Of course you may have also come to another problem. Only immediately after completing my review did I realize that there are several different versions of the game now available. To make sure no one gets confused during their search for the perfect gift, I’m here to give a run down of all the spin-off’s that the Classic Blokus has inspired since its release.

This Retrospective will act as a sequel to The Classic Blokus Retrospective. If you have not yet read that one, please do so.

Blokus Duo

In which the two colors of the rainbow NOT in Classic Blokus take center stage.

Also known as “Travel Blokus”, Blokus Duo is a more personal, head-to-head take on the game. The basic rules are very similar to Blokus: Both players alternate turns placing their pieces on the board, advancing by touching the corners of their pervious pieces, until there is no more space for either of them to advance. Player with the most squares covered in their color at the end wins.

There are two main differences. First, to accommodate 2 players instead of 4, the board is smaller and has less space, shrinking from a 20×20 square grid to 14×14. Second, instead of starting at opposite corners as one familiar with the original might assume, Blokus Duo has two specifically marked squares near the center of the board in which both orange and purple players must place their beginning pieces. This is good, because it enforces confrontation right away without a lot of chance to play it safe or build up a defense. Unlike two players who would just start at opposite corners nowhere near each other, it’s less likely to become a stale mate.

Personally, Blokus Duo is a grey area for me. While on one hand, I understand it’s easier to find one friend to play with than three, and that it’s also travel size and can be taken anywhere, both of which make it more accessible. Yet at the same time, it’s like playing a one-on-one game of Super Smash Bros: while it may be compelling and competitive for hard core players, half the appeal is gone when the fun and chaos of four people fighting amongst each other all at once isn’t there.

Blokus Trigon

Don’t be fooled. It’s just as easy to learn as the rest.

The most unique thing about Blokus Trigon is how it looks. Instead of a Square grid, the board is a Hexagon-shaped triangle grid that looks more similar to Chinese checkers, and the pieces you play with look like shattered pieces of the triforce. That’s all that’s really different.

The game starts exactly like Blokus Duo with four players each starting on one of four designated marked spaces near the center, and then for the rest of the game it plays exactly like Classic Blokus. While I will not deny that this is a unique way to change the game up, I can’t help but thinking why they didn’t take advantage of the concept and change it up a little more. They could have easily made the board slightly bigger and turned Blokus Trigon into a 6-player game. Yeah that would make it even more difficult to get a full game started, but seeing as the board was already a hexagon, wouldn’t that have made more sense? Maybe the game would be too chaotic then? If it aint broke, don’t fix it I guess.

Blokus 3D

Okay, now even I’m a little confused.

Imagine Blokus Classic is Super Mario Bros. 3 for the NES. Blokus Duo would be Super Mario Bros on Gameboy (a shorter simplified version that can be played on the go), Blokus Trigon would be Super Mario World for the SNES (an almost completely identical game, just with different graphics), then Blokus 3D would be Super Mario 64. What I mean by this is that Blokus 3D, of all the iterations, feels the most like its own unique game.

The rules take a little longer to explain, yet are still simple enough to figure out once you’ve played through it. In all the previous games, the main objective was to place as much of your colored pieces on the board as possible, whereas in 3D, the main objective is to place as much of your colored pieces on the board that are visible from the top view of the structure. This is done by using a set of three-dimensional pieces that, this time, must advance while staying in contact with their respected color. The players predetermine what structure they will be building up to prior to beginning the game. Choices include either a tower, wall, staircase, or pyramid. Once all players have placed as much of their pieces possible within the compound of their structure, they count how many pieces of their color are visible from the top, minus any pieces they didn’t play. Player with the most points wins.

So there you have it. Four ways to experience the strategy game that, with your help, can define the future of strategy games, and I mean future quite literally. Seriously, even when you look at Blokus and see its square battleship-esque grid and polygonal shaped pieces with their bright see-through colors, it aspires a very futuristic almost sci-fi image. Imagine that fifty years in the future, myself and every other old person will gather around a park to play Blokus while reminiscing about the good old days when video games had controllers, Elijah Wood had an acting career, and America didn’t get bought out by China.

Want more articles on board games? Check these out:

-All Out War: A Risk Retrospective

-Victory Never Tasted So Sweet: A Candy Land Retrospective

-A Retrospective on Trivial Pursuit the Board Game

Think Risk, except replace dice and chance with Tetris pieces and actual strategy.

Blokus falls in the ‘simple to learn yet challenging to master’ category of board games. You can easily figure out everything by watching one play through, but here’s the run down: Each player chooses a color and takes a set of 21 pieces made of all variations of 1-5 squares. Players take turns placing pieces on the 20×20 square grid, each starting from the corner of their color.

Each new piece you place must touch one of your other pieces, but only at the corners. Pieces of the same color cannot be in contact along the sides. However, there are no restrictions to how your pieces touch other colors.

Your goal is to cover as much of the board with your pieces as possible, while blocking your opponents from expanding their own territory. The game ends when all players are blocked from laying down any more of their pieces. The player with the most squares placed on the grid (or easier to tally, the player with the least number of squares left unplaced) wins.

