Recommend me a board game?

Ok, I play board games with my family sometimes. Not really intense ones, but stuff like Parcheesi, Monopoly, trivia games, etc. I thought maybe I’d try introducing them to one of these super-keen board games that people play, but I don’t know where to start.

It needs to be simple but fun, and easy to learn. Games shouldn’t take more than an hour or so. My mother and sister are not gamers of any stripe, so it has to have casual appeal while hopefully offering whatever it is that these hobbyist-type games offer. Any ideas?

Edit: also it has to be four players.

I’d start with Blokus. It’s not necessarily going to turn them onto more complicated games (it’s almost as simple as Go), but it is very fun for almost all types of gamers (including young children), and it might at least start to make them open to games that aren’t part of the traditional canon…

Hi, go to www.boardgamegeek.com, and then click on Games and you’ll see the games sorted by rank. There’s tons of content relating to each game, particularly those in the top 50.

Lorini

Edit: Settlers of Catan and Ra should fit your bill too.

I have a question and I hope it’s not too impolite. Is the expression “recommend me” just a slang expression that is grammatically incorrect, or is it actually correct grammar? I thought the proper usage would be, “Recommend (object) for me” but I tend to see “Recommend me” everywhere online.

Sorry for the diversion, but it’s been on my mind when I see it lately. :D

-Kitsune

It’s not a board game, but we played this game over the holidays, and it’s a blast.

It’s like Jenga. But the pieces are different colors and on your turn you have to remove a piece that matches the color you rolled on the die.

I’ve seen that in stores, it looks kind of neat. Is it basically a board game version of Tetris?

And what’s this Carcassone thing? I saw it in the list on boardgamegeek and vaguely remember hearing something about it. It sounds like it may or may not fit the bill.

I don’t think Carcassone is a very good game for starters. If you do play it, my recommendation is to forget about trying to explain/understand the farmers, it’s just plain difficult. Any of the other Carcassone games are better than plain Carcassone, in that they implement the farmers much more sensibly.

Lorini

Which one is the best/most accessible? I saw “fairly light” on that site and thought that was a good sign, and it really does sound interesting.

I’ve only played Travel Blokus, which is the smaller 2-player version of the game, but it is very good. Another excellent game a family can play is Rumis, which is a game of stacking oddly shaped blocks in three dimensions in order to have the most on top at the end.

If your family isn’t so much into the abstract games (blocks and colors and the like) then I’d also recommend Settlers of Catan as being a great starting point.

I’ve seen Carcassone bomb with beginners sometimes - the game mechanics are just a little too different from what most people are used to. I’d recommend Settlers of Catan or Scotland Yard if you want to go for a slightly more meaty game.

Also, very underrated game (once you grow up and stop just guessing): Clue

Really? It sounds complicated, with resource management and so forth.

Carcassonne:The City is probably my favorite. It plays in about an hour and can be explained/understood pretty easily.

I would also highly recommend Ticket to Ride (with the 1910 expansion for the better cards) and Ticket to Ride: Europe. Both very good, easy to explain, and non-gamers tend to enjoy them.

Lorini

No, it isn’t grammatically correct, but it’s part of American vernacular, so you probably won’t get called on it.

The nice thing about Settlers is that the options are always fairly discrete - there are (at most) four different things you can build, you can only build new stuff off of old stuff, card trading is easy to understand - unlike Carcassone, which gives the player an increasingly high number of choices each turn.

Please reveal to me a ruleset that makes Clue stop sucking so, so hard. The default rules makes Clue one of the most inane party games imaginable. I’d rather drop names in a hat and play the Vampire game.

Scotland Yard! That game is a blast from the past. I remember playing that game, oh so vaguely, but can’t place where or when, other than knowing it was some time in my childhood.

Thanks for your help guys. I’ll try to pick up Blokus and either Carcassone or Settlers, whichever is cheaper/available. I want to have two options in case one doesn’t go over, and it looks like Blokus is going to be a winner regardless.

Hmmm… I’m not grammar expert, but I think you are on to something. Clearly, the sentence “Recommend me” is a command with an understood subject (the person being addressed). However, it seems to me you are telling somebody to suggest yourself for some position or task, not give you suggestions. Example, “Please, recommend me to the Board of Admissions”. I think using the phrase to suggest you recieve the recommendations, is incorrect. So, the proper construction would indeed be, “Please, Recommend canidates to me”. So, yes the OP was using slang in his title, where the “to” is dropped.

Of course, I’m no language expert.

It’s informal, just like “give me” should be “give to me”.

Actually, I think it’s technically correct as written; the problem is that it’s ambiguous, as you have so astutely observed. I think we’re just looking at a case of terrible style, here.

Is there a significant difference between the various version of X of Catan?