Modern Designer Boardgames to the Rescue
The world of modern designer boardgames has gone unnoticed by the vast majority of the populace for far too long. Ask the average person if they play boardgames and their immediate reaction is an adamant denial with extreme prejudice and a contemptible scoffing dripping with disdain. Boardgames are things that you play when there is literally nothing else to do because of inclement weather or because your life is pathetically sad. Not so. But, this generic contempt for boardgames persists because the vast majority of people think of boardgames as residing at one of two extremes. They either conjure in their minds memories of the games of their youth (Monopoly, Candyland, Yahtzee) and remember how rudimentary and primordial those gaming concepts were and how dull the experience was as a result. Or, they think of Dungeons and Dragons and call to mind caricatures of the social outcasts who played such games and recall with relish the heaps of scorn they lavished upon those games and the ones unfortunate enough to play them in some basement somewhere.
But, there is a middle ground. Unfortunately, very few seem to know that such a median exists. This is quite sad because modern designer boardgames can fix a lot of what ails the modern family at present. Parents and their growing children have found it increasingly difficult to engage with one another on neutral ground. Parents, desirous to engage in activities as a family unit, have to keep their children off of their digital devices with a whip and a chair long enough to engage, but cannot seem to provide an entertaining alternative that can remotely compete with social media or video games. Teens and pre-teens tend to loathe family nights because they typically involve activities they have no interest in participating in.
Modern designer boardgames can step into this void and bridge the digital divide that has increasingly alienated members within their own families. What modern designer boardgames can provide is a sort of magic – a strange alchemy that combines an endlessly fascinating and mentally challenging puzzle with a thoroughly enjoyable gameplay experience for all ages, all while packaged within an aesthetically pleasing world of the designer’s creation. You are invited into a new world where every participant engages as an individual, while simultaneously operating within a construct that binds the participants closer together as a single unit because of their shared experience – an experience that can be mildly engrossing in the worst-case scenario, utterly enchanting in the best.
My own family’s dynamic changed dramatically as a result of modern designer boardgames. In the past, as a family of four, we typically spent time together eating out at restaurants or going to movie theaters to see the latest blockbuster. Unfortunately, this was costly and much of what we watched in the theaters was corrosive. Further, the level of engagement was kept at the bare minimum because meaningful interaction is difficult in crowded restaurants and impossible in a movie theater. When we spent time at home our options were that much more limited. Television watching occupied much of our time together, but again meaningful interaction was virtually nonexistent. When we endeavored to play boardgames, we would typically play Monopoly or Risk. Neither were particularly satisfying experiences. Monopoly is almost pure luck and uninteresting to most people past the age of 10 or 11. Risk is a decent game, but only if everyone plays the game the way it is designed to be played. My mother, God bless her, hates to fight. Consequently, whenever we would play a game of Risk she would never attack anyone and therefore everyone else was loath to attack her. She would effectively watch us play as we tried to take over the world. This became increasingly unsatisfactory. We needed an alternative. We found it in modern designer boardgames and it is not hyperbolic to suggest that the discovery changed our lives.
Catan
The first modern designer boardgame our family purchased was Catan (or Settlers of Catan as it was called back then). My brother had played this boardgame in college and introduced it to our family. We played it once and we were immediately hooked. We played that game over and over again to the point where we had to tape the cards back together because they were tearing at the edges from constant use. We literally played that game thousands of times.
Catan is what is called a Eurogame. There is some indirect player interaction, but very limited ways for direct frontal assaults amongst players. This was a boon for my dear mother who hates conflict in general and would rather die than attack one of her own children, even figuratively. Catan is effectively a resource management game where the object is to collect resources, convert those resources into houses, cities, roads, or cards in order to generate victory points. First player to ten points wins.
What makes this game so addictive is the fact that there is no downtime during the game for any of the players. Every roll of the dice involves every player in the game, thus even when it is not your turn it is somehow still your turn. The trading aspect with other players in the game for resources also adds a depth and a complexity to the game that makes it quite compelling. But, what perhaps encapsulates the magic of Catan more than any other feature is its endgame. The moment a player hits ten points the game ends, which gives the game a race-like quality that has every player compulsively trying to gain points as quickly as possible. And not only does the game end abruptly, but almost every single game ends in a photo finish. I have yet to play a game of Catan where it was a blowout from start to finish. Typically, the endgame has every player within a point or two of victory. Consequently, at the end of the game the typical refrain is “I was so close. Let’s play again.” That is the magic of Catan.
Eventually, however, we had reached the point where we had played that game to death. We needed something new and Catan had opened up an entire new world for us to explore. We went down the rabbit hole and we found deeper, more intellectually stimulating and aesthetically engrossing games that left us in awe of the genius of the designers who had created them. Catan was our first foray as tourists into the world of modern designer boardgames. What we found next made us permanent residents.