These are all the shapes you have to work with. Rule of Thumb: Start with the 5-square pieces early.

The game plays with 2 to 4 players. With 2, both players take two colors each and alternate between them. Unfortunately games played one-on-one can very easily be turned into stalemates. With 3, each player takes one color and alternates every turn playing for the remaining color. This is sort of interesting, but, to be honest with ourselves, the only real way to play is when you have 4 solid players. Half the challenge and fun of this game is having to micromanage between offensive and defensive approaches to 3 opponents at the same time.

What’s also nice about Blokus is that no matter how good you may get at it, the game never seems unfair or crippling to newcomers. In fact, get too good and all three players will easily single you out as a threat and start gunning toward you first. While it is fun to make alliances and pick out threats, toward the end of the game, all deals will be off as everyone will be scrambling for whatever little space is left.

In college, the name of this game was eventually changed to “Blok-Gus.”

In my opinion, Blokus is the ideal party game, and I’m probably not alone in this, seeing the several awards it has won since it’s creation, including the National Competition Winner by Mensa, the High HQ Society. It is the perfect combination of being very easy to pick up and learn how to play, while also making the players think. It doesn’t suck time or become monotonous like Monopoly or Sorry, and has incredible replay value. It’s also the perfect gift for that special strategist in your life, or anyone for that matter. Find it at your local retail toy section, or check it out online at their official sight. www.blokus.com.

Want more good family games? Check these articles out for tips:

-“Ain’t” Is Not a Word: A Scrabble Guide For The Lazy

-Mario: A Retrospective Part 7 (On Mario Party)

-How To Beat Your Friends In Board Games

-I Am Scattegories And You Can Too: A Scattegories Retrospective

The box just makes it look so fun! Could that be a lie?

The year is 1993 (not really, but we’re on that memory-traveling trip here so pay attention), and Milton Bradley are doing what they always do, namely, producing board games. As a young and impressionable kid, easily swayed by commercials and the like, a TV ad for a new game called 13 Dead End Drive started playing, telling me that it was the end-all beat-all for board games and that I’d never be happy without it. Naturally, I ran right up to my mother and demanded it for Christmas.

Those unfamiliar with the game, I’d best describe it as Clue meets Mouse Trap. The premise is that a rich old woman named Aunt Agatha has died, leaving behind a massive fortune, and 12 other characters are potentially in line to inherit it all. The Mouse Trap aspect comes into play seeing as how there are moving parts to the game that are typically more fun than actually playing.

Since there are 12 characters vying for one ultimate prize, they each try to kill each other off using five different traps scattered throughout the board, shaped like a mansion more or less. Above the fireplace is a picture of Aunt Agatha, but 12 character portraits are shuffled and placed in the picture frame instead. Whichever character is displayed at any given time is the character favored to claim the money, meaning if they get out of the mansion alive, they win the game. All the while, a detective is walking up the front pathway during gameplay, and if he reaches the front door, whoever is displayed above the fireplace wins the game. The final way to win is to just kill everyone else.

Poor Aunt Agatha. If only she knew what her death has done to this group of people.

As a kid, the coolest parts of the game were springing the traps on people, of which there was one that tossed a character off some stairs, one that toppled them from a ladder, one that knocked a suit of armor on them, one that hurled them into the fireplace, and one that dropped a chandelier on their head. Setting everything up was a pain, but once the game was up and running, it was all about using the traps.

Players were randomly assigned anonymous character cards determining which characters they were hoping would win, but any player could move any character’s pawn around the board regardless of whether they owned the corresponding character card. This placed the key gameplay mechanic around the act of deception, though every game played by kids would devolve into placing pawns under the traps and killing them. I can’t remember a single time I actually saw the game end by traditional methods.

I’m a little surprised this game was around at all, especially by the mid 90’s. These days I feel parents would go nuts if they heard about a game coming out where the goal was to kill off other players to inherit a huge sum of money, but it could come down to the terminology the manual and commercials implemented to circumvent this stigma. Instead of saying that you “killed” the other players, it was referred to as “getting bumped off” by each other. This totally worked on my childhood mind because in pitching the sale to my mother I told her, “no, you don’t kill anyone, you just bump them off.” She told me that meant the same thing and my mind imploded because, duh, that was obvious to anyone but the brainwashed children watching the commercials.

Really, I just wanted to try dropping stuff on things. I hardly even knew their were rules until someone told me.

These days I don’t have the slightest inkling to break out 13 Dead End Drive, or even the spin-off 1313 Dead End Drive, for a game with my friends. We’ve got far better games to deal with that don’t involve killing off pretend pawns. Our games work far better when we kill each other off as we sit around the table playing Monopoly. At least, I assume they work better. I’ve never seen the end of a Monopoly game, either.

Want more articles about childhood memories? Check these out:

-Forget-Me-Nots: Halloween-Turned-Toys!

-Forget-Me-Nots: The TMNT Pizza Power Board Game

-Sweet Memories of Childhood Cars: A Matchbox Retrospective

This counts for my daily fruit intake, right?

