Tonight, with a living room full of ten-year-old girls, we discovered that Monopoly is still incredibly boring, even if it’s cat-themed and the actual cat wants to keep jumping on the board. Widget also had problems with my alternate rules of the game (I was trying to explain the shorter, “shuffle-and-hand-out-properties-so-that-the-thing-finishes-before-doomsday” version), even though we use the “pay your fines to Park Place and collect if you land on Free Parking” variation on the game. When it comes to boardgames, there’s a fine line between fun and murderous rampage, and games such as Sorry, Backgammon and Parcheesi are still banned in my household due to problems of rage and/or vengeance. Still, we can get through a decent round of Balderdash together (though I am still the reigning champion and mightiest of all possible bluffers), which leads us to today’s query…
The MS-QOTD (pronounced, as always, “misquoted”) is one of the 17 people alive who have completed an entire game of ‘Monopoly’ without a fist-fight, albeit because I had chicken pox, asking: What’s your favorite board-type game of all?
10 Comments
I’m quite fond of Backgammon myself.
Scrabble is one I’ve been playing for who knows how long, and it’s at the point where I’m thinking three moves ahead, which is scary.
Trivial Pursuit. It’s great as a board game of if you just want to pull out cards and quiz yourself or others.
I’m quite fond of most versions of Trivial Pursuit myself, although I’m a bit tired of the Star Wars variant since I always win (curse of too much free time and having read or read about most of the non-movie material, which most people I know aside from my goddaughter and my girlfriend have barely touched).
Although when I was younger, there was a game I cannot recall the name of that was like half board game, half tabletop RPG that I used to love playing. I used to play it quite frequently, but I lost it when we moved when I was around 13-14 and have long since forgotten the name of the game. I’ve been trying to remember what it was called for almost 20 years to see if I could track it down somewhere, but I’ve only been able to find games that were almost similar but not quite the same.
You know, there are literally thousands of other board games out there. Try some Bohnanza, Pandemic or Shadows Over Camelot sometime.
Most likely candidates from your description are Heroquest, Dungeonquest, Talisman, and Magic Realm.
Some people might disagree with me, but I really like Monopoly. Not the regular version, though. My family has a Star Wars themed Monopoly, with settlements like Hoth and the Ewok Village. I did play the regular version before, but I disliked it. Something about Star Ways Monopoly just peaks my interest. But my family can barely get through an hour session of it, much less an entire game.
Because everything is better with Star Wars!
I’m actually surprised I don’t have Star Wars Monopoly (although my younger brother does, a gift from his wife), but I do have a few of the parts that have become part of my “Patchwork Monopoly” (regular Monopoly, just with choices of your game piece from about 5 different sets because those were being sold at yard sales).
In all seriousness, I’ve always been drawn to the utter simplicity of board games aimed at kids like Candyland and Shoots and Ladders. There is something hypnotic to me about how basic they are.
Ha! “Shoots” huh? Must have crime on my mind!
We have about a hundred different board games in our house because playing them together is one of favourite family activities. One of my favourite sites is boardgamegeek.com where they have details of literally thousands of high quality challenging board games. Check it out.
Amongst the general boardgames that can be found in some toy shops etc I would pick Settlers of Catan as the best.
Then there are numerous specialty board game stores around. A good place to start with these is games like Ticket to Ride, Lords of Waterdeep, Carcassone. These type of games don’t rely on dice but use choice of placement of tiles or workers or such up to the player with a lot of fun and strategy involved, and the ones I have listed are not complicated and good for kids.
In the party games I would pick Dixit, a good fun simple game in the likes of the old Dictionary game but with pictures. Riotous fun every time we play.
Incidentally Monopoly can be a good medium length game if you stick to the rules (no fines on No Parking, at least doubles the length of the game, auction properties when someone chooses not to play, work at deals to get sets) but it does encourage (requires) player elimination which doesn’t always work well with families.