What Makes a Good Board Game

When I was growing up my family played board games like Monopoly. For the longest time that was what I thought all board games were like. Few years ago a friend introduced me to Settlers of Catan and I learned that board game could be more involved and strategic.

 

I've been in an active board game group for three years now. Two of the members are pretty avid collectors, so we play lots of different games. Over this time and all these games, I've figured out the features I like in board games. A lot of the really highly rated games are pretty low on my list. I think the reviewers concentrate mostly on the strategy, but I find you need way more than that to make a good game.

 

The most important aspect of a game is the pieces. You need a bunch of colorful pieces, wooden ones preferably. Carcassonne has some of the best pieces. They are fun fiddle with while you are watching the game. Most hard-core gamers think that pieces are irrelevant, but how often do they actually play a Cheap-Ass game? Those games have the worst pieces and you play them once then you are done with it.

 

Another key part of a board games is the social aspect. So many games just get this wrong. You need to have lots of communication, a few things to bicker over, and not a lot of concentration time. I find the games we come back to always have good social aspects. Recently we've been playing a lot of Modern Art. This is a great game. People are always talking out loud and kibitzing about strategy. The turn order is very important to the social part of the game. Games where you spend a lot of time waiting for somebody to go aren't fun. The person whose turn it is feels pressure and everyone else is bored. Good games have turns where everyone is participating on each turn even if it's not theirs.

 

One bad thing that really wrecks an otherwise good game when the game tends to end with king-maker situations. This is where one player has to pick someone else to win. The always makes the game end with a big let down. There are a couple good ways to get rid of king-maker situations. Lots of games simply hide the score with a little randomness. Since you don't know the score exactly, you can't pick the winner definitively. The other good way we've found to get rid of king-maker situations to play two vs. two. With only two teams, there aren't enough parties involved to have a king-maker problem. We've found it's not too hard to slightly modify the scoring of some games so they can be played two vs. two.

 

And even though I've been bagging on it a little, strategy is pretty important. If you have all the other elements, but the winner is random, the game isn't fun. I think the trick is to have some interesting game-play that doesn't involve too many numbers. Games with lots of numbers are hard to play and really don't appeal to the non-engineers in our group. Bidding is usually a pretty good mechanic because it's strategic without too many numbers.