Agricola
Agricola is another Eurogame. Agricola is classified as a worker placement game where each player only has two workers to start with and they are utilized to gather resources in a farming simulation. Your workers gather resources or perform certain actions to build a farm and the player with the “best” farm in the end wins. This sounds boring I know. But, this game perhaps more than any other changed our perceptions of what tabletop gaming can be. The game is intellectually stimulating – engrossing really – and the pastoral theme hooked my mother almost immediately.
What this game does perhaps better than any other boardgame is that it so finely balances what a player wants to do with what a player has to do. One mechanism embedded in the game is the requirement that each player has to feed their workers at certain predetermined intervals. This forces players to use their workers to procure food when they would rather use them to build their farm to ultimately gain the victory points needed to win the game. Because all players are constrained in this same way and because there are only a limited number of slots to place workers the game becomes a competitive race to use the slots available before the other players do. Imagine grocery shopping in a communist country where there is only one of each item in the store with hundreds of shoppers lined up in anticipation and you get some idea of what the early game of Agricola is like. The early game is a grind. But, as the game progresses more slots open up with greater opportunities to procure more workers, more food and more of the resources needed to build one’s farm.
And the magic of Agricola is the fact that at the end of the game every player has created their own food engine, thereby dispensing with the necessity to use precious workers to procure food. Players are then free to embark on collecting more resources to make their farms great and it is at that precise moment that the game ends. The scores are fairly close in the end and the compulsion is to keep playing because at the end of the game the players are finally able to do what they wanted to do the entire game, whereas in the early game players were largely forced to forego what they wanted to do in order to do what they had to do. Invariably, the game ends with almost every player saying, “So close. Let’s play again.” Again, that is the sign of a magical experience.
Once we found Agricola, we were hooked and we maniacally sought out other boardgames because we were so besotted with the experience. Our next boardgame took us even deeper down the rabbit hole.
Power Grid
Power Grid is an economic simulation whereby players are trying to build cities across a map, bid on power plants to power those cities, buy resources to power those power plants, and then collect the money that comes from providing power to the cities they have built. What is so magical about this game is that it is cutthroat without hurting anybody’s feelings. My own dear mother – the carest of Care Bears – loves this game even though she hates conflict with the fury of a thousand suns.
Players can stick it to their competitors by outbidding them for power plants or causing other players to pay too much for them. Players can also hamper the plans of their competitors by buying up all the resources that other players need to power their own power plants. Players can also hurt the prospects of their competitors by building cities in locations before the other players requiring them to then pay more to build their cities elsewhere. The game rewards efficiency and ruthless capitalism in equal measure and we love this game.
Moreover, Power Grid has a built-in mechanism that never allows for one player to build an insurmountable lead. I have never played a game of Power Grid where one player led wire to wire. The endgame is always tense and exciting.
Splendor
But, our family’s favorite game is probably Splendor. The game is quick and competitive and it is ultimately a race to the most victory points so that the game becomes endlessly replayable. Players are trying to be the first to gather fifteen victory points. Players gather gems, purchase cards with those gems and eventually get to a position where the combination of the gems they have gathered and the cards that they own allow them to purchase cards that give them more and more victory points. And the gameplay conditions are tight. Players are always competing against each other for a limited set of gems and cards.
The puzzle of Splendor makes it endlessly engrossing, but the endgame makes the game compulsively addictive. I have never played a game of Splendor where this statement was not made in the end, “If I only had one more turn I would have won.”
Honorable Mentions
Le Havre might be our family’s favorite game when we play it with three players instead of four. Although my family would happily play this game with four. Pretty much any game designed by Uwe Rosenberg would probably be an honorable mention for our family. We have not played them all, but if we did I’m sure every game would make it somewhere on our list of favorite games.
Crokinole is a dexterity game. Players are trying to flick a wooden disk into a hole. This sounds unappealing, but it is incredibly entertaining. Sort of a mix between golf and curling.
Conclusion
The games I mentioned may not be your family’s type of game. But, there is a modern designer boardgame out there that will enthrall your family. You just have to find it. There are literally thousands of modern tabletop games out there – cooperative games, thematic games, fighting games, card games, role playing games, dexterity games, party games – with hundreds more coming out every year. BoardGameGeek.com is sort of the unofficial hub of all things related to modern designer boardgames. YouTube has thousands of videos of boardgame reviews and play-throughs that will allow you to decide what game might be best for you and your family.
Whenever I happen to mention my love of boardgames in conversation with someone, the typical response I get from them is, “Like Monopoly?” And every time this happens, my heart breaks a little. No, not like Monopoly! Nothing like Monopoly! Infinitely better in fact. I want to take them by the hand and force feed them the red pill so I can show them just how deep the rabbit hole goes.