For a while in high school I had friends that became obsessed with the game Apples to Apples. It was the only game anyone would bring to parties anymore and the only game people would specifically ask for at said parties. In fact, people would plan parties around playing this game. So for me, I was hesitant to enjoy this game, assuming it was a fad. But was it? It still sells well to this very day. Let’s learn more.

Rules and Context

Apples to Apples came out in the significant year of 1999, famous for being the year everyone wanted to party like it was. It also managed to win a number of awards, such as Party Game of the Year and Mensa’s Mensa Select award. What did this mean to me in high school? Still not enough. I’d have to learn how this game was played first.

Apples to Apples is played with a group of 4-to-however many people all sitting in a circle. Each player is dealt seven red apple cards that have nouns, noun phrases, or gerunds written on them. No, don’t ask me, an English major, what a gerund is because I can’t tell you. You have to be in a special club to know what it means, probably called Mensa. The important thing to note is that these red apple cards will say something like “Rome,” “Bill Clinton,” or “Horseshoes.” One player designated the judge of that round draws a green apple card that has an adjective written on it like “Ridiculous” or “Amazing.” Players look through their red apple cards, pick one that they think best represents the adjective, and anonymously submit their card to the judge.

These are what the cards look like in case you weren't familiar with what cards look like.

Then comes the real fun. The judge reads all the red cards aloud and then decides whose card best fits the adjective. Now, the game can go in two ways here. Either the player picks the one that literally does match closest with no nonsense, also known as the “boring way to play,” or they correctly choose the most interesting card based on other players’ reactions of laughter. One of our personal best when playing was “Helen Keller” for “Lazy.” Politically correct? Nope. Hilarious? Absolutely.

There are tons of variations to this game by the way. Common variations include the judge selecting a red card at random and then seeing how ridiculous it is, awarding the point to the least likely red card, or having to judge from the point of view of someone else like Zack Effron or Barack Obama. I think all of these ways, the official way included, are boring. How do I play the game? I play it like Scattergories.

I learned this variation from my wife and her family. Instead of playing normally, everyone selects their red card and holds onto it, reading aloud their own choice and then making a case for why it is clearly the best. I find this way of playing to be far more entertaining because it places the importance of the humor on everyone in the round rather than just the judge and pretty much ensures that even if you have a dull judge for the round everyone is guaranteed a great show.

With both the official rules and my family’s variation, the most important aspect of play is not the actual box but rather the people you’re playing with. If you are playing in a group of people you either don’t know or aren’t completely comfortable with, everyone is more likely to play it safe and not take greater risks for the sake of comedy. And of course, there is the risk that there is that one boring person in your group that just can’t think of something really funny to submit for their turn. They are unfortunate, but this isn’t the game for them. They should go sit in the corner until everyone else is done having fun. But remember, it’s just a game. With that in mind, it’s only $17 on Amazon.

This right here was the coolest game I had in my closet.

If you listened to yesterday’s episode of the Too Much Awesome Podcast, you’d currently be jittering with anticipation to learn what my favorite board game growing up happened to be. The time has come and the secret is out. My favorite childhood board game was…the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Pizza Power Board Game. Surprising? Not really. Awesome? You bet your sweet bippy it is. So let’s rock!

Sweet Memories of Pizza

I first got the Pizza Power Board Game during the height of the TMNT craze, or rather, the original craze separate from the more recent resurgence. The first cartoon, however, had a much more devastating force on merchandising all around though. There was literally a Ninja Turtles item for any occasion, so it really wasn’t all that strange when a personalized board game came along that included the Ninja Turtles in some way.

The rules were pretty simple, if I remember them correctly. You start by selecting one of the four Turtles to play as, then go around the board trying to get Good Guy Cards, cards that had one of the four Turtles, April, or Splinter on them. They had a rating to tell you how good they were when battling. That number was important because you’d also have to go around the board landing on Bad Guy Card spaces wherein you draw a card, selected one of your Good Guys to fight, and battled. Pretty simple.

Seriously, I need to find this again and play it right now.

The battle system was actually pretty creative for the time. You couldn’t just wander around the board without needing at least some level of skill when it comes to the battles. During a fight, you had a little blue flipper thing that you had to use. How? It had four slots in it; you’d place a die in the first slot, and then try and flip it into the other spaces, preferably the space that had a 3 in it. If you were fighting Shredder, you’d need to have a Turtle Good Guy Card, and then you’d still usually have to hit the 3 space to defeat him.

Now, I’ve been looking around the Internet a bit and I’m getting the sense that this battle flipper thing is what either made or broke the game for most people. Half of the time people think the flipper was really cool, an opinion I share, because it required at least a bit more skill beyond just rolling dice and hoping you got a higher number than the card. This way, you still have to work on getting the technique correct. Regardless, a lot of people hated the game purely because of this feature.

Anyway, dice flipper aside, you had to have defeated at least three Bad Guys and have at least four Good Guy Cards before you’re allowed to take on the Technodrome in the middle, which consisted of basically flipping the dice into each of the three spaces. Nothing too difficult, but nothing overly exciting I suppose. It still worked for my childhood needs just fine.

