Board Games

Tonight I met with some gaming friends at my former employer.

I've always enjoyed games, both board and computer, and found some people with similar interests where I used to work. We would gather once every other week or so and play in the evenings, just to take a break. I used to play Scrabble with another group there, but it dissolved so now I just play on the computer once in a while. Scrabble and backgammon are my two favorite "classic" board games, because they require both luck and skill, and are therefore fun. I don't find chess to be enjoyable, for example, because it is pure skill.

Anyway, in the board games group, we started playing RoboRally but hit some problems. The game is fun but moves were taking so long we would often play for two or three hours and only complete one (out of four or more) of the victory conditions! We tried a few other games such as Formula DE before discovering Settlers of Catan, a game all of us really liked. So much that we played all the expansions and eventually needed a break. As Yogi Berra might say, it was so popular we stopped playing. We tried Tikal (good strategy game but suffers from decision paralysis), Carcasonne (game of the year but didn't quite captivate us), Princes of Florence (very good game), Torres (very strategic, and sometimes the best move is to help an opponent), Ra (I like this but not everybody enjoys auction games) and many others. These games are all great fun but each takes a while to setup and play. Plus, we'd have to review the rules for several minutes beforehand. Nevertheless, we would cycle through the games and buy a new one every few months.

Lately we've been playing games that move a bit faster, such as Evo. One friend got so good at this game others started making special house rules meant to even things up! Card based games are fun and quick, such as Fluxx, which is fast and easy, but a bit random so we lost interest. High Society, Cartagena, Bohnanza are among our favorites.

Tonight we played Illuminati, a game about secret societies taking over the world. Your Illuminati group spends its turn either destroying, neutralizing, or dominating other groups, which may be in the power structure of a rival Illuminati group (the other players). It was close game - the four of us were each within another turn of winning when someone finally did. That's the hallmark of a good game, when everybody is in it until the end!

NOTE: all these links are to FunAgain.com. I'm not affiliated with them, just a happy customer. It was easier to link to their online catalog than chase down all these links at the respective companies.