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Board Games

 Back to posting with a relatively simple one.


Students, you may or may not know this, but the board games that are in the Commons are from my collection*. My hope is that someday everyone will put down their cellphones and pick up a game instead. I really enjoy board games (although I don't play them as often as I would like). I'm not talking chess and checkers. I'm not even talking Monopoly and Scrabble. While those are technically board games, the genre has come a long way in the past few decades. Here's a few of my favorites (I'll use the term "board game" loosely, as some of these don't actually use a board).

(Settlers of**) Catan

If you're familiar with modern board games, you probably know this one. It first came out in 1995 and its popularity really exploded.

  • Collect resources
  • Build towns, cities, and roads. Each has different point values.
  • First player to 10 points wins.
It's a very good entry point due to the straightforward rules. The strategy can get very complex.


Fluxx


This is a card game that is very easy to learn. The rules start out very simple: 

  • You start off with 3 cards in your hand.
  • Each turn you draw one card and play one card.
  • The object of the game is to collect cards that match the pair shown on the goal card. However, the goal could change at any time (hence, Fluxx).
  • Some of the cards will change the rules, but they all tell you exactly what they do, so the learning curve is low. 

What's really fun is that that there are a lot of versions (44 at last count) to match your favorite fandom. 


iKnow


Trivia is kind of my thing***, so it shouldn't come as a surprise that there is at least one trivia game on this list (See the Trivial Pursuit tab on the spreadsheet for all the varieties of that franchise that I have).

In this take on trivia, you get more points the fewer clues that you need to guess the answer. 

  • You are first given a sentence starter. For example, "Which country..."
  • If you only need one clue, you get three points.
  • If you need all three clues, you only get one point.
To make it more interesting, you can bet either for or against players to earn more points. In theory, you could win by betting against yourself and getting every question wrong on purpose (although, that would only work if everyone else is really bad).


Sushi Go


This game is simple enough to play that you can still have a conversation with your friends while completing a round.
  • Play a card from your hand.
  • Pass your hand to the player on your left.
  • Try to collect sets of Sushi.
The art is really cute too. If you get bored with regular Sushi Go, Sushi Go Party has a lot of alternate "menus" to play with.


Unmatched

I haven't actually gotten around to playing this (I got it at Christmas), but I'm really looking forward to it. The concept is fairly simple:
  • Pick a character.
  • Each turn you can: move, fight, or take an action
The twist is that every character has different powers. Some have sidekicks, some have special weapons, all have special abilities. The original set has King Arthur, Alice in Wonderland, Sinbad, and Medusa. But there's many more expansions****: Marvel, Shakespeare, Buffy, Jurassic Park, etc. So, you can battle Michelangelo vs. Tyrannosaurus Rex or Beowulf vs. Ghost Rider. The latest even has a cooperative mode where you have to defend Earth against an alien invasion.


Firefly


My all time favorite game based on one of my favorite shows. This is the one that really got me into collecting games. I have all the expansions for this one including the 10th Anniversary Veteran Pilot's Upgrade. This one has a fairly high complexity score and a 50 page rule book, so it's not a good intro game. It also takes a long time to set up and under some scenarios (there's around 50 different ways to play), can take hours to complete.

Basic Rules:

  • Pick a scenario
  • Choose and ship and crew
  • Fly around space working jobs to complete the objectives
  • Jobs can be legal or illegal and moral or immoral (not the same as illegal)



*Rating and complexity score from Board Game Geek. If you see anything you want to try out (that's not already at school) let me know.

**It was rebranded simply as Catan in 2015, I believe.

***Team Big Brains dominated at Savio's last trivia night (even though the moderators changed the rules midway through to try to make us lose)

****I currently only have Slings and Arrows (Shakespeare, Hamlet, Titania, the Witches) and Tales to Amaze (Tesla, Jill Trent, Annie Christmas, the Golden Bat)

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