Board Gamery

Happy December, everybody, and I hope all you vidyagames fans out there survived the November onslaught of awesomeness. I plumped for Fallout 3 and played it from beginning to end, loving every minute… but more on that another day. There have been plenty of “November games” blog posts all over the place so I thought I’d take a step back and blog about something different for a change.

I’ve mentioned board gaming before but I think it’s time we had a full-on post devoted to it. So here goes.

I’ve been a fan of tabletop gaming for many years, ever since my then-teenaged brother’s then-girlfriend introduced me to Hero Quest and Space Crusade, games which captivated me not only with their cool, super-detailed little Citadel Miniatures pieces but the fact that they told a story and did something far beyond games that I had played in the past had done. They had interesting mechanics that went beyond “roll and move”, they had an interesting twist on the traditionally competitive nature of other board games by pitting up to three players (the Heroes or the Marines, depending on if you’re talking about Hero Quest or Space Crusade) against one more powerful player (the Dungeon Master or the Alien).

I was so captivated by Hero Quest and Space Crusade that I managed to convince my folks to get me a copy of Advanced Heroquest for one Christmas/birthday/present-receiving opportunity – this despite the fact that I didn’t really have anyone to play with on a regular basis. AHQ took Hero Quest and took it to the next level, with a more “RPG” style system involving character statistics, equipment, hit rolls and all sorts of other interesting rules. More intriguingly, it featured both random dungeon generation, meaning a different experience every time, plus a comprehensive set of rules for solo play, so that my lack of gaming friends living nearby wasn’t an issue.

Fast forward a few years and we reach the present. At some point last year, my buddies Sam and Tom and I decided to sit down and play some board games. We started with Risk and then, following some lucky victories on eBay, we dug out Hero Quest and Space Crusade.

This was the beginning of things – that and discovering Board Game Geek, a site with a big, lively community that discusses board games in great detail and offers excellent, articulate community reviews. (Board gamers seem to be typically rather more articulate than many video gamers, I’ve noticed.) Over time, we started to amass a collection of interesting and out-of-the-ordinary board games. I’d like to share my thoughts on a couple of them with you now.

Pandemic

Pandemic is a peculiar game from the off in that it’s not competitive at all. It pits two to four players against the game itself. The premise is that the players are all members of an elite disease-fighting organisation and have been tasked with curing four deadly diseases that are sweeping the planet. Each player has a unique “role” which gives them a special ability – the Medic, for example, is better at “cleaning” a city of disease, the Scientist discovers cures easier than the other characters, the Dispatcher can move other players on their turn to put them into a strategically advantageous position, the Researcher can exchange information (coloured cards that have to be collected as a set to discover a cure) with other players easier than the others and the Operations Expert can build a Research Facility (a location where cures can be discovered, and also a means of “fast traveling” between locations) anywhere at no cost.

It’s the balance between these roles and the strategy which you have to develop that makes this game so interesting… and it’s the random element thrown up by the fact that the diseases spread a certain amount each turn that makes it exciting and difficult. It often seems relatively easy to get to the “halfway” point with two of the four diseases cured before an epidemic sweeps through an area which had looked somewhat “quiet” before, leading to a situation difficult or even impossible to recover from.

Pandemic is simple to learn and encourages a huge amount of communication and strategising between players. I really like it, even though the “Heroic” game we’ve been playing recently (which makes the game more challenging by throwing more “Epidemic” cards into the mix) kicks our ass every time we play it. It’s the kind of game where you think “well, next time if we do this…” every time.

Our worst game lasted two turns. That’s two players’ turns, not two rounds of the table.

Check it out on Board Game Geek.

Agricola

I mentioned this on the recent Squadron of Shame podcast (see links to the right if you want to listen or subscribe) but it’s worth mentioning again. Agricola is currently one of the Geek’s top-rated board games. Players take on the role of a 16th-century German farmer struggling to get by in difficult times. Throughout the course of the game, you have to try and feed your family, grow your family (more family members means more actions per turn), plough fields, sow crops, breed animals and ensure that your farmyard is as full as possible.

The difficulty comes in the fact that all this has to be done in the space of 14 turns, which never seems to be quite enough time.

Each turn, players use one of their “family members” to take an action from the “action spaces” on the board in the middle of the table. This could be anything from taking resources, required for building pretty much everything, to actually building said structures, to baking bread to produce food. The interesting way the game works is that as it progresses, more and more action spaces become available so it gradually increases in complexity as time goes on – that and the fact that once one person has taken an action, no-one else can on that turn.

I am shit at Agricola. I’m not sure what it is – perhaps it’s an inability to look as far ahead as my buddies – but I enjoy it nonetheless as it’s satisfying to put together your farm, however feeble it ends up looking at the end of the game!

Check it out on Board Game Geek.

Mystery of the Abbey

Describe Mystery of the Abbey to someone and the first thing everyone says is “Oh, that sounds like Clue(do)“. Try it – here’s a description.

There’s been a murder at the Abbey. The players have to discover the identity of the culprit by gathering information, eliminating suspects through questioning and deduction before finally revealing the identity of the perpetrator.

It’s more interesting and thought-provoking than Clue, though, in that it requires you to spend a little time formulating your questions. Rather than simply “calling Colonel Mustard into the library with the candlestick”, you have to actually ask your fellow players questions, being careful to phrase them in such a way that reveals information to you and not to others. Players that you question can either take a vow of silence, in which case no information is exchanged, or answer your question, which gives them the automatic right to hurl a question straight back at you.

The Abbey setting provides scope for a number of interesting rules, too. Every four rounds, the investigative monks have to tromp back to the Ecclesia to take Mass. At Mass, as everyone knows, monks gossip, so players have to pass a particular number of cards (each card representing a monk who DIDN’T commit the crime) to the next player on the table. In this way, it becomes another challenge to conceal certain innocent monks from the other players for as long as possible.

Then there’s the Penance rules. These are some vaguely-defined but incredibly harsh rules that punish not following the way of the Abbey. If a player moves out of turn, or breaks a rule, or forgets to move the little bell that marks progress towards the next Mass, then the other players can call “Penance!” (by common agreement) and send the monk back to the Ecclesia to miss a turn atoning for their sins. The Penance rules are particularly harsh, especially given the fairly mild-natured manner of the rest of the game, but it gives the whole thing a slight air of tension which is enormously entertaining.

Check it out on Board Game Geek.

So there you have it. Three great games that I highly recommend you check out if you’re the slightest bit interested in going beyond what more “traditional” games like Monopoly can offer.