One thing I always found odd about the game has nothing to do with the way it’s played but rather how the Turtles looked. They looked awesome, and the artwork on the box and the board was really cool, but the color of Michelangelo got me every time. See, the Turtles are typically all the same green color except when they’re action figures. Each Turtle had a different shade of green with Donatello being a brown/olive color. However, the Pizza Power Board Game gave Mike the brown/olive color instead of Don. It wasn’t a big deal, and it never dawned on me until just recently, but it was always in the back of my mind when I played that something was wrong somewhere.

Is it the best game in the world? Nope, not by most people’s standards. But was it my favorite? Absolutely. I’d still play it to this very day if I could find it again. I think it’s somewhere buried in my parents garage, so we can only hope it’ll turn up again someday. Until then, I’ll just have to remember the good times and forget how much the battle flipper sucked.

A simple concept sometimes goes a long way.

I’m a fan of good party games. You’ve caught on to this already being the intellectual readers that you are. I’m ready to talk about yet another fantastic game to break out when friends and family come to visit. Time for Catch Phrase.

You ever played Catch Phrase before? I’d be shocked if you hadn’t, since Catch Phrase is a fairly popular game among the masses as it’s simple to grasp, fun to play, and can require zero set-up if you have the electronic edition, as I’m about to recommend. If you choose to buy Catch Phrase, I recommend getting the electronic version (see, what did I just say?). Either way though, you’ll find yourself having a lot of fun, but there are a few catches (oh puns!). I’ll get into those later. For now, rule time.

How To Play The Fair Way

The rules are brutally simple: Teams are designated, usually no more than two, and the game starts once someone sets the timer from “Safe” to “OMG I Lost!” The first player grabs either the word disc (in the non-electronic version), or the whole Catch Phrase game (in the electronic version), and sees a word/phrase. This is the word he needs to get his teammates to guess. He’s allowed to use anything to get his teammates to say the word, including gestures and impressions and such, though using any part of the word is forbidden (no saying “It contains peanuts” if the word is “Peanut Butter”), as well as giving the first letter of the word, the number of syllables, or a word that rhymes with the word. I mean, come on, you have to have some challenge to the game, right?

Once the player gets his team to figure out the word without cheating, he passes it to a player on the other team where they are tasked with figuring out a new word. Play continues like this until the timer runs out and someone throws the Catch Phrase disc in terrified surprise. Whichever team isn’t holding the disc when the timer goes off gets a point. You can play to whatever you like, but 10 seems to be a fairly standard number even though I’d recommend taking the less-conformist path and playing ‘til 17, just because.

When playing Catch Phrase, you have got to remain cool and collected, otherwise you’ll look like a goober and no one will like you. Or maybe you’ll just flub through your turn and cost your team a point, but the important thing is that you look cool to other people, so take a deep breath and picture everyone in their underwear if that sort of things helps you to relax. If that doesn’t work, you might as well get down to your underpants to relieve the tension.

Don’t Lose Your Cool

If you aren’t remaining cool and collected, you’ll have a hard time getting your brain to think of the perfect connection to help your team guess that your ramblings are actually pointing them toward saying “Richard Nixon.” If you happen to be a teammate guessing, you have an equally important job to manage since you need to be synced up perfectly with the guy trying to get you to say the Catch Phrase. Do not, and I repeat DO NOT keep guessing the same thing if it was incorrect. It doesn’t matter how much you THINK the other player meant to be saying “Rutabaga,” it matters that he was actually trying to say “Jimmy Stewart.” You’ve got to keep calm as well, and in fact, you’ve got to be the one insuring that your teammate holding the Catch Phrase disc is relaxed, so throw in a joke here and there and generally be encouraging.

Chances are you're probably more familiar with this version, of which I recommend.

Now we get to the seedier part of my article here: Cheating, also known as Advanced Strategies, though some will probably call you on cheating unless you have the quick comeback of, “No YOUR face is dumb.” No one can recover from that one.

Childish insults aside, you need to be synced up with your teammates on a level deeper than I may have implied earlier. You guys need to basically have a mind-meld, otherwise you’ll have to rely on pure skill, and who has time to attain that in today’s age? You have got to know the exact thing that gets your teammates to guess the proper word or phrase. If your friends have an inside joke about Jell-O pudding and the word happens to get brought up, bust out your inside joke. Your group will instantly know what to guess, plus the connection adds to team morale and that in turn makes everyone play better while simultaneously making the other team wish they were as good of friends as you guys are. If you have more time than you need, go through the game with your friends and develop code words for each word or phrase so you already know that if “Circus Tent” shows up your first clue is to say “Elephant Surprise.” Is this cheating? That’s for the other team to decide.

So as I also mentioned, there’s some hiccups in playing the game to it’s fullest, and they come as a result of the people you’re playing with. I’ve been attacking this article from the angle that the people playing are all close friend, but in the very likely situation that you are forced to play the game with unknowns for one reason or another, you may find yourself and the others in dangerous risk of losing. Why? Because someone who’s afraid to take risks in front of strangers is going to have a very tough time when they’re up to bat. They stumble over words more, they can’t think of connections with phrases, and they spend too much time bypassing words or phrases they don’t think they can do, ultimately resulting in the timer flipping out from the awkwardness.

