Hey, everyone! This is my second post in the new Change-up category. I originally wrote this as one long piece but it was just too massive. So I’ve broken it into three parts. As always, leave comments and let me know what you think!
Continuing from where we left off, here is the second section!
Are there a lot of tabletop games? Didn’t we cover the human experience with Monopoly and Risk?
No, we didn’t quite cover everything with those two.
Tons of tabletop games exist. So I’m going to go over a few and share some of my favorites. Some may have been featured in a Fan Friday post and others might be at some point.
Deck Building Games
Deck building games are card games. Everyone starts with the same cards and then each player chooses to acquire cards throughout the game. I’ll give a couple of examples.
Legendary is actually one of my favorites. It’s a Marvel game that utilizes tons of villains and heroes. Once you pick the heroes and villains you want to play with, you shuffle them into respective decks. Villains come onto the board, occupying one area of the city. Your hero cards come into the headquarters. Players then buy heroes (with their starting cards) and work together to fight the villains before they destroy the city. It’s cooperative, it has a ton of variation, and it’s one of my absolute favorite games.
This is the new expansion coming out soon! I was able to get my hands on a copy during GenCon!
Ascension is another great one, though it’s not cooperative. This is a fantasy themed game (with amazing art) where items, heroes, and monsters get shuffled into one big deck. Then you acquire heroes and defeat monsters, building your deck as you go along. The objective of the game is to acquire honor, which you do by acquiring heroes and defeating monsters. Once the honor pool (represented by a pile of gems, which are plastic pieces) runs out, the game is over and everyone counts up their total honor. This is another fun game. I love the theme, the art, and the multiple ways you can win. While you’re playing, it’s never quite clear who is in the lead because you can acquire gems to attain honor, but every hero you acquire also has an honor value on the card. So someone with a smaller pile of gems could have more heroes that tip the scale in their favor.
Roleplaying Games
Roleplaying games can be a great bonding experience, combined with escapism, and brought together by story. Depending on the system you want to use, it can have a low or high entry cost. These are games like Dungeons and Dragons, Dark Heresy, Edge of the Empire, Warhammer, and many, many more.
Dungeons and Dragons is the game I have the most experience with. But don’t worry, there are common elements in most roleplaying games that I’ll talk about.
While Miniatures aren’t always necessary, they can help create a scene.
First, someone needs to be elected as a game-master, dungeon-master, or whatever you want to call it. Essentially, this is the storyteller. They’re responsible for making the world come to life. And if you think that sounds like work, you’re right. But it can also be a lot of fun.
Second, the other players make characters. Now, lots of games have different rules for making characters. However, here’s the binding part, it’s all about personality. Making that character come to life is what allows them to interact with everyone else. Roleplaying games allow for escapism, adventure, as well as great interaction.
Third, tell a great story. The person running the game creates the world and characters the other players will interact with. Then, the other players create characters. But now you work together to tell a fantastic story. Work together, be crazy, be funny, and have a great time!
There are tons of great games out there. Fantasy Flight Games just released an amazing Star Wars system called Edge of the Empire. It’s fantastic.
While I’m talking about D&D in the post, GenCon had some awesome stuff for Edge of the Empire.
Why pick a roleplaying game? While you might spend more money on it than other games, you’ll also get a lot of mileage. And roleplaying games are continuous. There’s a story arc (or maybe an episodic adventure arc) that picks up every time you play. This makes it a great and stable pick for weekly, bi-weekly, or monthly game sessions that maintain a continuous theme, tone, and story.
Adventure games
Descent is an adventure game that can best be described as almost a light roleplaying game. The characters are premade, there isn’t much emphasis on roleplaying, but you can have fun adventures in dungeons and whatnot.
Party Games
Apples to Apples can be a fun, family friendly party game. Everyone takes turns being the judge. The judge pulls a green card (an adjective) and reads it to the group. The other players then put down a red card (a noun, usually) that they feel goes with the adjective. The judge then chooses a winner. Super simple, clean, and fun. Usually my friends try to twist it by attempting to pair cards into offensive combos.
Cards Against Humanity is a similar concept. The judge (who changes every turn) reads a black card. This card might be something like, “instead of coal, Santa is giving out _______ to naughty children for Christmas.” And then there are the white cards. And they might include a word, a phrase, or an elaborate scenario. It’s offensive. You don’t need to try and be offensive, the game itself is horrendous. And if you’re into the darker side of humor, you’ll love it. If you’re not, don’t even look into it.
Other
This topic is massive and I could just keep going on and on.
X-Wing Miniatures Game is fantastic for recreating Star Wars space battles.
Mage Wars is a fantastic game about dueling wizards with spellbooks and magic.
Warhammer: Invasion simulates two factions sieging one another’s capital cities.
Boss Monster is a quirky deck builder where you play a villain and set up rooms in your dungeon to trap heroes that come into town.
Game of Thrones has a board game or intrigue that will have you and your friends eyeing one another suspiciously for hours.
There are so many great games out there! Truly, there’s something out there for everyone!
This is the end of part two. Please let me know what you think and I’ll see you on Sunday for part three!