We’ve previously done posts for great games for kids, let’s do something a bit different and look back taking some inspiration from how we enjoyed board games in our youth.
The games we remember playing ‘back in the day’ were made for families and were also seen as classics. We’re not going to do the likes of Uno, Monopoly or Frustration as things have moved on as there are some amazing games out there and we reckon that a family who has been brought up on gaming should have at least one or two of these great modern classics in their collection.
So here are some of those games that have stood the test of time, been around for a fair long while and still going strong. The sign of quality.
Catan
Some say that modern board gaming all started here and we’re prone to agree with them.
The Settlers of Catan, Settlers, Die Siedler von Catan, it’s had a few name changes, these days it’s just Catan, but it’s still the masterpiece from Klaus Teuber from 1995 with over 32 million copies sold and in over 40 languages this is truly a behemoth of the modern gaming world.
With various expansions and spin-offs being released over the years (there’s way more than 50 that we can find online without even trying that hard…) and a huge fanbase, we regularly see this hitting the tables at our cafes.
A lot of those we talk to about Catan mention they were introduced to modern board games through it and some don’t ever leave as it’s that good.
Why? Well, it’s a great mix of strategy and negotiation and has a great complexity curve where, at the start of the game things options are limited so it’s not oo confusing but it soon ramps up at a beautiful rate and before you know it you’re wheeling and dealing and getting in each others way like there is no tomorrow. The rule book may seem daunting but when you realise that all the rules are only on two pages of the book, it’s in no way an insurmountable obstacle.
There’s been 5 editions so far and the 6th is due this year, we can’t wait to see how they improve on this already amazing classic.
For 3 to 4 players (base game) you owe yourself a game of Catan and we’d love to be the ones to share that experience with you, your family and your friends.
Carcassonne
Carcassonne is named after a town in France and has a huge fanbase in the gaming world, in fact after Catan this is the most rated game on Board Game Geek with (at last count) over 130,000 users giving it a ranking.
Carcassonne is at its heart a tile-laying game where you take ownership of features on the map using ‘meeples’ and efficiently score those features with a view to end up with the most points at the end of the game.
Let’s pause a moment and mention that odd word again, meeple. Did you know that the original game of Carcassonne referred to the little wooden people tokens as followers? The name rose in popularity as a shortened form of ‘my people’, and the name stuck, now most game pieces shaped like people are called meeples.
One of the reasons we love Carcassonne is how differently it plays at each of the player counts and how it can be played with a hint of evilness or even by assisting other players in the game. There are ways in the game of sharing scoring features and if you do then you both get all the points for the feature. In a 2-player game this is a great way of making a feature that your opponent has spent ages building, end up worthless and in a larger player count game it’s a great way of catching up on a player who has taken a large lead.
Expansions, yeah… lots and it seems there is a new one most years of some description. They even have plenty of stand alone games too, including a great purely cooperative version.
Beautiful to play from 2 to 5 players, this is a game that is always going to be around. Thank you Klaus-Jürgen Wrede for creating a well loved classic.
7 Wonders
In 2010 7 Wonders from Antoine Bauza was released and, once you know the game it’s a speedy civilization game of less than 30 minutes.
Over the course of 3 ages you will play a total of only 18 cards but you will feel like those 18 cards have built up a whole Empire. Amazing game play, when you put it like that it’s a stunning accomplishment.
It’s a simple tableau building closed drafting system that brings this game to life with a little dash of asymmetry in your starting player board which represents one of various Wonders of the ancient world. This adds a lovely bit of asymmetry as does the fact that not all cards will be played and in the final age a random selection of guild cards are added in for end game scoring, not all will be in every game.
With all the areas of a Civ game you would expect, military, commerce, resource creation, technology and quality of life (represented as victory points), it’s even got a mini ’tech-tree’ aspect too in the way cards can link over Eras.
With a player count from 2 to 7 players and again, various expansions that can add to the game play, there is a lot here to explore.
Dominion
So far we’ve had the very start of modern board gaming, the best tile laying game, the best drafting game… Now it’s that very first of what was a totally new mechanic at the time, deck-building.
Dominion came from a world where Magic the Gathering was king. MtG is a game where you make a deck of cards before the game begins and pit it against opponents. People loved this building of a deck aspect, so why not include it in the game?
In 2008 that is exactly what Donald X. Vaccarino did. In Dominion you all start with the same deck of cards and over the course of the game you will purchase new cards to be added to your deck and hopefully create a synergy that will end up with you having the most points when the game ends. This was totally new and since then many other games have taken this wonderful mechanic and riffed on it to various degrees of success. Are any as good as Dominion? Maybe that’s a different blog… All we know is Dominion did it first and with over a dozen expansions that add new and varied twists to a great system it’s an absolute corker.
Quacks of Quedlinburg
Our final game is a bit more recent but is another great example of an awesome twist on a quality mechanic, we’ve mentioned drafting before and normally it’s cards… Well, this time it’s something a bit different…
In Quacks (as it’s known to its friends) you are competing apothecaries trying to show that they brew the greatest potion in the land. You are basically showing off what bubbly lovely creations you can make from taking ingredients from your bag and then spend the money you earn each day on putting new ingredients in your bag. Put too much of the stuff that makes it look bubbly in your potion and the whole thing explodes. Nobody likes that!
So, really what you have here is a twist on deck-building (thank you Dominion)… but you are ‘bag building’, the tokens are your cards and the bag is your deck. What has been added here is a lovely physical push your luck element that just works beautifully.
Wolfgang Warsch nailed this thematic masterpiece and it has such a wide replayability thanks to alternative rules for each ingredient.
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One last thing… There was no point mentioning this in the above text for each game but every single one of these games has won an award at the Spiel des Jahres. We’ve always said that receiving that award is a mark of quality, and clearly as these have stood the test of time… it is!