I can’t quite do much to advise in these situations as I typically have no problem making a fool of myself, but I’m not everyone. Public speaking can be straight up horrifying for some people and the only advice I can give is to, once again, take a deep breath and try to relax. Besides, it’s just a game. What’s the worst that could happen, other than people thinking you’re a goober? I rest my case.

I like to imagine world leaders looking like this man while they play Stretego.

So chess is a classic game of strategy and checkers is a classic game of “I Wish I Were Chess.” I was always good at chess (checkers, not so much), but there was another game I was addicted to beyond those two: Stratego. Have you played Stratego? You really should. Don’t believe me? Oh ye of little faith. Follow me then. It’s time for a history lesson.

A Cultured Past

Stratego as we know it was first a game called “Game of the Fighting Animals (“Dou Shou Qi!”), “Animal Chess,” or simply “Jungle,” and it came from China. The main difference between “Jungle” and “Stratego” was the in “Jungle” the identities of the pieces were known and the initial starting locations of everything were always the same. I haven’t gotten a chance to play “Jungle” for myself, but it sounds like a heck of a game, what with the pieces being animals rather than army personnel (“My Tiger attacks your Hippo for MAXIMUM DAMAGE!”).

Eventually a one Mademoiselle Hermance Edan decides to make the version of Stratego that we all know and love (unless you’re one of “those guys”). She patented her version at the end of the year 1908 with the year 1909 becoming the official first year of Stratego and 1910 being the first year it was sold all around under the name “L’Attaque,” which means, to my knowledge, probably “The Attack.” I don’t know, it’s French. I dropped French after a week and a half of feeling stupid. Oh right, we’re talking about Stratego. Well, that’s the short history. You can probably guess the rest.

Rules Shall Be Rules

Pretty basic yet so much fun.

Now that we’ve got the origins out of the way, let’s discuss the rules, shall we? You know the rules by now, but let’s go over them again in case you just don’t know yet. Stratego is all about deception and clever strategy. The game is played with two players as they set up their inconspicuous board of pieces. Each player gets 40 pieces to set up as they want (just don’t do it wrong) on their side of the 10-by-10 board. There are two lakes placed in the middle of the board, causing a funneling of pieces to make the game more dramatic. One of the pieces each player gets is a flag, the most important piece in the game. If it gets captured then the game is over.

The whole concept of the game revolves around the rank of the individual pieces. The pieces have a rank between 1 and 9, plus a Spy, the flag, and six bombs. The lower the number on the piece (number 1 is called the Marshall), the stronger it is. So if a 9 runs into a 5, the 5 wins and the 9 is removed from the game (he goes to “Number Heaven”). The Spy is a very special piece though as it’s the only one that can kill the Marshall, but only if the Spy is the one that attacks. Also important are the 8’s, called the Miners. They are the only pieces that can defuse bombs. And 9’s, called Scouts, are the only pieces that can move in as many spaces in one direction as they’d like (oh those crazy 9’s).

That’s basically the game there. Players take turns moving pieces, discovering what their opponent’s pieces are, and trying to find the all-important enemy flag. But you’ve got to use strategy. If you don’t, then what’s the point of playing a game called Stratego? Here’s a simply strategy I always use: Place your flag in the corner and surround it by bombs. Then all you’ve got to do is find your enemy’s Miners and it becomes impossible for them to win. Can’t get through bombs if all the Miners are in “Number Heaven.”

Ain't nobody getting to that flag.

Also, don’t give away the location of your Spy. You’ll need that sneaky little bugger for when your opponent is trouncing your troops with their Marshall. Keep your Spy hidden, but in a place that it can quickly rush out and assassinate Mr. Number One. After enough times playing against someone while using my “Flag in the Corner” strategy, I barricade a Scout in the corner and let my opponent kill themselves just to let him out. The classic look on their face when that happens makes it all worth it.

Yeah, you can find some variations of Stratego with all the usual brands, such as Star Wars, Lord of the Rings, Transformers, and Marvel Comics (no Twilight version yet, but give it time). For me, it was all about the classic version though. You don’t even need to buy the game if you don’t want to as long as you have the time to make some cardboard pieces yourself. Just remember though that when you finally do get the flag, it’s important that you scream, “That’s Numberwang!” as loud as you can muster. You won’t understand why, but that’s probably because you just don’t appreciate Stratego like I do.

A deceptively conservative box. What could the contents include?

I’ll be downright honest here and let you in on a little secret: Before I got The Game Of Things for Christmas I had never heard of it before. Does that make me a bad person? Probably not. What it did manage to do is make me feel kind of stupid since there’s a pretty decent game here for parties with the right group of people. Let’s get into this review then.

Playing With Things

So how do you play this game? It’s actually rather simple. You’ll need at least four players (though I can see it working with a few as three, but honestly you want half a dozen or more, preferably). Everyone gets a slip of paper and someone reads a card that contains a thing, such as “Things you wouldn’t want to do in a cemetery” or “Things that annoy you.”

