Musings on law, tech, chess & other topics by a geek

Boing Boing has a great post on board game:

If you asked people in the street to name three new books, films, TV shows or music they’ve enjoyed in the past 20 years, you’ll soon have hundreds of different answers. Ask them to name three boardgames, and you will likely only hear “Monopoly, Scrabble & Cluedo” (aka Clue)*. Not an exaggeration, most people have no idea how far boardgame design has progressed recently. Modern boardgames compare to Monopoly like a BMW compares to a Model T Ford. It’s that different.   I was shown Settlers Of Catan in 1996, just after it was first published and it changed my life**. The epitome of modern German game design, Settlers is totally engaging. You have to think, make decisions, barter, trade and influence the other players. You don’t attack people, but you can block them. You don’t get eliminated and the game takes about two hours tops. Settlers does use dice, but you win by being smart, not lucky. The ‘board’ is modular, large hex tiles, so every game is different and fresh.

Read the rest at BoingBoing

I completely agree, Settlers Rocks. It is collaborative, social, strategic and ever a little competitive while still having an amazing replay value. Our 9 year old loves it and just won her first game of knights and cities this past weekend.  This was a big accomplishment for her, she learned a lot about planning and implementing a strategy to get there. Board games were a staple for my family growing up but they were nothing like this.  Board games have gotten so much better in the last 15 years.

Board games really took off when I was managing a WOTC store.  We had a game night where employees would get together and play new games.  We also had a policy where employees could check out any game in the store to take home for a week and learn.  I miss working somewhere that people get together to play games .

Image CC BY SA Marcaunon wikipedia