Never Too Grown Up: Five Great Games

Something happened when I grew up...

Time was, every time I got together with a group of friends, we'd break out a board or card game. I've played a LOT of games in my time, so not being able to play too many... well, it makes me sad, to be honest. In honor of my 200th Blogger post (or whatever), I'm gonna talk quickly about five of my most favoritest games ever.

Dominion

Most board/card games, once you've played them a couple of times, lend themselves to a specific strategy - buy like crazy in Monopoly, dig your heels into Australia when playing Risk, etc.

In Dominion, players focus on building up their own "deck" from a selection of resource and victory point cards. Resources allow the player to purchase more victory points but have no impact on the end of the game, while victory points are useless in game but are the only way to determine victory. There are about 30 different types of resource cards - the catch, though, is that only 10 are available each game. Every time you play Dominion, the game is completely different.

Expansion packs increase the variety even more, but, in my opinion, the core game is solid enough to stand on its own.

Bang

Bang is a card game that recreates the great gun fights of Spaghetti Westerns. Players assume the roles of colorful cowboy stereotypes and take shots at each other with guns, knives, and dynamite. Sometimes you can defend yourself by taking shelter behind a barrel or riding away on your horse. If you're lucky enough to have a sombrero or Bible, you're enemies will probably hit that insteat. If not, you better just hope they miss.

Heh. The first time I played Bang, I actually died before I even got a turn. Bang still ranks as one of my favorite games, though.

Once Upon a Time

Here's a game for the storyteller.

Once Upon a Time provides players with the building blocks of a classic fairy tale and an ending to work towards. The first player (usually the player with the longest beard) starts telling the story he has in mind, but any other player can jump in if they have a card that matches any plot element the other player brings up. The goal is to get rid of all the cards in your hand and end the story the way YOU planned - but other players are trying to wrest control of the story from you.

Competetive storytelling. Pure awesome.

Talisman

This, by the way, is the random board game you often see the nerds playing in Big Bang Theory.

Talisman is a fantasy-style board game I played with my brothers all while growing up. The goal is to... well, allegedly, it's just to get to the center of the board and find the ancient treasure guarded by evil dragons and stuff. Really, though, you just need to kill the other players. If you're an Assassin, it's pretty easy. If you're, say, the Merchant... you're probably dead.

You know, I don't really care too much about this game anymore, but I loved it so much growing up that I just HAD to include it.

Puerto Rico

Puerto Rico's all about commerce, in this old-fashioned, 18th century kind of way. You cultivate your land to produce sugar, coffee, and other goods and harvest it all with slave labor (the game says "colonists," but I know what's REALLY up). You ship the goods for victory points or sell them for money. You use money to buy up different buildings and factories to make MORE victory points or money, and you use victory points to... win.

There's a lot of strategy that goes into the game, but I've found it to be one of the best games I've ever played in the last five years.