Saturday discussion post: board games (72/365)

[white_hart]

We have been watching The Queen's Gambit on Netflix, which is very good even if you know as little about chess as I do.

I don't really like any board games (other than possibly Trivial Pursuit). I never find that they manage to hold my interest, and they tend to stifle other conversation. I know lots of people who really enjoy them, though. So tell me, if you like playing board games, what do you enjoy about them? What kinds do you play? Or are you like me and don't like them?

Comments

[cosmolinguist]

I don't like them, because they're almost all huge drains on my visual processing abilities and the modern complicated games my friends tend to like also tend to have the most complex information, all of which is kept track of visually.

Luckily there's a trend among those modern complicated games for cooperative games, which are much more accessible to me and also tend to allow more outside-the-game conversation generally.

[white_hart]

Co-operative games sound like more fun to me, too.

[used_songs]

I prefer card games and dominoes but I will play board games if they are not so complex that they preclude conversation about non-game related stuff. Basically, if I can allot about 30% of my brain to the game play and the rest to the conversation then I'm good.

[white_hart]

I struggle with only allotting part of my brain to the game (or maybe it's that any brain space allocated to a game takes away my ability to follow a conversation), and then I end up resenting the amount of brain that's being taken up with something that isn't actually hitting any of the buttons for "interesting", "relaxing" or "fun" for me.

[fencesitting]

I love thinking several moves ahead, anticipating other people's moves, but also the camaraderie. And sometimes winning. :)

[white_hart]

I feel like thinking ahead and anticipating other people's moves is basically life as I experience it, so that may be why it doesn't feel like fun to me!

[antisoppist]

I think I like board games because they are the one area where having this skill produces tangible WINNING that I get credit for.

[julian]

Basically, if they're an excuse to hang out together and be enthusiastic about something, with *lots of conversation* going on, then that's fine.

Or, alternatively, if everyone's into it in friendly-but-competitive ways, as has happened for me in Trivial Pursuit, then that can be OK. But if it becomes one or two people dragging everyone else along in game-play, that's annoying.

[white_hart]

All too often I find it's people who seem to see playing games as a substitute for conversation rather than a complement. (Also, in the recent past, when I've been pushed into playing games it has been with people who were fairly drunk, while I'm teetotal, which probably hasn't helped.)

[radiantfracture]

jasmine_r_s and I *loved* The Queen's Gambit. It is so satisfying to see her win and win and win.

I kind of love almost all board games. I like a sense of mystery and chance balanced with strategy. (Not too much strategy or my brother the math guy will just always win.)

I always liked Agricola because there's strategy but the stakes are phenomenally low -- like, you're trying to get a cow. That's it.

[white_hart]

It was a brilliant series. I really enjoyed seeing her winning greater and greater things, and only having to battle herself to get there are not other people.

[mountainkiss]

I like TP because I learn stuff but otherwise I try to avoid them because I’m insanely competitive but it is not a side of myself that I want to nurture.

On the other hand my close relationship with my nephew comes out of a five hour game of Monopoly and I would not trade that for the world.

[white_hart]

I am also extremely competitive, and utterly fixated on rules, which is a bad combination, I think.

[girlyswot]

We have a thing that some of us (ME) have to keep reminding ourselves: Let us not love winning more than we love those against whom we compete.

[mountainkiss]

There is that, but I also overreact to losing and want to avoid that experience.

[el_staplador]

I enjoy them, I think because they provide a sort of structure to a gathering without inhibiting conversation (as compared to a film, for example). I also don't get terribly invested in them (these days, anyway; I do have one Shameful Monopoly Incident in my past); I'm not nearly as strategic in gameplay as I am at work or writing. I think for me it feels like a low-stakes environment where I can make mistakes without anything awful happening.

countertony doesn't like board games so for me it's always associated with socialising beyond the household - either with friends or with family. Family-wise, there's a certain amount of tradition in there as well, I think: we play Scrabble/Letterbags/Racing Demon because we always have. My brothers and I are going to play Ticket to Ride online this evening, assuming the technology works.

[white_hart]

PLaying board games with my family almost always ended in arguments between me and my brothers, which may well be part of the reason I don't much like them now!

[jinty]

I am not bothered / not keen on board games and I leave R to play them with the kids. That said there are some other board-game-adjacent things that I enjoy, like Timeline. This is a card game you lay out on a table or biggish space, each player starting off with 4 or 5 cards plus one in the middle to start everyone going. The cards each have events on them, like ‘Pompeii erupts’ or ‘Alexander Graham Bell invents the telephone’ and you have to put one of the cards in your hand either earlier or later than other cards on the table (the year / answer is on the back of the card). So it starts off easy, and there are some cards that are always easy (eg dinosaurs are basically earlier than almost anything else in the deck). But then it gets to be a case of remembering or working out, did Jane Austen write Pride & Prejudice before or after the Taj Mahal was built? That sort of thing. You may happen to know the century that the Taj Mahal was built, which makes it easy, but what about if you had the year when the Brighton Pavilion was built, instead?

[white_hart]

That does sound like quite good fun!

[antisoppist]

I want this game. Except that the child who would also adore it is now doing history at university.

It is a great game!

[jinty]

Might be worth getting for times when said kid is visiting, esp if you have any tradition of playing games eg at Christmas? It’s small, doesn’t take up much room so easier to have around than big board games, also it plays quickly. There are lots of different packs which are generally combinable, so it’s flexible too. I bought a pack a couple of years ago, brought it into the office and played it there, about three people immediately went out and bought their own for christmas family entertainment :-)

[joyeuce]

With the 8-year-old I enjoy Uno, Dobble, and Fluxx - simple card games with little to no strategy and some humour. With a group of friends, Articulate, Apples to Apples, and Masquerade (can't find a link - like Articulate, but miming) - humour again, and no strategy, and having to convey your meaning without the obvious. (On that reasoning I ought to enjoy Pictionary, but I don't, because drawing.)

