Board games have enjoyed a popular resurgence over the last decade, with thousands of new titles released each year. Industry watchers are forecasting that the board and card game industry will be a $21.6 billion proposition by 2023 — accounting for $12 billion in the U.S. alone — and that was before the pandemic shutdown turned us all into near-obsessive puzzle devotees and board game fans.
Parcheesi may be peachy and pinochle fun, but with so many new games flooding the market, we set out to test drive some new amusements. And these four new — or new to us — board games are just the ticket.
Who can resist a game that lets you channel your inner Zeus, showcase your trivia prowess or map forests and streams in the hinterlands? It’s all kinds of geeky fun.
Cartographers
Released late last year, this game designed by Jordy Adan is our new favorite. We’ve played it a dozen times in the last week alone, and we’re not alone in our devotion. Cartographers was a nominee for the 2020 Kennerspiel des Jahres, the Oscars of the game world, as well as Meeples’ Choice and other major awards.
The game is beautifully designed and easy to learn — flip a card, then figure out what to draw and where — with enough quirks to keep you coming back for more. And it can be played by any number of people, from one to 100.
The backstory: Queen Gimnax from the Kingdom of Nalos wants to reclaim the wild northern lands from the evil Dragul, but she needs a cartographer — that’s you — to map the wilderness over the next four seasons. The hitch? You’ll have to do it according to her very strict and ever-changing edicts. She wants one enormous village, forests to protect the borderlands and farms at water’s edge and — hang on, new edict coming in! OK, those farms should not be anywhere near water, and the forests should ring the mountains, not line the borders. Also, small villages, people! The queen wants hamlets!
Your cartographer’s notepad represents the northern lands as an 11-by-11 grid dotted with mountains and ancient ruins. It’s up to you to draw Tetris-shaped expanses of forest or river, say, or squeeze an L-shaped trio of hamlet houses into rapidly diminishing space, while pleasing the mercurial queen and warding off goblins. The royal edicts rotate each season and change out entirely next game.
Good to know: The game includes a cartography pad; edict, season and explore cards; and four small pencils, which we quickly wore down to nubbins. Have a pencil sharpener and back-up pencils handy. Using colored pencils — green for forest, blue for water, neon hues for goblins — makes scoring easier (and besides, who doesn’t enjoy coloring?).
Zoom-ability: This game is a natural for virtual game night. Friends and family can download extra cartography pages from the Thunderworksgames.com site or simply use graph paper to map the kingdom. (Once they’ve played it, they’ll probably want to buy their own game. It’s addictive.)
Details: Made by Thunderworks, Cartographers ($25) is designed for 1 to 100 players ages 12 and up. It takes 30 to 45 minutes to play.
Tokaido
We can’t jet off to Asia right now, but we can capture some of the joy of travel — exploring new terrain, trying new foods, seeing new things and meeting interesting people — in this beautiful game. Tokaido, which was originally released in 2012 and has been updated with fresh art since, follows Japan’s 11th-century road connecting Edo (now Tokyo) and Kyoto. By the 17th century it had become a popular route, with travelers breaking up their then-two-week journey with stops at inns, hot springs and other attractions. Now you can make that journey, too.
In Tokaido, just as in real-life travel, the winner isn’t the player who finishes first. It’s the one who collects the most varied experiences along the way. And though the board game is linear — you start in one city and progress to the other, passing 53 temples, inns, hot springs and merchants along the way — the order of play is not.
There are no dice, no spinner. You move as many places as you want to move, and the next player to go is the farthest one back. Rush ahead, and you’ll find yourself cooling your heels while other players soak in the hot springs, listen to the shamisen, view stunning landscapes and pick up souvenirs, before spending their cardboard yen on sashimi and udon.
We rushed through the game the first time — how can first-to-the-finish be wrong? The second time, we stopped everywhere on a leisurely, meditative journey. We also gave our meeple — the wooden playing pieces — personalities drawn from 10 possibilities, including a street entertainer, an artist and an orphan, who started out with little money but reaped free food at every inn.
Good to know: There’s an adaptation for playing with two players, instead of three or more, that involves creating an imaginary friend, which is silly. Just play by the normal rules.
Zoom-ability: No — this is an in-person game for a quiet game night at home.
Details: This game ($40) from FunForge is designed for 2 to 5 players, ages eight and up. It takes 45 minutes to play.
Santorini
Looking to indulge your inner Demeter? To channel your Dionysius alter ego? This strategic board game has players vying to build an ancient Greek city by constructing white-washed towers. The first player to build and ascend to the third floor of a tower wins the game, which sounds easy enough. But a stack of “god cards” confers super powers — doubling your construction capability, for example, or allowing you to jump over opponents — and can completely change the rules.
Created by mathematician and teacher Gordon Hamilton, this is a great-looking game — from a distance, you can’t tell those towers are plastic. We spent a happy afternoon pretending we were in the Aegean and plotting where and how to build our towers on this green island game board. Each player has two worker/pieces to maneuver around the board, building and climbing towers. Blue domes let frantic architects cap off their towers if opponents get too close for comfort.
Good to know: The instructions urge players to play by the basic rules for the first round or two, before introducing the “god cards” and their superpowers — and you probably should, for the first, incredibly boring round anyway, so you understand how the rules work before bringing the “simple gods” cards into play. The game doesn’t take flight until you add the “advanced gods” and suddenly the game becomes all about strategy, with rules that shift from round to round.
Zoom-ability: It might be possible to play this virtually, the same way that you can play chess by mail. But it won’t be anywhere near as fun as playing with the actual game board and pieces.
Details: The Santorini game ($30), from Spin Master Games, is designed for two to six players, ages 8 and up.
Listography
This trivia box is the game-board offshoot of the best-selling themed journals — Food Listography, Music Listography, Travel Listography, et al. The game version sends players along a serpentine path, competing to compile lists of things that do or do not match other players, according to the cards you draw.
Draw a “One-on-One” card and everyone must write lists of 10 things associated with pirates, perhaps, or sports that require a glove, with a point for every item that matches an item on only one other player’s list. For a “Threefold” card, players jot down three things — body parts you can live without, for example — in the hopes of matching as many other players as possible.
And a “Forgotten Four” rewards items with no matches at all. So when challenged to name four movies based on, say, Stephen King books, “It” will do you no favors. You’ll have to go deep into the King canon to pluck out something no one else is likely to think of — or do a fake out with a heavy sigh, a muttered “Well, everyone will have that” and an elaborate crossing out, then sneaking “It” or “The Shining” onto your list. (Just ask my husband, who won the bagel flavors round with “plain bagel.”)
Good to know: You need at least three people to play the actual game. With just two players, the points are identical and you win in unison. That said, there’s plenty of fun to be had by drawing cards and comparing lists, without caring who wins — especially with the Forgotten Four cards.
Zoom-ability: This one is perfect for virtual game play.
Details: This 2016 game ($25) from Chronicle Books is designed for three to six players, ages 12 and up, although younger children could certainly play if you curate the cards for a younger crowd.
https://www.sbsun.com/2020/12/09/board-game-night-4-great-new-or-newish-board-and-card-games/
2020-12-09 19:23:28Z
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