A recent Lodi News-Sentinel article discussed the ten best known board games, at least as far as the general public is concerned. I thought it might be interesting to take a look at these games from the point of view of the gaming world, which tends to see these titles quite differently. How many of them stand up to close scrutiny today? After all, there could be nothing wrong with such popular games! Or could there ...
Let's start with number 10.
10. Risk
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"The game of world conquest" dates from 1957 and the Cold War atmosphere
shows. An important precept has developed since those days: Everybody
Plays, and has a chance to win, right until the end. But not in
Risk, where players can be eliminated hours before it's over.
Then too, it features a cards collecting
mechanism designed to help out those with smaller board holdings, but
whoever is luckiest at collecting cards receives the most reinforcements and tends to do the best.
Much of the strategy is in deciding when the odds favor taking a
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9. Pictionary
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This curious list takes us from one extreme, the war game, all the way
to the other, a party game, in this
case dating back to 1985. As you probably know, it's all about
drawing a picture of a random word while others guess it in a
limited timespan. Drawing skill is rewarded as is players
knowing one another well. Objects are easy, but some words, e.g.
"wide", can prove quite challenging and stimulating to creativity.
It's not entirely without problems. When two or more groups are
playing at the same time it can be difficult to tell who finished first,
not to mention the possibility of unscrupulous players who train their
eyes on their artist's picture, but their ears on the guesses of other
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8. Trivial Pursuit
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Continuing with another 80s party game (1981), we come to a game of
knowledge and pop culture. Although generally a bit more tame than
Pictionary, it has the same power to bring out many of the same
outbursts and emotions. Presenting a very clear picture of each
player's progress (using innovative playing pieces that build over
time), finding the sweet spot of easy and not-so-easy questions and
not lasting past the point of player patience are a few of the things
that this does so well.
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7. Othello
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With Othello we go back to the 80s, 1880, that is.
Originally called Annexation or Annex this two-player abstract
flickered out, only to return to popularity and gain its semi-classic
status in the 1950s.
A likely descendant of
Go
it differs in that there is a white side and a black side to each
token, the object being to outflank the opponent by getting own disks
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6. Cluedo/Clue
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Dating to 1949, Clue probably owes a lot to Agatha Christie,
A. Conan Doyle and also World War II. A topic as outré as murder had been
rare in board games, but the worst war the world had ever seen
desensitized the audience in such matters. (You can see similar trends
in the movies of the period.) Although
subsequent games have taken its focus on logical deduction further, it
can still often mostly work. Probably there are not enough die rolls
in the game for probabilities to work out fairly and a player who rolls
consistently badly can be a disadvantage. In addition players probably
have too much control over others, being able to pick up their pieces
and move them to wherever they are on the board. If the table
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5. Monopoly
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The original version dates from 1904, among gamers this is probably the most
controversial game in this list. Some continue to love it while the rest
have left it far behind. Its supporters like to point out that few
play it as intended – so many use
variants
such as placing tax
payments to be claimed on Free Parking and the omission of the auction
rules for unpurchased properties. These lengthen play time quite a bit
and contribute not a little to the general dislike, which tends to
make the game's fans even more adamant. But they have to admit there
are other serious problems. Players are eliminated. The first player
has an unfair advantage because the earlier you roll the better property
purchasing opportunities you have. The two card decks are rather
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4. Scrabble
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The classic word game from 1931 is not only about vocabulary,
but also strategy since the board has a definite geography in terms of
double and triple letter and word spaces. It would be great if it
were about knowing lots of different words and being good at
figuring out what you can make with your letters, but developing
proficiency in this one goes in the wrong direction. Most experts
tend to form very short words to limit severely the choices of
opponents. Fanatics memorize every obscure two- and
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3. Backgammon
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This abstract is a true
classic, apparently dating back five thousand years to
Mesopotamia. It may share a common ancestor with Pachisi,
was probably related to the Egyptian game Senet and spread
everywhere by Roman legions. Popularity surged in the United
States during the 1970s and continues today, probably for the
gambling element. Like Othello it is also quite easy to learn.
The gambling aspect saves the game's main problem, its extreme
vagaries of luck. The only way to really play it is to make an entire
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2. Checkers
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Here is another true oldie, an
abstract whose roots stretch all the way back to ancient Egypt, when
possibly it was not quite so abstract. Today, versions vary and the UK
and USA seem content to play on a 8x8 board while continental Europe
prefers a 10x10 board. Other parts of the world, such as
southeast Asia, even use 12x12. Generally quite popular,
although somehow lacking the exalted reputation of Chess, to which it
is often compared, probably on the basis of the similar board even
though this is not really appropriate as the two are quite different.
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1. Chess
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The last of the true oldies has
obviously experienced a large number of
rules changes over time. Allowing pawns to optionally move
forward two spaces is a fix to speed things up while the en passant
rule is a fix to this fix. Strategy is very deep, but computers
are beating even the very best players these days.
Unlike many of the games above, there is no luck apart from who
starts. Despite its former reputation as a quaint, sissy pursuit, it
is increasingly becoming recognized, for example as in The Joy Luck
Club, that good play is mostly about aggression. As with the similarly
popular Bridge, the very extensive amount of literature about the game
prove to be its downfall. In the words of Baldassare Castiglione who
wrote his Etiquette for Renaissance Gentlemen in 1528: "That is
certainly a refined and ingenious recreation," said Federico, "but it
seems to me to possess one defect; namely, that it is possible for it
to demand too much knowledge, so that anyone who wishes to become an
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