TOPIC: Proper board games for Christmas

To avoid trawling through the Poopyhead thread…

I’m a bit of a board games geek, so the following are a few recommendations (none of which reaches Dungeons and Dragons levels of nerdishness or boredom):

Ticket to Ride. 2-5 players. Quick to set up, easy to learn, fast-paced and fun. I prefer Europe to the USA version. Marklin is great too.

Carcassonne. 2-6 players. Virtually no set-up time. Lots of editions and expansions available. The Winter Edition is particularly nice to play at Christmas.

Perudo. 2-6 players. Liar dice. Lively and fun. Easy to learn. No set-up time needed.

Settlers of Catan. 3-4 players, though there is a 5-6 player expansion. Takes a bit of setting up and a bit of learning, but is very good. This is a bit of a ‘gateway’ game for people. Enjoy this and a whole new world of games will open up to you.

Bang! The Dice Game. 3-8 players. Western-themed dice game.

Pandemic. Theoretically 2-4 players, though you can easily double up, so 2-8 is possible. It’s a collaborative game: all the players either win together or they all get beaten together and the game wins. Takes a bit of setting up and a bit of learning, but is well worth it.

Cartagena. 2-5 players. Pirates racing through a tunnel. Easy to learn, quick to set up.

I could go on, but I won’t.

Some of these are a bit tough for young kids, but to a degree it depends whether they’re used to board gaming.

Risk works best with 4 players. The problem with it with 3 is that an aggressive player, if he has the first turn, can win in two turns. This doesn’t happen with 4 players. With 5 or 6 players, you can be doing a lot of sitting around. I think the more recent editions are significantly worse than older ones. There have been rule changes and the playing pieces are over-fussy and, in my view, not as appealing as the older ones.

Risk is a brilliant game - we played it as kids before there were missions when you simply had to take over the world. Has anyone played Axis & Allies - think its the 1942 version? I have yet to find anyone who can play it and its very difficult to tell the different ships apart.