Ever got hyped about a game, following an online review perhaps, bought it and then felt totally at a loss when you table the game to dismal feedback from your fellow gamers? If this has happened to you, you are not alone. The truth of the matter is that with the huge diversity of board games available on the market, matching the right game to the right crowd can be difficult.
Let us say you want to establish what might work best with your chosen crowd, first you need to take your own board game collection into consideration. For starters you need to establish the player counts catered for by your various games. If, for instance, most of your games cater for 2 to 4 players, then you don’t really have any party games to speak of. With player counts ironed out, you next need to determine the type of games you have in your collection by identifying their key gaming mechanism.
Most modern games exhibit one or more gaming mechanisms at their core but they will always have one overarching mechanism that dominates. For instance, games like Carcassonne are principally “tile laying” in nature but then Carcassonne also happens to be a “worker placement” game, where you use meeples to lay claim to certain features on the board and earn points. Other games like the classic Risk or Kingdom Builder, are more focused on territory or area control. These are but two examples but there are obviously much more out there. Each mechanism will add or, in some cases detract, from the spread of possible choices available to a player. In many ways the complexity of a game can be considered to be directly related to the number of available decisions or choices throughout.
Another aspect you may need to consider while preparing for a gaming session, is whether your crowd is highly competitive, enjoying cutthroat action while playing board games, or whether they are more drawn to non-confrontational styles of gaming. If the latter is the case, then games following a “last man standing” model should be avoided. Furthermore euro-style games such as Tokaido, Lords of Waterdeep and the various Pandemic-style, cooperative games, will prove definitely more popular.
If you don’t have the time to quiz your fellow gamers in advance, you would be best served by having a diverse library of games spanning as many mechanisms as possible. This would obviously allow you to adjust your offering based on who you will be hosting during your gaming session. However given that you cannot own all the of games in existence, you need to choose your games carefully. Above all you need some specific criteria that will allow you to choose your games smartly. For this reason, I am suggesting that you should have a spread of games that cater for at least the following criteria:-
Game duration - Here I advise having two types of games. Short, interactive games with a duration anywhere between 15-20 to 45 minutes and medium duration games with play times ranging anywhere from 60-90 to 180 minutes. Personally, I think that you should refrain from acquiring games with longer play durations or those which need to be played over several sessions. Unless you can get a game group to commit to regular sessions, long multi-session games will end up become a waste of space in your collection. Another aspect you need to take seriously into account is how familiar your gaming group happens to be with a particular game. It stands to reason that if a game is brand new, players will need to first digest the rules and then learn to apply them during the course of a game. Even a derivative game, based on an established and previously played game, will have rule variations that will need to be learnt. For this reason, if you intend to bring a new game to the table which says, on the box, that it can be played in 45 minutes, make sure you add on at least another 30-45 minutes to the overall game time.
Rulebook Complexity - You should have in your collection, games which have terse, one to four page rulesets, in addition to games with more elaborate (though hopefully easy to understand) rulebooks. The former, especially if they also happen to have short to medium game durations of say up to 45 minutes max, would make for excellent ice breakers. In some instances these will be the games you will play exclusively, especially if your fellow gamers tend to be casual players who aren’t into playing longer games.
Cutthroat versus Euro-style games - Games can be divided between what I call cutthroat games and euro-style games. Cutthroat games are usually of a type where, if more than two players are involved, players will be gradually eliminated from play before the end of the game. We can also call this kind of game the “last man standing” type, since at the end of the game, the sole surviving player is crowned the winner. Euro-style games on the other hand tend to focus on point scoring, allowing all players to remain in play till the very last round. You will here appreciate that you have to carefully gauge whether your gaming group prefers old school cutthroat games (Monopoly comes to mind), or whether they tend to prefer player engagement and staying in play till the end. Either way, it would be best if you have both types represented in your collection.
Competitive versus Cooperative games - This is another distinction which you should like to have represented in your collection. One may argue that all games are intrinsically competitive, it is what encourages players to even learn how to play them in the first place. Yet some modern euro games cater for cooperative play, where players can actually work as a team to overcome obstacles set in place through clever game mechanisms. A flag bearer of this genre is Pandemic, this game is in fact considered the quintessential cooperative game. Yet there are other cooperative games other than Pandemic and I am sure you will find several. For example Zombicide by CMON games comes to mind.
When it comes to theming in board games, matters get a bit more complicated. To begin with, themes in board games are neverending. You will find games which focus on exploring reality, some that have strong historic resonance, others still, that draw their inspiration from sci-fi, steampunk or fantasy settings. Whether or not a theme will work with a play group will depend significantly on individual tastes. If your game group is made up of folk who just love fantasy, a D&D or Lord of the Rings themed board game will most likely be a hit. If on the other hand, your game group isn’t too keen on war themed games or on history in general, bringing games to the table like Brass Birmingham or Axis & Allies will not go down well. As a general rule of thumb, simpler, elegant or well presented games are easier to bring to the table than, say, those with complex designs that utilise a plethora of tokens or come with some heavy number crunching as part of their design.
I think at this point, I have covered most of the matters you would need to consider, to make sure that you bring the right games to the table. However I have left one final matter till the very end. This will make or break any gaming session, since it will more certainly impact the games you will actually play. I am here talking about available time.
If you are planning a board game session, make sure you know exactly how much time you have to play a particular game. Are all your fellow gamers aware of the duration and can they stay on till the end of a game? These are important questions because no one likes seeing a perfectly good game break up on account of one or two killjoys, who were either reluctant to commit in the first place, or who suddenly notice (in the thick of things) that they happen to have other commitments to tend to.
If you plan to make an evening of it, make sure you have ample time for food consumption, preparing the gaming area, bringing the board game/s out and actually playing the game. If this means meeting up early to get the food over and done with, make sure that all are on board with the idea. It also helps if you have one or two guests who are willing to help you set up the game as this will greatly reduce preparations allowing for more gaming time in the long run.
I sincerely hope that this little exposition has offered you a good insight into the hobby, especially if you happen to love board games and sharing them with family and friends. If there are any questions you might have and wish to ask, please feel free to get in touch and I will gladly try my best to answer them for you. Until my next blog, have fun playing board games!
No comments:
Post a Comment