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Puzzle Games (Games) Role Playing (Games) Entertainment Games

Traditional Games 100 - Rating 2003's Boardgames 32

Posted by simoniker from the germans-and-mayflowers-oh-my dept.
Thanks to OgreCave for pointing out The Traditional Games 100, the favorite board and card games of 2003, as voted by the editors and playtesters of GAMES Magazine. The site explains that "...each year since 1980, GAMES Magazine has published a Buyer's Guide to Games in their year-end holiday issue", and this year's overall winner is Alan Moon & Aaron Weissblum's New England from Uberplay. Elsewhere, "Face 2 Face Games tops our Family Games category with Sid Sackson's hilarious I'm the Boss! [and] Days of Wonder won the Family Cards category with Queen's Necklace", among many other category winners.
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Traditional Games 100 - Rating 2003's Boardgames More

Traditional Games 100 - Rating 2003's Boardgames

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  • Huh? (Score:2, Interesting)

    by obeythefist ( 719316 )
    Do people still play boardgames?

    There have been a lot of attempts to implement boardgames as PC games, Monopoly is a big example, but they have been very unsuccessful.

    Some online card games are popular, and Wizards of the Coast have been desperate to get Magic played online (and still reap huge profits by not even having to print cards anymore).

    Personally I'll stick to GTA (which, if ever made into a boardgame, would suck), and maybe a game of 500 or bridge or poker in the flesh world.

    • Re:Huh? (Score:4, Interesting)

      by Kris_J ( 10111 ) on Friday November 14, 2003 @12:54AM (#7471948) Homepage Journal
      Occasionally we dig out one of our Monopoly boards for a game, but currently we're playing the card game "Fluxx". It's very enjoyable.

    • Re:Huh? (Score:4, Informative)

      by keefer ( 60778 ) on Friday November 14, 2003 @07:20AM (#7472888) Homepage
      Board games rule! If you have other sufficiently geeky board game friends, it can be way more fulfilling than your usual FPS, racing game, etc.

      I suggest checking out Board Game Geek [boardgamegeek.com], it's truly an awesome site. Of particular interest, the games considered the best by the BGGs are here [boardgamegeek.com].

      There's also a German board game WORLD of sorts where you can play a heck of a lot of board games online. Check it out here [brettspielwelt.de].
    • Do people still play boardgames?

      No matter how hard they try I have yet to see a strategic PC game with the same psychological bantering and name-calling as Axis & Allies. For the real geeked-out board gamers, here's an article about obsessively in-depth strategy game [cbcradio3.com]

    • Re:Huh? (Score:2, Interesting)

      by CrisDias ( 556611 )
      It looks to me that most (good) board games these days are translated versions of German games.

      This could not necessarily mean that boardgames are not as "an important market" in the US as in Europe, but it says a lot...
    • I board game at least one day every weekend with various friends. I round up 3 or 4 of them, and we generally eat snacks and board game for somewhere between 3 and 6 hours. I'd classify most of my friends as semi-geeky (eg. they're science majors). Regardless of sex, I have not introduced one to board gaming who hasn't asked to be reinvited for another session. The great thing about board gaming is that _everyone_ can relate to it, and the only people who aren't likely to enjoy it are those who simply a
      • Heh, I was just rereading my last post and I wanted to clarify. When I said "and we generally eat snacks and board game for somewhere between 3 and 6 hours.", we DO NOT eat the board games.

        Has anybody seen my comma?

  • So boring, in fact, that in the picture they felt the need to throw in a corn cob, a telescope, a burlap sack (woo! fun!) and some fetish gear (!) as props.

    See for yourself [kumquat.com].

  • zero of these games in the stores I visit. It seems more like a "top 100 most obscure games" list!
    I mean, the last 3 boardgames I played were Monopoly, Risk, and Civilisation... and civ was the fist one I'd bought for many years. Boardgames are becoming a strange oddity these days.. while there's a desire by boardgame-players to see them computerized, there's also a trend in the reverse (as Civilisation is an example of).
    After having slugged through setting up civ, I've realised that neither way is going

    • Re:I've seen exactly... (Score:4, Insightful)

      by neglige ( 641101 ) on Friday November 14, 2003 @05:20AM (#7472661)
      but the effort required to train enough people to play a new game with weird or complex rules just isn't worth it anymore

      Ah, you need to find the right people. I agree that for the average family (or friend) players, who get together every few weeks to play for a couple of hours, complex rules and games are a no-no. Simple rules with a lot of interaction - the reason you want to play in the first place - are a must.

      Complex games with complex rules are for the avid player. You need to play those games regularly, otherwise you've forgotten 50% of the rules next time you play ;) Ppl that play many boardgames are also more willing to try new games and give them a second or third shot if they didn't like them the first time. This allows for a higher obscurity factor.
    • There are a lot of great games out there with very simple rules (take less than 10 minutes to teach). Check out Settlers of Catan if you ever get the chance - pretty simple to learn - lots of fun.
    • ...the effort required to train enough people to play a new game with weird or complex rules just isn't worth it anymore.

      I can relate to your problem -- there are a lot of games that you can't just sit down and play with anyone. In fact, some of those are my favorites. But there are a lot of games with fairly simple rules that you can teach almost anyone in a matter of minutes.

      "Apples to Apples" and "Fluxx" come to mind as games that almost anyone can be taught and jump right in and play. They als
    • >zero of these games in the stores I visit

      Monopoly pales in comparison to the board games on this list.

