Peaeater

I love games and gaming. I won't try to figure out why in this post. I will say right off the bat that "games" do not include "sports" in my personal lexicon. Nothing wrong with sports per se, I'm just not naturally interested in them. Probably this has to do with the fact that the games I like involve a "let's pretend" aspect to them, which doesn't translate to sports. "Let's pretend we're a bunch of people kicking this ball around" does not a feast for the imagination make.

Yes, sports are healthy. They are good. Just making a point.

There's been a real resurgence of board gaming in the last 10 years or so, and it all seems to have started with the "German games" best represented by Settlers of Catan, which garnered Spiel des Jahres (Game of the Year) in 1995. Could I be alive at a better time than this?

When I say "board games" I include games that don't actually use a board. In fact, not one of the games that follows actually has a board. Maybe I should have called them "tabletop games." Too late now. My DELETE key is overused as it is. You disagree. Fine.

Here are the board games we have in our closet and play pretty regularly. I would be delighted to beat you soundly at any one of them.

Settlers of Catan is a must-have. I have burned my Monopoly set, (except for the money, which I put toward my mortgage) and I will never go back. There are a number of add-ons and descendants that extend the game and change the nature of play so as to keep you addicted for the rest of your natural life. We have the  Seafarers of Catan and Cities and Knights of Catan expansions. If you come to our house for a social call, we *will* inflict Settlers on you. We've also recently acquired Candamir: The First Settlers which is vaguely related, and we've played it a couple of times - just last night actually.

Carcassonne is another fine German game that I thought, initially, I had a lock on, but now screw up royally every time I play. On every turn, you draw and place a land tile, so the board gets built as you go. You get to choose where to place the tile, so long as it adjoins an existing tile and is suited to that spot (a road must join to a road, for example). You then decide whether to place one of your little guys (meeples) on the tile, and which role it'll play: knight, thief, monk, or farmer, depending on how it's placed. You garner points for controlling or "closing off" various areas of the board, and different strategies seem to pay off equally well: you can either try to gain a lot of quick cheap points, or invest in good positions for end game scoring. There are about a million expansions to this game.

Bang! is a Wild West card game where the outlaws try to shoot down the sheriff, the deputies try to stop them, and the renegade just gots to be the last man standing. It's kind of a strange game in that almost everyone is going to be eliminated, but somehow you don't mind, and play goes fast enough that you'll be joining a new game within 20 minutes. Competition is very direct - you inhume the other players with bullets and dynamite to knock them out of play! I haven't really figured out any particular strategy that works consistently, which is a good thing, actually, because no one player dominates, and it also means you must rely on your compadres' help to win. The game gets better the more players you have - 8 is best! Especially if they're Friesens. The card deck has both English and the original Italian, which somehow makes the game even better: Mancato! (Missed!)

Coloretto can be hard to explain, but everyone gets it as soon as they see it laid out. You collect coloured cards. At the end of every short round, you are forced to take some. For three colours you decide are "yours" (and you can change your mind on which three at any time), the colours you collect count for positive points, but any extra colour cards count against you. It's very tricky to get just the colours you want, and of course you want to stick everyone else with colours they don't need. Play goes quickly, and there's just enough thinking to keep you interested and vengeful: no "analysis paralysis" in this game, which is a vice of mine in games such as Scrabble, so much so my wife will never play Scrabble with me ever again.

Hive is brand new to me, but I like it a great deal. Only two players, mano a mano, and no board at all: just hex tiles with bugs on 'em. The tiles are nice and heavy and remind me of dominoes. Each type of bug has a different move, sort of like chess pieces, and though the rules are simple, the game play can be highly varied and complex. You can really develop involved long-term strategies and watch them come to fruition, or see the work of half an hour dashed because your opponent's queen bee moved one space. I guess that's like chess again, except I find chess a little too abstract and formal for my taste. Hive is a lot more fun.