The players then scribble their response and pass them to the reader who in turn waits for all the slips to come in before reading them aloud, saying that the responses for “Things not to do in a hospital” are “Smoke,” “Hold up,” “Have an operation,” or “Look for dates.” It doesn’t matter the answer or how true it is because the next part is where the actual game comes into play.

The person to the left of the reader is the first to guess. They may say that “Chris said ‘Look for dates’ in a hospital,” and the reader would either confirm or deny this. If the person was right, they get a point and get to go again. However, Chris (that’d be me for this example) is out for the rest of that turn since he made it too simple for people to guess his answer. Play continues until all the slips are guessed, though you aren’t allowed to guess the reader’s answer since they don’t get a chance to get points in that round anyway. And basically that’s the game. Copy/paste, lather-rinse-repeat.

It’s a Party Game for a Reason

This is where I’m saying that more people are better. If you have a group of four playing, one person is automatically excluded from getting points that round since they are the reader. The person to their left has all the advantages in the world as long as they know the rest of the players really well. But even if they do, they can only get a total of two points that round since they can’t guess the reader’s response and it’d be counter-productive to guess their own. I played with a group of five people and the final score after ten rounds was ten to nine to eight to six to one. I…I had the one point for the following reason: I played the game like Scattergories and that’s a mistake.

This is all you need to get a night of deception going.

See, you don’t want to play this one like you would a lot of creative games where the most creative answers are the best. That actually works against you since you’ll give yourself away every time as it becomes pretty obvious who among your group is most likely to think of hilarious responses and who is most likely to be your father and trick everyone into believing down and out lies. Yeah, he won the game, but only because he cheated like every game he ever plays (except TrueQuest, because you can’t lie about history).

What you want to do is play things very conservatively, assuming you’re the only usual goofball in your group. If you have a whole band of off-the-wallers then you’re fine to make up the most random responses you can think of, but otherwise you’ll have to hold yourself back to vanilla answers to questions like “Things not to do while driving,” a question that could be something so awesome as “Juggle penguins” but should probably be “Put on make-up.” See? Boring. But that’s the trade-off you make when you want to win.

Overall The Game of Things is a good game. You’ll find a lot of fun in this wooden box, but to play it right you either have to have a whole group of rowdy creative types or a group of people that don’t exactly think outside the box.

I’m not saying that’s a bad thing having a non-out-of-the-boxers group, I’m just saying it’s required to play The Game of Things and not instantly lose because you’re the one person throwing waterfowl into every response you can.

Someday I'm going to run this world while atop a noble steed and then we'll see who's laughing!

I am not very good at Risk. Ever lost Risk in two turns? I have.  I’ve seen friendships nearly break up as a result of Risk games going bad. It’s even worse than Monopoly with the amount of hate you seen thrown about. Regardless, never let your friends dissuade you from utter conquest of Asia or Europe, as you can’t take over the world without them. They’re impossible to hold onto, but still.

Risky Business

Risk was the brainchild of one French film director Albert Lamorisse who created the game in 1957 and called it something in French (or “La Conquête du Monde,” which means, naturally, “The Conquest of the World”). Why would someone decide to make a game that revolves around world domination? If you have to ask that question then you’re probably not a man. Every man hopes to someday rule the world with an iron fist and a glorious hat.

A standard game of Risk begins with a group of friends deciding their friendship has reached its limit. A few tears are shed and players are given their share of armies depending on how many total players there are. For instance, a two-player game has each player start with 40 armies, a three-player game has 35, a four-player game has 30, and so on. Each army is represented by a piece that looks like a solider. Cavalry pieces count as five armies and Artillery pieces are 10 armies.

Get used to seeing this because it's gonna be a long night.

Once everyone has their armies they take turns claiming territories to place an army on, just like in real life. Once the world is divided up, players place their remaining armies on their territories as they see fit to fortify them for the inevitable attacks from their former friends. Thus begins the bloodshed.

Like The History Channel Come Alive

The first player decides where he wishes to attack by looking at where his territory touches another and saying he’d like to attack for possession. It never sounds this formal though as most of the time they just scream, “Prepare for battle!” and toss dice in your face. Each turn you are given at least three additional armies to do what you will with, so when he means to tackle a territory, he’ll have some extra firepower to do so with.

These attacks are conducted as follows: The attacker gets up to three dice depending on how many armies he has in a territory. He can only attack with as many dice as one less than the number of armies that he has. The defender gets a die for however many armies he has, up to two. The once-friends roll their dice and compare the highest dice together. One army is lost when you lose a roll. The same goes for the second highest dice rolled. You can keep attacking as many times as you want even if your army is getting destroyed, but you have to stop when all your men are dead (unless you have necromancer powers or something, but I don’t think that applies to most games of Risk).

The rest of your turn can be spent fortifying your troops, getting Risk cards that can be turned in at the beginning of your next turn should you make a set (they give you more armies), and then apologizing to your friends. The game just keeps going until someone controls every territory in the world or someone thinks of something better to do with their time.

Maybe You Prefer Orcs

One Ring to Rule Them All!

