More Than Monopoly

By Chris Yi

For nearly the last 10 years, I’ve been involved in a very rewarding hobby: board games. I grew up playing a healthy amount of the classics like Clue, Risk, and Monopoly, but played games less frequently as I got older. When I was 22, my brother introduced my wife and I to games like The Settlers of Catan and Dominion that changed my mind about what board games could do. These were more strategic. They let me use my problem-solving skills and explore unique and fun paths to win. We got together for games night after night, introducing our new discoveries to friends, sometimes having large game nights with a dozen people over playing loud and raucous games. Other nights, we weighed the costs and benefits of different options as we sat silently, staring at a board of wooden figurines. Both types of nights were just as much fun. Our family plays games.

This hobby would seem ideal during a global pandemic with stay-at-home orders and fears of large public gatherings. In many ways it is! My wife and I continue to play games within our own home and enjoy tinkering with the pieces and strategies of games we love. Board games are a nearly ideal inside activity that encourages us to put away our phones, and thereby distract us from the slew of bad news available 24 hours a day at our fingertips. Instead we look at the table, we talk with the people around us eye to eye, and we create memories. Our daughter, nearly 5 years old, loves delivering apples or starting pie fights in a gorgeous game called My Little Scythe. My wife and I love seeing who can do a better job turning an uninhabitable planet into a thriving landscape of oceans, forests, and cities in the game Terraforming Mars. We even work together as a family to fight against four differently colored diseases spreading across a map of the world in a perhaps-on-the-nose game titled Pandemic (which in all fairness did come out in 2008).

Although there is a stereotype of tabletop gamers as being basement dwelling nerds who shower all too infrequently, many gamers are quite normal and quite bathed. We regularly enjoy socializing with others who show us their favorites or want to learn ours. And this is where the pandemic has affected us the most. In February, Las Vegas hosted a convention dedicated to board games. The convention, Dice Tower West, is run by a local man named Timm Metivier who also runs an excellent store in town called Meepleville Board Game Café (imagine a library but with board games instead of books). It was also one of the last gatherings we had with friends and strangers to play games outside of our home in the last four months.

As much as board games are an inside hobby, they have just as strong of a place outside the home. Some people bring cards on a camping trip or to a café to enjoy in the open air. Many times, we gather at a friend’s house or public area and pull out some games. The aforementioned Meepleville Board Game Café had become a frequent date night spot for my wife and me because we got to meet lots of new people. I even made a group of friends I would meet up with every Wednesday evening. This is the part of my hobby that I miss currently. It is a much more social pastime than people may realize.

There’s a question many of us are wondering: When will things get back to normal? It may be longer for some than for others because of underlying health concerns. But regardless of how long it takes, we will be rolling dice and shuffling cards at our table. We have found some great online implementations of games to play with friends regularly to keep ourselves social in the hobby we enjoy. If you are a person who hasn’t pulled out a game in a while, now might be a great time to revisit a classic. Or, consider looking at lists of some of the most highly regarded games to come out in the last several years. There are some real surprises that you can enjoy with children, adults, or even by yourself.

If you want to look into some of these modern board games, here are my recommendations in a few categories.

For Two People – Jaipur is a wonderfully clever head-to-head card game that don’t have too many rules and plays very smoothly once you get them down. You and your opponent affect each other in subtle ways rather than playing a “lose a turn” card. But it has enough tension to keep it interesting.

For Families with Young Children (3-5) – My First Castle Panic is an adorable game about fighting off cute goblins and trolls who are trying to knock down your castle. All family members play on the same team against the little creatures. It relies on matching shapes and colors to capture the monsters and throw them into the dungeon (the inside of the box is printed to look like a dungeon, and our daughter had so much fun actually placing them in there).

For Families with Children 5-10 – My Little Scythe, as I mentioned above, is a great “big game” for a kid to have. The box says ages 8+ on it, but it was actually designed by father and his 4 year-old daughter. You know your kid, and whether they can sit through 10 minutes of rules or not. If they can, this game is just as challenging to win as an adult as it is for the kids.

For Families with Tweens and Teens – Ticket to Ride is a delightful game of trying to place trains on the board to connect cities. There are several versions of it with maps of different countries too, so it can be fun to see some geography be useful.

For People Who Want to Dive In Deep – Dominion is the game my wife and I first fell in love with about 10 years ago. It is a card game where you create a deck of cards during the course of the game. Unlike Magic the Gathering, everyone can pull from the same cards, so it’s not about spending more money than another player.

For Solitaire Play – Viticulture is a game about making wine that plays from 1 to 6 people. While it works well for large groups, it also has a very fun way to play against a deck of cards that simulates an opponent. Go from vines to wine in a group or by yourself.

If you can, please support local businesses by shopping at games stores like Meepleville Board Game Café, my personal favorite.

Chris Yi has been a lifelong Las Vegas resident. He is a graduate of the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, Lee Business School with a master’s degree in accounting. In their free time, he and his wife volunteer with youth and adult programs at their church and run a podcast and YouTube channel about board games called Meeple Overboard.

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Kathleen KuoJuly 20, 2020AComment