think it's not as expressive as the word or charade type games.
Catch Phrase! - I'm really not much of a fan of this one. I think it tries to be too complex and the whole pass the hot potato thing to me just makes it feel really random.
The Bowl Game* - This was the name given to our version of a Charades/Taboo combination game that I played in college. Before the game would start, everyone would write 5 nouns on a small slip of paper, and you'd put them into a big bowl. You'd then take turns having 2 minutes trying to first get the teams to guess the words in charades fashion, then guess them again in taboo fashion. I've spent a lot of time trying to think of the perfect 5 words for such an entry, and I'm convinced that "stud muffin" is one of them.
* - I'm not ranking this, but if I were, I'd put it at the top of the list.