Not everyone likes the idea of world conquest. Some people may prefer conquering a fictitious land, like Middle Earth or the Star Wars galaxies. Luckily there’s an edition for each of you as Risk has a few Lord of the Rings editions, a few Star Wars editions, a Transformers edition, and even a Halo edition. There are just too many worlds out there to be conquered, aren’t there? Better get to it.

Before you depart, let’s talk about what you’ll hear from your friends when you play. Don’t forget, they aren’t your friends anymore. So whatever they say is a dirty rotten lie. When someone says “Are you crazy? You can’t hold Asia,” make the attempt anyway. You’ll get seven additional armies at the beginning of every turn when you hold all of Asia, so you can fortify like nuts and stomp any that oppose you. But yeah, it’s easier to hole up in Australia and build a massive army to unleash during the best Blitzkrieg ever seen this side of WWII. I’ve seen it happen, and it is amazing when it does.

Delightful fun for the English major in all of us.

Few games take advantage of an overactive vocabulary the way Scrabble does. In fact, Scrabble is all about knowing difficult words in the hopes of showing up your family with a massive triple word score for something with a Z in it. Apparently, Scrabble is also the proud owner of a sordid past, but let’s not get too hasty! Okay, we can get hasty. Let’s learn about Scrabble!

The History of The Scrabble

Scrabble was created all the way back in 1938 by an architect named Alfred Mosher Butts. Mr. Butts (yes it’s funny), had previously come up with a game called Lexiko that basically followed the same principle, but he decided to try something different by adding the 15-by-15 tile board and the crossword-style gameplay. And while we can’t think of the world without Scrabble, at the time, Butts had no luck whatsoever getting the game made.

In 1948 another man with an only slightly less-humorous name came along. This was James Brunot. He had bought a copy of Butts’ game, then called “Criss-Crosswords,” and made a deal wherein he would give royalties to Butts in return for the rights to do whatever with the game. The first thing Brunot did was change the name to “Scrabble,” a word meaning “to scratch frantically.” Then he switched some bonus tile locations around and started making some sets with his family to distribute that year. Somehow he lost money on this venture, but then the tale goes that Jack Strauss, the president of Macy’s, played the game and decided this needed to be a hit. Eventually the game would become a household sensation and by the 1950′s Scrabble was here to stay. I’m leaving some stuff out, but really it’s only legal issues that aren’t all too interesting.

On With The Rules

Look familiar? I mean, I'm used to smaller words, but still familiar.

So how’s this game played? You get together some friends or family and each pull seven tiles out from the bag o’ tiles. Each tile has one letter on it that you place on your tile rack. Naturally, don’t show anyone else what letters you have-it’s supposed to be secret. Then someone decides on a word to form out of some of their tiles. A word must consist of at least two letters and go either horizontally or vertically (none of this diagonal nonsense), plus the first word must always go over the center tile, which just so happens to be a double-word scoring tile. It pays to be first, doesn’t it?

As the game goes, players can either pass for the turn, scrap all their tiles for seven new tiles, or play on the current words on the board. If someone sees the word “Biggest” horizontal on the board, they can play the word “Stilts” vertically off the ‘s’ or “Imp” off the ‘i’ or any number of things they can think of and create with the letters they have. And if the new word passes over a bonus square, then naturally they get more points.

How to Cheat at Scrabble without Really Cheating

The trick to the game is to constantly steal the hard work of other players. If someone has a long word going like “payment,” just add an ‘s’ and make it “payments.” You get all the points for the word other than the double- or triple-point scores (those only count once). This is cheap, but it gets results. And if you can somehow manage to use all your letters you get a great 50-point bonus for being awesome. This is where inventing words comes heavily into play.

Some people take Scrabble too seriously.

You can get away with anything as long as you’re convincing enough. Make the other players feel stupid, because no one wants to sound stupid. “What do you mean you’ve never heard of the word ‘bigrymp’? I hear it all the time in daily conversation!” “Oh, is that so…? Well then, sure, it MUST be a word! I was just kidding…” If someone decides to challenge you after all, the good old Dictionary of Truth is busted out and if your word doesn’t appear, well then you’re out of luck and you lose a turn, plus your bogus word is removed. Nice try there, Bucky.

The game is over when all the tiles are gone or people get bored of spelling for an hour. Points are added up and whoever has the highest score is the victor, as you may expect by now. The sad thing about Scrabble is that since the game is only about making words, there’s no room for any real different editions. You just have words, words, and more words. I suppose you could make any game of Scrabble any edition you’d like. I want to see some of you playing Lord of the Rings Scrabble and Nintendo Scrabble, using only words associated with the various franchises you select. But no Twilight Scrabble, please. Scrabble is dry enough as it is.

I still plan to live here some day.

I’ve been talking about board games a lot lately but I’ve been too caught up with the serious world of competition to remember some of the most classic and wonderful games of our youth (or in some cases our present if that’s how you roll). Two words for you here: Candy and Land. Put those together and you have Candy Land, a game that requires no skill but demands you enjoy it and when the game revolves around a land made of sugary treats, how can I say no?

