So You Want To Get Into… Board Games

Despite the distinct lack of clarity for our current… let’s call them “government” for lack of a better word, the one thing that is clear is that we’re still going to be spending time indoors for a while yet (unless you go out but don’t out, going to work only if can unless you’re told you have to but not using any public transport but only if your name is Geoff and Mercury is ascendant). Given that insidey-ness is still the order of the day, let’s have a look at some of the ways that you can pass the time without staring at a screen for hours on end (once you’ve finished staring at the screen to read this, of course). I’ve posted bits and bobs about board games before but let’s give you a bit of an overview to some of the ones out there that’ll give you a bit of a break from the usual monotony of Monopoly.

Good Entry Games
An entry game should be simple to learn, good fun and replayable. You don’t want to be daunted by too many rules. These are also all very family friendly
Exploding Kittens is a great example - the aim of the game is to avoid picking the Exploding Kitten card off the pile and try to make your opponents pick it up. You can get a few expansions now for that one too to add a few more levels of deviousness once you’ve got a few games under your belt. (You can also get a NSFW version so be careful which one you buy if you’re planning on family game night…)
Tsuro is nicely simple too - you lay tiles on the board to make paths with the aim being to stay on board as long as possible - the last person still on the board is the winner. Really quick and easy and a nice little warm up game.
Gloom is also a nicely fun one. You have a family and your aim is to make them as miserable as possible before killing them off while attempting to make your opponents’ families happy. This one encourages an element of storytelling - not essential but makes it nicely fun. This one is, of course, always popular with kids as it’s weird and a bit morbid.

Next Level Up
If you want to move away from the card games and on to the board games, these are all worth exploring.
Ticket To Ride is a board game in which you compete against each other to claim train routes and build up points. It’s another one that’s relatively simple to learn but you can start to add complexity by going for Ticket To Ride Europe which has a couple of extra rules or adding in the expansion maps which each have their own variations on the base game.
Takenoko involves moving a panda and a gardener to either eat or grow crops in order to fulfil objectives - whoever gets to nine completed objectives first wins the game. It’s a nice combination of strategy and randomness. It’s one of those games that seems initially a little confusing as you try to pick up the rules but is actually pretty straightforward once you get into playing it.
King Of New York (or King Of Tokyo - basically the same game) is a combination of Godzilla-style monster-smashing and Yahtzee in that you roll combinations of dice to help you gain power, smash the city and destroy your opponents. As with most modern board games, you can also get a few expansions for this to add more characters and extra rules.

Party Time
All of the above are suitable for two players but if you want something a bit more party/quiz-based (and there are still a number of you in the house together) then there are also a number of other alternatives to give you a bit of a break from the usual round of Trivial Pursuit. Big Potato Games are pretty good at creating a few simple but fun games that fit into this bracket.
Colour Brain involves questions for which the answers are always one or more colours - you play the coloured cards in your hand in order to answer the question. There’s also a sneaky extra mechanic that lets you steal colours from your opponents hand in order to try and disadvantage them.
Mister Lister’s Quiz Shootout divides you up into teams and gives you a topic, going back and forth between the teams to shout out answers. Whoever gets the most wins the card and whoever gets a full set of the different boozes pictured on the back of the cards wins. Nice and simple and good fun.
Cards Against Humanity…. look, we’ve all played that. It’s wrong, it’s twisted and it’ll reveal hidden offensive sides to your nearest and dearest tha were hitherto unsuspected. So you’ve all already played that, haven’t you?

There are loads more I could list so i reckon this one will warrant a sequel at some point. This’ll keep you going for now though (something else to help until the pubs reopen again anyway).