SATURDAY, JUNE 5, 2010
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Breaking the monopoly Forget roll and dice, modern boardgame mechanics will challenge you to think about Victorian London and dystopian Mars B Y K RISH R AGHAV krish.r@livemint.com
···························· n 31 May, a list of five board games was released quietly on a German website. The site is the online home of Spiel des Jahres (German for Game of the Year), a prestigious annual award for board-game design that has grown in stature and importance since its inception in 1978. Nearly three million people from 250 countries watch the site closely, with Internet forums and blogs breaking out into furious speculation and intense debate before a high-profile ceremony in Hamburg on 28 June decides the winner. The nominees for the latest edition also show the inherent eclecticism and variety in modern board-game design, a far cry from the “roll-dice-and-move” formula most Indians are familiar with. One of the nominees, Dixit, is a game where players make up a story based on the cards they draw randomly and are awarded for the strength of their storytelling. Another, called Fresco, calls upon
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Meeple power: Following their debut in Carcassonne, the peopleshaped wooden meeples have become a fixture in many contemporary games.
EURO BASH
Five Europeanstyle board games that will make you rethink the medium, get a sense of modern game design, and get started on some serious playing
The Settlers of Catan The original best-selling Euro game is still among the best “gateway” games available—titles you can play with non-gaming friends as a way of introducing them to the hobby. Catan is set on a pristine island that you have to criss-cross with your roads and settlements and cities, generating resources and wealth along the way. Think of it as a board-game version of the video game Age of Empires. The game is brilliant in the deft way it’s balanced—players never feel like they’re not making progress. Inter-player trading of resources gives the game a raucous, chaotic feel, and it gets very tense in the final stages. Highly recommended, both as your first taste of a Euro, and a permanent addition to your game library. 3-4 players, 60 minutes per game, www.catan.com
players to compete to finish a fresco in a Renaissance-era church, deciding the pace and manner of their work. A la Carte sees players play the role of halfcrazed chefs competing for a job in a restaurant. Spiel des Jahres is the Oscar of the board-game world—high-profile and popular, but not indicative of the best the medium produces. “The award is for a very specific type of game: Typically, something that is very family-friendly, not too complicated, and plays relatively quickly,” says Matthew Monin of B o a r d G a m e G e e k , a 300,000-strong online community of board gamers worldwide. Games with more complex rules and eclectic themes are shoehorned into other awards and events, among them the Essen Feather and The Golden Geek (arguably, the Frankfurt and Sundance festivals of board games). Board-game design is in the middle of a veritable renaissance, with a staggering spread of game mechanics and themes, from Victorian London to dystopian Mars. In the first six months of 2009, board-game sales in the US grew 10% year-on-year, a period where toy sales fell 2%, according to market research firm NPD. A lot of mainstream games carry the whiff of experimentation. Take Space Alert, a 2009 Spiel des Jahres winner. The game is set on a spaceship under attack, and shipped with two audio CDs that announce threats in real time for the players to respond to.
Bored no more: A game of Ticket to Ride in progress.
The roster of celebrity boardgame designers also grows yearon-year, with new “talents” being discovered. Conventions, where new games are showcased, are sold out months in advance. “The big one is the Essen Toy Fair, held every November in Germany,” says Monin. “Publishers debut many new games at Essen and board-game fans from around the world converge there to be the first to try them out.” Most other conventions are focused on getting a lot of gamers together to play games all day long, with GenCon being the biggest in the US. Board games have shaken off the “old fashioned” tag they were saddled with in the wake of mainstream video games, and their supposed obsolescence with the spread of mobile gaming devices such as the Nintendo DS. Since the early 2000s, they have captured a dedicated niche that likes
social playing experiences. They are low-impact, intelligent, and not always ruthlessly competitive, allowing for both tense, frantic affairs and slow, strategic playthroughs. Partly responsible for this resurgence is the export of “European style” board games outside of Europe, where the market was largely dominated by “roll-andmove” games such as Monopoly and Cluedo. The “Euros”, as they’re called, were radically different in the way they were played, and the success of a clever little 1997 title called The Settlers of Catan—which sold 600,000 copies in 2008—opened the floodgates. “These games distinguish themselves by being playable in 45-60 minutes, having a high degree of player interaction, being relatively straightforward to learn, and by attempting to keep all players in the game until the end of the game,” says game designer Matt Leacock, whose new title Roll through the Ages has been nominated for this year’s award. “Many American
games, on the other hand, feature player elimination, can outlast their welcome in playtime, and often suffer from downtime when it’s not your turn.” But the Euros may take a while to reach Indian shores. At Toy Biz 2010, a business convention for India’s toy industry held in April in Delhi, board-game ideas were few and far between, and dominated largely by Monopoly knock-offs. “Branded games like Monopoly, Game of Life, Cluedo and Scotland Yard make up about 50% of the business,” says K.A. Shabir of Funskool India, which manufactures 65,000 board-game sets a month. While Funskool’s board-game business is growing by “about 20%” annually, Shabir says Indian gamers are “not quite ready for the deep strategy that Euros bring”. Funskool’s upcoming launches favour dexteritybased games such as Sorry! Slider, which involves knocking sliding pieces off each other. “But we are experimenting with strategy titles. We bought out a range of IIT-designed games that are very abstract strategy, but with a distinct Indian bent,” he says.
Carcassonne
Pandemic
It is a deceptively simple tile-laying game, where the players procedurally generate the game board as they go along. The game consists of placing individual tiles like jigsaw puzzle pieces to make a map of roads, cities, farms and churches. On these fixtures, players claim areas by placing small people-shaped wooden pieces (called “Meeple”, who have gone on to become an endearing fixture of most Euro games). Each game produces a different map, giving the game extended longevity. The game takes 20-30 minutes, making it a nice “filler” title between more complex games.
It is a “cooperative” game, meaning the players don’t play against each other, but together against the game itself. The game simulates the spread of disease strains across the world, with the players racing to stop them and synthesize cures before they mutate irreversibly. The theme is excellent, and the rules easy to comprehend. The cooperative nature of the game adds an interesting social element to each session, with lots of arguments and tough decisions to be made. Your friends will never seem more helpful, or selfish.
2-5 players, 30 minutes per game, www.riograndegames.com
Ticket to Ride The game involves building trains across Europe. Players build routes between cities, placing colourful little locomotives on the board and trying to get the longest continuous route across the map. Ticket to Ride is a very popular Euro game, and often cited along with The Settlers of Catan as the perfect gateway game for non-gamers. The board is bright and well designed, and the game exudes an implacable sense of cheerfulness. It’s quick, light on strategy and heavy on fun, and sessions never get bogged down with confusion or boredom. 2-5 players, 60 minutes per game, www.daysofwonder.com
2-4 players, 45 minutes per game, www.zmangames.com
Battle Line Battle Line comes from the stable of Reiner Knizia, a veteran board-game designer with a prodigious output. It’s a two-player game that’s a cross between Tic-Tac-Toe and Poker—players attempt to create troop formations from their hand of cards along a “battle line” in an attempt to claim three consecutive flags. The game is incredibly tense right from the start and makes for a brilliant, quick two-player title. The breadth of strategy possible is immense, and the intricate balance means every playthrough goes right down to the wire before it’s decided. The rules are simple to pick up, and the game’s tense foreboding doesn’t wear off even after numerous plays. 2 players, 30 minutes per game, www.gmtgames.com
All these games can be purchased through eBay’s Global EasyBuy programme at www.ebay.in/geb. Prices start from Rs1,250, depending on availability.