The 4 Best Games You’ve Never Played

A lot of times people are surprised when I tell them I really love to play board games. You need to understand, though – I’m not talking about Monopoly, Clue, or Scrabble. I think those are fine, but what I really, really like is board games that have a good balance of strategy and luck, which a group of people can tear into time after time without feeling like they’re playing the exact same contest each time.

What most people don’t realize is that board games are experiencing something of a renaissance now, and there have been some very creative games developed over the last ten years or so, games created and marketed on a smaller scale but which, thanks to the friendly Internet, are readily available anywhere on the planet. If you’re a little adventuresome, you can get into all kinds of fun. Before I give you my list, though, I need to tell you why I love games.

Communities are built by lots of different factors. Common purpose and language are major factors, as is our old friend common experience. That comes in a lot of different forms over time, including the common experience of tragedy and victory, or change and challenge. Certainly those are all poignant moments, each instance of which can be independently significant to a community’s formation and understanding of itself.

Underrated, though, is the consistent experience of common play together. We sometimes fail to value how playing together, in all the forms that can take, shapes and deepens the bonds between us. When we play together, we create patterns of understanding each other, grooves of being. I begin to understand my friends boundaries, the way they communicate, and what moves and motivates them.

Of course, there are a lot of forms of play. Games, physycal, strategic, or intellectual, can play a part, as might dancing or shopping (you know who you are). Certainly board games are just a subset – not any kind of magic community building bullet. Each community just has to find the forms that work best for it.

For us, we’ve had a ton of fun playing the games below with our amigos. I thought it’d be fun to make a list like this, since these are perhaps a little unusual.

1.  Carcassonne is a fun little game that is part puzzle, part cutthroat strategy.  The learning curve isn’t too bad at all, the game is very balanced, and you can go through a game easily in a half-hour.  That means you usually have time to play a few rounds, which means more chances to win.  It’s probably Kelly’s favorite of all these games.  She is absolutely brutal as a farmer.  There are some expansion variations available, and they’re kind of fun, too.  I think the original game is enough to keep us busy for a while though.  This game opened us up to a lot of different strategy games we wouldn’t have tried before.

2.  The Settlers of Catan might be one of the best of the newer breed of strategy games.  It’s got a tremendous upside: It’s easy to learn, lots of room for strategy to minimize the effects of luck, and some mechanisms (variable board, for instance) that change the game enough that it can feel really different each time you play it.  It does take a bit longer for each round (2 hours if you’ve played before),  and the game as it comes can only take four people.  You can buy an expansion pack so that six can play, and should, but that increases the cost a bit.  This is an extremely fun game, and has a pretty addictive element.  I’m almost always up for a round of this.

3.  Munchkin is perhaps the quirkiest of the games I’m posting here, and perhaps the riskiest as well.  It’s a role playing card game, with an odd set of rules that seems to always change.  Boring people should not play this, but if you have some friends with a little extra imagination, it can be a terribly fun game.  It takes a while, and every time we play it feels like we have to make up our own rules.  Nonetheless, I like it a lot, and Kelly feels sort of “eh” about it.  The best thing about it comes near the end, as there are almost always climatic contest to see who is going to walk away the winner.  There are a lot of extensions to this game, and I appreciate the wit of the creators.  I should note that you might want to censor this game a bit though, as some of the cards can be a little sketchy.

4. Pandemic.  Okay, this is an extremely fun game, but for different reasons.  The biggest quirk is that the players (up to four) don’t compete against each other, but with each other against a set of diseases that threaten the world.  Everybody’s on the same team in this game, so it really ends up being a cooperative strategy game.  That’s a very different type of experience, but I have really liked it.  The game last about an hour, is relatively easy to pick up, and gets fairly intense as it reaches the end stages.  It’s remarkably well balanced.  You can adjust the difficulty somewhat, so it’s a game you can grow into as you master the concepts.

Bonus:  I’ve recently picked up a new game, called King Me!, which the jury is still out on.  I like the design and gameplay a good bit, but we just haven’t played it enough yet for this to be “The 5 best games you’ve never played.”  I’ll keep you posted, though.  So far, I do think it’s fun!

So there are my current favorites.  Anybody else want to chime in on a fun game you’ve run across lately?  I’m always up for something new!