I don't much enjoy strategy games as I'm not very good at them, but there are some simpler ones I will play with my husband (because he doesn't laugh at me for messing up) - Carcassonne, Lost Cities (link is to play online, in case anyone's interested), Jaipur, and Codenames Duet.

[white_hart]

No, I'm not really any good at strategy games, either.

[antisoppist]

I like Articulate but poor youngest is always seen as a handicap for whoever has to be with her because she has less general knowledge than anyone else and her brain makes entirely different connections to the rest of us.

[angelofthenorth]

I love apples to apples precisely because it stimulates conversation at parties

[white_hart]

That isn't one I've come across before!

[angelofthenorth]

It's more cards than board game, but it's great. Child suitable, and it's about getting to know how people think, hence the conversation being an essential part of it. It requires 4-10 players, but we have managed with 3.

[girlyswot]

Games have been a huge part of my support bubble time this lockdown and it's been brilliant. We laugh a lot, get a bit competitive, but ultimately know that it doesn't matter. You can't be worrying about work/life/covid while you're focussing on the turn of the next card. And it's social without having to find things to talk about.

Settlers of Catan is one of my long term favourites. It's competitive, but you have to trade with each other, so you also have to co-operate a bit. Every game is very different and the strategies are not so hard that you have to spend years learning them, but not so simple that you can guarantee to win every time.

We've also been playing: Uno Flip, Monopoly Deal, the Pointless game, Trivial Pursuit, Pictureka, Boggle and Flags of the World. I do not really recommend Flags of the World.

[girlyswot]

Oh, also Exploding Kittens. Content warning: kittens sometimes explode.

[antisoppist]

I do not really recommend Flags of the World.
Flags of the World was eldest's favourite game from about the age of 7. There was a point at which everyone gradually refused to play it with her any more but it is standing her in good stead in quizzing as a student. She also likes Mapominoes, which annoys me because the geography isn't right.

[girlyswot]

Yes, I have only agreed to play it as practice for Pointless (we have applied, but not yet heard anything back). As an actual game, there is no fun element to it at all.

[antisoppist]

Ooh. There is no fun element to it unless you are the one person in the family who has memorised all the flags of the world. And even then it can't be that much fun if no-one else had. It does make eldest very good at any Pointless question with flags in, to be fair to it :-)

[danieldwilliam]

I'm a keen board gamer.

I like a nice medium weight Euro-game. Particularly if the theme and the rules are closely aligned and if there are opportunities to build interesting engines.

I like figuring out how the combination of rules, pieces, cards, placement etc can build an engine work.

I quite like a game where we have to concentrate on the game.

I also quite like a game where the game is simple and we don't have to concentrate on it and can have a bit of side conversation.

I enjoy worker placement and tile placement games and also trick taking games. I like a good deck builder but they're not that popular with the rest of the family. Not many takers for co-op games in the family either although Forbidden Desert is a top ten family game and Hanabi is popular too.


There's also an element of them being a tool to provide social interaction without requiring conversation. It's a social activity that doesn't require 100% focused social interaction.

Family favourites include

Carcasonne - classic tile and worker placement
Port Royal - deck and engine builder card game
Forbidden Desert - co-op hand management and action points
Ticket to Ride - card drafting and hand management
Machi Koro - which has a nice engine builder and random management
7 Wonders - card drafting and set collection
Paperback - word based card drafting
Flamme Rouge - hand management race
Robo Rally - deck management race
Splendor - trick taking

I don't get much of an opportunity at the moment to play some of the weightier Euro games I've got in my collection like Stone Age and Viticulture or Scythe (too much brain power required in a pandemic) or my favourite set of social deduction games Tortuga, Deadwood and Salem (too few people allowed in a pandemic.0

I have a strong dislike of Monopoly and similar roll and move algorithms.

[antisoppist]

I think we started playing board games with the kids because the family atmosphere and the tension between parents was always better with an external framework imposed by the game. It's remained our main family activity in both houses (middle child doesn't watch telly, which is a bonding thing for me and the other two) and I'm a bit sad at the minute that because they are playing board games with their father a lot at the moment, they have stopped wanting to play them with me. But it's a way he's managing to interact with them so yay I guess. Also he likes competitive ones that go on for ever where you gradually destroy everyone like Monopoly and Risk and I like strategy and logic like Cluedo, Ticket to Ride.

One we all like in this house is 7 Wonders. But we also have collaborative games like Pandemic and Mysterium where you have to make associations between images on cards in the same way as the person deciding on them has.

I don't like games where I am the focus of everyone's attention doing something silly. In non-pandemic times we usually have a games day with friends and they always want to play Wink Murder and I just can't and have to do the washing up in that bit.

[white_hart]

I can't actually wink, which makes Wink Murder very tricky!

I suspect I'm just permanently traumatised by family games of Monopoly when I was a child, really.

[mrs_redboots]

I do like playing Articulate on Christmas night (it didn't feel like Christmas without, this year), and maybe other similar games, but that's as far as it goes. I'm the only one in my family who neither plays Bridge (okay, that's cards, but still) nor has any interest in learning. My father played chess pretty obsessively until the last year of his life, and was delighted when my then-6-year-old grandson fought him to a draw! Meanwhile he always played with my son-in-law, who has been a ranked player in his time. And my daughter recently posted a lovely lockdown picture of the two boys - now rising 11 and 7 1/2 - playing chess together on the floor! I know the moves of chess but have never had any real interest in playing, much to my father's sorrow!