But without it, we’d never know where Australia is :)
I really don’t buy into this as someone who hates Settlers and loves Agricola and Small World. All the same, Agricola is a pretty complicated game and isn’t exactly pretty. If she’s the kind of person who thinks about board games outside their actual play time and comes to the board with a strategy she wants to try, then Agricola is a great fit. If she prefers to react to the circumstances of the board, Small World is probably better.
No, but they all have nice boards and bits and themes I thought would be engaging for a 13-year-old. Dominions and Bohnanza are terrific games, but they’re card games and don’t meet the board/bits criteria.
I thought that distinction went to Monopoly. :P
This looks GREAT to me. How does it play?
There’s a great deal of randomness to it, but some wonderful opportunities for strategy and backstabbing. The initial rulebook is a bit daunting, but it’s peppered with the trademark Steve Jackson humor, so it’s pretty easy to digest.
My boys (15 and 12 at the time we first played it) got the hang of it right away, and were outplaying me for most of that first night. My daughter (age 5 at the time) took some hand-holding, but eventually got to the point where, near the end of that first session, she double-crossed her brother and brought out a really debilitating card that ended up dropping him out of contention for the winning spot.
Two years later, and we’ve got 2 expansions for the game (more varied cards and more tiles for the dungeon), and it’s something we can play for hours without losing steam.
I think there can be mutliple reasons Settlers doesn’t go down well. I’ve had some people not like the “confrontational” nature of placing the robber on people’s best territories. But yes, if it “I’d like something more straightforward and this is too complex” Agricola would be even worse.
It definitey fulfills all of his criteria, though.
Not really a board game, but San Juan might be a good fit. There are some interesting mechanics and the games don’t last too long. It makes a perfect introduction to role selection games like Puerto Rico and Race for the Galaxy.
Carcasonne
Pandemic
Puerto Rico
- Alan
I don’t particularly like monopoly, but at least if you play it properly it’s not as horribly painful and boring.
Who ever came up with the idea of free money on free parking needs to be beaten.
When those house rules were made, there were no trading rules in Monopoly, meaning that to keep the game at all interesting, you needed to add something to give it some spice. It’s just that people didn’t realize that the house rules were superfluous once the trading rules were written.
No, not at all.
What I’m saying is that for someone who hasn’t the discipline and patience to learn the rules, prepare the stage, et cetera and hasn’t much of an attention span and rather get gratification right away is going to be put off from playing the game.
Consider it the difference between Checkers and Chess.
You were that guy who always lost, weren’t you? pat pat There, there.
Junta
Except Risk is the checkers of military themed wargames.
Any 13 year old who doesn’t have ADHD or developmental issues is not going to have a problem with Risk. I mean, they may or may not like Risk, but the game is not going to be too complex for them.
And Risk cannot be the best board game ever because unless you house rule it in various ways, the endgame is always completely broken.
Supposedly the revised edition of Risk (2008) fixes some of the problems with the original. In particular, it adds victory conditions which help to shorten the playtime quite a bit.
- Alan
Yep, it does clean up the end game. There are a lot of different ways to win and it affects your strategy significantly.
The victory conditions in play are also randomized from game to game.
There are lots of Risk variants that are infinitely better than Risk (the new revision, 2210 A.D., both the Star Wars ones, LOTR Trilogy Edition, and Godstorm). Similarly, there are lots of lite wargames that are infinitely better than any Risk variant (Nexus Ops, Neuroshima Hex, Attack, etc.). In the end, though, there’s no reason to be a Risk/Monopoly/Whatever snob since the whole point is to get together with some friends and have a kick-ass gaming night. As long as that happens you’re playing the best game ever no matter what you’re playing.
I should say, I’ve played a ton of Risk and I play a sort of solitaire computer version to this day as a time waster. I just think it’s silly to overrate its complexity or depth.
Oh, Queen’s Necklace might fit the bill as well. Basically a card auction game it also has some nice competitive elements as well as a necklace that must be worn if you own a particular card! It’s kinda cute :)