It can be daunting!
But much like I was coached into getting more active and get moving by the excellent coaches at Raincity Athletics I am here to help you start getting your first steps into modern boardgaming and building your gamer muscles so that one day you may enjoy the beautiful complexity of a game like Terraforming Mars or Root (pictured above).
If the mention of Boardgames brings up memories of playing Monopoly, Risk, Scrabble, Uno or The Game of Life, then well my friend... I have great news for you! Boardgames have evolved in the past decades and a whole renaissance has taken place. What we call now Modern Boardgames – oh aren't we so posh – are much more friendly, well thought-out products than the old generation and offer much clearer rules, more player agency and much more polished experiences for all ages. If you think that spending some quality time with friends and family around a table sharing and building stories and strategies together is fun, I got your back!
Enough with the talking! To keep things simple, I have selected 6 games and separated them into three categories below to offer anyone with no experience a door into this hobby. Just like one must master a basic Squat before jumping into full fledged Cross-Fitting, these games should be a great introduction into the best Boardgames can offer before you go around purchasing acrylic stands for Twilight Imperium!
To play with friends
These are two great games to play between 5-6 people, are quick to learn and teach and offer a lot of interaction, talking opportunities and can be played among a group of recently introduced people like at a dinner party or a weekend visiting a friend's cabin.
Ticket to Ride
This one is so popular right now that it can almost live in the same era as Monopoly and Risk depending on how people make the cut, but I consider that people who have not interacted much with boardgames from the 90's and upwards may have missed on this classic game!
Players compete to build railroads across the USA, accumulating points for the longest tracks and interconnected railways. Players draw a series of colored cards and must make sets of them to deploy their trains.
It plays from 2 to 5 people and takes about 60 minutes to play with multiple playthroughs recommended for maximum enjoyment in an afternoon!
Non-gamer pitch: "You get the opportunity to be a millionaire railroads tycoon by having a bit of a poker-face and none of the actual work."
Tsuro
A beautiful game themed around oriental dragons and it plays with up to 8 people in around 20 minutes per playthrough. Tsuro is a game of spatial awareness where each player follows their own "path of enlightenment" in a beautifully abstract theme. Each turn a player will draw a new path tile and place it in front of their token to follow in the path. The goal is to avoid a collision with the board edge as long as possible while making the other player's run headlong into it.
Non-gamer pitch: "It's basically competitive meditation."
To play with loved ones
These games are best played in small groups of up to 4 players and really shine when played dozens on times over and over with the same group of people. Each player will build their own story and narrative within the game and you'll have fond memories of that one game when everything went right and everyone had a great time.
Pandemic
Pandemic is a cooperative game, meaning that every player has to work together to solve a problem, the problem in this game being that the world is at the brink of collapse with epidemic diseases spreading out of control. The only hope is you and your team of highly skilled Doctors, Researchers and Scientists to find and develop cures in time.
The game is extremely rewarding to master as the first few games are going to be an uphill battle and seem impossible, but with time and perseverance players start to develop winning strategies and finally be able to beat it. The first time a group is able to overcome the challenge you'll have people screaming in joy as it's very intense.
It plays 2-4 players and takes about 1-hour per game.
Non-gamer pitch: "We save either save the world from a pandemic by finding the cures or die trying."
Dixit
Dixit is a game that is great to play with family and can quickly bring people of all generations together sharing stories and bonding via the colorful art on the large cards. It is a beautiful game that can be explained in less than two minutes. Players have to come up with half-true descriptions of the images they see on cards to leave enough hints for some, but not all players to guess the correct card. It is a delightful game of social deduction that gets better the better you know other players.
Plays from 3 to 6 players in about 40 minutes.
Non-gamer pitch: "We all play Bunnies that share half-truth stories based off surrealist paintings."
To play with kids
These are games that really help adults bond with children by sharing a common activity in where they have ample room to learn and develop their strategies while being coached. These games offer a lot of room for the imagination and narrative while having very clear goals to pursue.
King of Tokyo
I find that children really love rolling dice and pretending to be giant monsters and king of Tokyo offers both: Be either a cult classic King Kong or the pink-colored Cyber-bunny where monsters are competing to see who is the biggest and baddest to claim the title of King of Tokyo. The game offers a concept called "push your luck" where players can re-roll some of the dice in pursuit of a better result. Learning the fine tuned risk-reward mechanics of the game is a great experience for children and adults alike and the over-sized dice are just plain fun to see in the hands of little kids!
Plays from 2 to 6 in about 30 minutes, recommended for ages 8+ (requires some reading) but even 6-year old children can be coached into playing.
Non-gamer pitch: "Ever wonder how it feels to be Godzilla and fight Mothra? Now you can not only do that but also destroy Tokyo in the process for points!"
Mice & Mystics
This is the cutest game ever where players take the role of a group of adventurers that have been transformed into tiny little adventurer-mice, complete with tiny little everyday object weapon adaptations like a fork for a catapult and a shirt button for a shield. In this cooperative game the players are trying to break the curse by travelling from under the kitchen drainage up through the castle fighting roaches, centipede and the now gigantic, orange housecat Brodie. It's a very simple game with a lovely story-line that allows adults to basically live through a bedtime story with children and watch they grow their characters and make their own decisions.
It plays 1 to 4 players and takes from 60 to 90 minutes depending on what chapter the adventurers are in.
Non-gamer pitch: "It's like playing Pixar's version of Dungeons and Dragons, but with no Dungeon Master and where eating cheese makes one more powerful!"
Conclusion
Well I hope the list above helps show how one can easily get into the habit of playing modern boardgames. I have found that they are great in creating bonds between players, there is never lack of a subject to talk about when you are discussing the best strategy to beat pandemic or retelling the incredible storyline of Mice and Mystics.
And there are new and better games coming out every year. Different from online, mobile or console videogames there is a physical and social aspect to boardgames that is hard to pull away from. Having people sit around a table and share an experience, hear their laughter and see their tension as the dice roll is an incredible experience that I wish everyone can enjoy and it's never been easier.
Game on!
Bonus recommendation: The best game I ever played
Pandemic: Legacy Season 1
If you have other three people that you can play a game over a few months, this is the box to get. Now this is not an introductory-level game – I'd recommend you at least give the regular pandemic a few playthroughs, including beating it at least three times – before you dive into the Legacy series (yes there is already a season 2, and it's even better).
Without giving any spoilers, Pandemic: Legacy is a new take on the regular pandemic where the consequences of one game will string over to the next one in a larger story line where the board and the player characters will evolve and change over time. It is an incredible experience as at the end of each game there are new secret boxes to open that offer new challenges and new powers, telling a grandiose story over the course of 12+ game sessions.
I can't recommend it enough, it is especially cool for couples to share the responsibility or for siblings and their parents to spend some quality time together.
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