2004 Good Gift Games Guide

The Morning News – The 2004 Good Gift Games Guide

First off, it should be noted that this is a list of board games. Most people think all I want to do is play video games until my eyes rot and I’m left with empty sockets that possibly spark at the back, but that’s not true. I really enjoy board games, from very simple to very complex.

I really like this list of games. My reason for really liking this list of games is that each of the games matches these three criteria (listed in the article):

• Easy to learn, with rules that can be explained in less than five minutes
• Entertaining, so committed to the fun factor that even the guy who comes in dead last has a great time playing
• Quick, lacking downtime and requiring no more than an hour to complete.

These criteria are important to me, because most of the time, when I try and introduce people to board games, they think of things like Monopoly, that have some weird rules and maybe some house rules and they think it’s going to take hours and it’ll be boring and awful. That’s really not the case.

Games like The Settlers of Catan are fairly easy to learn and can be played in 45 minutes to an hour. Settlers isn’t on this list, in part because it’s an older game (1995 or so, I believe), but also because Settlers does take about fifteen minutes to really grasp. Even with that issue, most people enjoy it once they’ve sat down and played through a round. Another reason that Settlers probably isn’t on the list is because there’s a small bit of downtime in the setup. It can take a few minutes to get the board properly built and situated (which sounds intimidating, but it isn’t).

Those criteria above make for great games to introduce people into modern board games. One particular game on the list, Carcassonne: the City, is a new variant of Carcassonne, a fun and easy game that I’m sure was on this list a couple of years ago without even reading back. It’s really easy to start, easy to play, and generally meets the criteria above. As you add expansions on to Carcassonne, it slows just a little bit, but not too bad.

I wish more people appreciated board games. They’re a great form of entertainment that’s on the way back into popularity. There are some awesome games coming out now (such as Betrayal at House on the Hill, which has only been out since September 2004), and it’s a shame that so many people are going to miss out on them. Go buy a board game for someone you love and play it with them. Modern games are great fun, I swear.