      I joined a weekly boardgame group at my local games and hobby store. I am amazed at the number of people who show up every Thursday night to learn and play obscure (but not always complicated) board games. Try calling your local comic book / d&d / hobby shop and see if they sponser some sort of 'Board Game Night'.

      Also you can probably purchass all the games on the list at funagain [funagain.com].

      Board Ga [boardgamegeek.com]

  • Snap (Score:4, Interesting)

    by tiled_rainbows ( 686195 ) on Friday November 14, 2003 @05:20AM (#7472662) Homepage Journal
    My wide and I spent last Saturday at home playing snap. You know, where you each take turns to put a card down, and if they're both the same, you shout "SNAP" and win all the cards? Maybe it's called something different in the US.
    Anyway, I didn't want to play at first, bacause I thought it was a stupid kid's game, but actually there's a lot of skill in volved - just not the sort of skill usually involved in card games - more speed of pattern recognition and quickness of reactions (hence this post being wonderfully on topic).
    After a while, we both got so fast that we had to put an empty cigarette packet on the table, which we hit as we shouted "snap", so , by seeing who actually hit the packet first, we vcuold break ties.
    It gets more complex, too - snap can actually be quite a deep game:
    We were both playing our cards to separate stacks in front of us; a snap situation was defined as when the cards on top of both piles matched. However, we often felt the urge to call out "snap" when putting a matching card on the same pile. So we put another cigarette packet on the other side of the table, and defined such a condition as "autosnap". Calling out the wrong sort of snap or hitting the wrong fag packet counted as a foul. Next time we plan to implement more features: contrasnap, where the top card on one pile matches the second-from top on the opposite pile, consecutive snap, where the card is one away in sequence from the other, autoconsecutive snap, and contraconsecutive snap.
    We'll need six empty cigarette packets (or similar, to count as "bases" in different parts of the room. Should be quite a workout.


  • Fluxx! (Score:3, Insightful)

    by metamatic ( 202216 ) on Friday November 14, 2003 @09:34AM (#7473523) Homepage Journal
    How could they not include FLUXX [wunderland.com]?

    Anyone got any recommendations along the lines of "If you love FLUXX, you'll also love..."?

    • Re:Fluxx! (Score:3, Informative)

      by ottergigas ( 620046 )
      The Games 100 is based on games that were released in the previous year (although I believe they take a few liberties and include some previous year's winners as well.) Fluxx has been around for a few years, and I believe it's appeared on their list at least once in the past. They do have a "Hall of Fame" of games that have been produced for 10 years straight and that are considered classics in some way. I wouldn't be surprised if Fluxx makes it to the list on its tenth anniversary. The Looney Labs peop
    • If you really like FLUXX and can deal with some open ended complexity, you might consider nomic [earlham.edu]. It's basically a rules set that defines how changes can be made to the rules set and has an arbitrary victory condition (which usually gets changed quickly).

    • Re:Fluxx! (Score:3, Interesting)

      by ivan256 ( 17499 ) *
      Well, this is the best of 2003, and I know that I got my first copy of Fluxx in 1999. It wasn't even the first edition. It not being new probably has something to do with it not being on this list.

  • Yep, people still play board games. (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Tofino ( 628530 ) on Friday November 14, 2003 @12:10PM (#7474847)
    One gets broken out every 2 or 3 weeks at my house, when we have friends over. And it's nearly always a Cheapass Game [cheapass.com]. Amazingly well-designed games that take no time at all to learn but can be quite deep, and always entertaining. Most importantly, they are fun to both geeks and non-geeks alike, AND they play in a short time (unlike, say, Monopoly).

    Kill Doctor Lucky is especially recommended.

    And the Mario Party series of Nintendo games are all fantastic, and are all basically board games. Mario Party 5 night tonight! :)

  • Old GAMES Subscriber Observations (Score:3, Informative)

    by robbway ( 200983 ) on Friday November 14, 2003 @12:55PM (#7475287) Journal
    I've been a GAMES subsciber since about 1978. There were 4 or 5 years on non-publication. The original publisher was Playboy. The current publisher keeps changing almost yearly. The GAMES 100 has been one of the few steady things.

    GAMES used to include old games in the list, but they had several games repeatedly, so they retired the best to the "Hall of Fame." The board games are usually excellent games if you can find them. Many are foreign (not English) language, so make sure they're translated if you need it.

    You used to be able to get many boardgames from Wizards of the Coast stores, but the last time I was there, they had cut their selection drastically because it's a niche market. Good boardgames cost $30 on up! I'm guessing that's why you can only find these at Funagain.

    Something to be wary about, though. The games reviews are always upbeat and positive. The mini-reviews are doled out to their writers. Like any review, the games are to the taste of the reviewer. Try to research the game online before buying.

    And finally, GAMES also publishes the Top 100 Electronic/Computer games. The list is the top video games for people who don't play video games regularly. Although they pick a lot of good ones, they always seem to pick flash over substance.
  • They have Dvonn & Tamsk on the list, both of which are from The Gipf Project [gipf.com], but they are missing one of the best games from the project: Zertz! I am a pretty big fan of Dvonn as well though, but not as much...
  • You can buy these games at:

    Funagain [funagain.com]
    Games Surplus [gamesurplus.com]
    Fair Play Games [fairplaygames.com]
    Boulder Games [bouldergames.com]

    You can also sometimes find them on Ebay [ebay.com] (a good place to look for out of print ones) and The BoardGameGeek marketplace [boardgamegeek.com]

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