I hear tell it’s time for Americans to give thanks, and along with that comes shopping ahead of the Christmas season. Up in Canada, we’ve already survived turkey tryptophan, first snowfalls, and apologetic tramplings at shopping centres. As may be no surprise, my friends and family are all a bunch of nerds. We’d sooner pull out a board game than shop till someone gets dropped. But, those board games have to come from somewhere, thus my taking on this genre for 2018’s gift guide. So if you want to play a game, you want it to have a board, and if you’ve got multiple players, this is the gift guide for you.
For a group game, Seven Wonders will serve you well. You can play it with 2-7 players which gets over that five-player hump many game nights struggle to overcome. The mechanics are pretty straightforward each turn; pick a card to play. It’s competitive without being cutthroat. Aside from taking a card you know that someone wants, or playing a military card, you can’t really directly affect another player. Even those are pretty low-key conflict. The artwork is very nice and play goes quickly.
2: Bananagrams (Recommended by Ben Erickson)
Scrabble for the modern age, Bananagrams was released a good number of years ago and launched Bananagrams Inc. This game is a great “warm up game” to play while waiting for the rest of your friends to show up to board game night or between longer and more intense games as a palette cleanser. Each player draws a number of letter tiles from the center pile and attempts to create as many words as possible, building them off of each other like in Scrabble, pulling more letter tiles as you or other players run out. The first player to get rid of all of their tiles when the center pile is gone is the winner. It’s fast and frantic with each game only lasting a few minutes, allowing you to play multiple rounds.
Kim Frandsen – Geek Out!My suggestion for a Group Board Game comes in the form of Geek Out! Basically, it’s a test of “How Geeky are you?” and “Are you geekier than your friends?” Most of the questions boil down to knowledge about specific topics, such as comics, tabletop roleplaying games, movies, and books. Things like “Name 5 Batman enemies” and then each side bids in with how many they can get, BEFORE discussing it with each other. So if one side bids 5, the other bids 6 or more, and then it goes back and forth until one team eventually goes “Right, show us.” The team that gave the winning bid must then fulfill the conditions of the card. They get a point if they can, and if they can’t, they lose 2 points. The winner is the one who gets to 5 points first. Geek & Sundry did a piece on the game here.
3: Red Dragon Inn 7: The Tavern Crew (Recommended by Linda Whitson )
The Red Dragon Inn has been one of my favorite board games since my son introduced me and his dad to it at Gamer Nation Con IV. This game keeps growing. The 7th set (playable standalone or as an expansion to earlier games in the series) is The Tavern Crew, fulfilling the fantasies of many longtime fans for a playable Wench character. Suggested retail price is US$40, although I have seen it for around $30 on Amazon.
If you’re looking for a heavy, complex, set-aside-a-Saturday-including-meal-breaks game, I can’t recommend A Distant Plain enough. Part of GMT Games COIN (counterinsurgency) series, A Distant Plain takes 1-4 players to Afghanistan in the long ago time of 2003-? where factions vie for the control, and support, of the Afghan population. Players take the role of the Coalition (ISAF), the (Kabul) Government, Taliban, or Warlords. Each has a unique play style and victory condition which abstractly simulates the political and military conditions of the period. Opportunities for synergy and antagonism abound: while the Coalition and Government are nominally aligned, Government players can quickly grow weary of being forced into costly joint operations. All the while perhaps the Taliban and Warlords debate working together against the counter-insurgents despite their competing interests. Victory conditions specifically help sell the simulationist feel, with the Coalition military being extremely powerful, but balanced by the fact they must eventually withdraw forces from Afghanistan in order to win. If you’re looking for a game to sink hours into, get engaged in strategic thinking, and perhaps even learn something about one of America’s longest-running conflicts, I cannot recommend A Distant Plain enough.
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Christopher Hunt
Staff Writer at d20 Radio
Christopher Hunt is a long-time gamer and has recently broke into the world of RPG freelancing. Chris’ unofficial Star Wars RPG blog ran weekly on d20radio.com for the past three years. He has written for Rusted Iron Games, Raging Swan Press, and most recently Fantasy Flight Games’ Star Wars RPG. Chris is currently pursuing a Master of Arts in Political Science. Always the gamer, his thesis, which explores conflict short of war by uniting current threats to historical events, was inspired by a historical board game.
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