A Sweeter Time

The world before 1940 was a dark and gloomy place. Everyone was depressed and there was probably a war going on at some point around there. But this didn’t stop Eleanor Abbott from deciding she needed to make a game wherein players race to save the King of a Candy Land. How did she find time to create this game? She was recovering from polio. Pretty sure this one selfless act brought us out of the Great Depression, (of maybe another war of some kind, I can’t be expected to keep all these facts straight).

By 1949 Milton Bradley bought Candy Land and began distributing it to kids all over the nation, only wanting in return a smile, dedication to candy, and money.

If Candy Land doesn’t seem that big to you anymore, keep in mind that it was the most popular toy during the 1940-1949 decade. That’s pretty big, let me tell you. It defined the decade’s toy purchases. What’s the second biggest toy from then? Don’t know, don’t care, it isn’t Candy Land.

So Simple an Adult Could Play It

Based off visions of sugarplums dancing in heads.

The gameplay is pretty simple here. Players choose a piece and place it at the start of the gameboard, then draw cards from a pile. Each card has one of six colors on it corresponding to a square on the board, of which there are 134. The player moves his piece to the closest square matching the card and the next player draws.

Sound simple? Well yes, unless you’re colorblind. You want to make it tougher and you add a hint of danger to the game, like a timer that signifies the end of Candy Land should no one save the king in time or force kids to read the color on the card with their eyes closed. With a few simple changes, Candy Land can turn into something far more exciting. Also add snakes.

This is how Candy Land was played in my home.

Some Delicious Notes

Keep in mind that there are two sets of rules in play. There are rules from the pre-2004 edition and rules from the post-2004 edition (apparently 2004 was a big turning point for the citizens of Candy Land). Some cards force players to move backward, though players decide before starting whether they’re going to follow this rule or not (as with most games).

Also, the final space used to just be the end and it was implied that you had to draw the same color card as the last square to win the game, though all editions past 2004 have a rainbow space, putting an end to this debate once and for all. I recommend that the player be forced to collect one of each color before winning the game, unless I’m playing and about to win in which case any single color is acceptable.

You won’t find a whole lot of variations of Candy Land out there, though there are a few such as Winnie the Pooh and Dora the Explorer. Actually that’s it for variations on the game. Who needs more though? As long as there is candy and a land in which this candy exists, you’re set.

I’ll leave you with a few random tidbits about the game. First, there used to be a section of the board called “Molasses Swamp” that has since been changed to “Chocolate Swamp,” most likely because children don’t eat molasses anymore. Also, the game is an example of a Markov Chain, a mathematical random process wherein all information about the future is contained in the present. Confused? Well then maybe Candy Land isn’t a child’s game after all.

As classic as they come.

Have you ever played Cluedo? I bet you have, but you might have just called it Clue. Surprised to learn that Clue isn’t originally from the US? Yup, first came from the UK and was called Cluedo, (pronounced like Clu Du). The classic murder mystery game is always a smart and sophisticated option for individuals looking for a game to play as a group. Also, it works wonders to reveal which of your friends are actually idiots.

The Original Murder

Anthony E. Pratt, (a right good Englishman), filed a patent for a murder/mystery board game called “Murder!” This took place in 1944. Pratt and his wife went ahead and had the game purchased and trademarked as “Cluedo” in 1947 but wouldn’t make it to the public until 1949 due to the war and the shortages that came along with said war. Parker Brothers distributed the game as “Clue” in the US and since then people have been investigating the murder of a one Dr. Black (Mr. Boddy for you Yanks), for years to come.

As we know it now, the game involves up to six players assuming the roles of Miss Scarlet, Colonel Mustard, Mrs. White, Mrs. Peacock, Professor Plum, and Reverend Green (or Mr. Green in some editions), and searching a mansion for clues regarding the murder. The original concept for the game involved 10 characters, one of which was the victim of the murder (which probably wouldn’t be a very fun piece to play, really), but the number was cut back to the standard six that we’ve all come to know and love and suspect (it’s always that lying Miss Scarlet though, as if you couldn’t tell by the way she acts). There were also more rooms and more weapons in the concept version but as things stand today we have just enough to be manageable.

I Suspect Everyone

So much mystery, so little time.

The average game consists of first having the evidence cards shuffled and a suspect card, location card, and weapon card placed in the envelope. This combination is the solution that all players are trying to figure out. They do this by keeping track of clues they find or have been given since at the beginning of the game the remaining cards are dealt to the players. You would be wise to write down all this information on your little notepad as it’ll come in handy. This is the first sign that one of your friends is an idiot, assuming they don’t properly keep track of anything.

As the game goes on, players move into a room and then make the claim that “someone did something in this room!” Since there are six characters, six weapons, and nine rooms, there are 324 possible solutions to the murder. Once a claim is made, let’s say I accused Miss Scarlet of murdering Dr. Black in the library with the dagger (because she totally would, that liar). Players would go around the table clockwise to disprove my claim by showing me a card that contains one of the elements I mentioned since if they have the card it can’t possibly be in the envelope. Only one card is shown per accusation, otherwise the game would whip by and everyone would know clues too easily.

Becoming A Master Detective

The trick is to work within the matrix problem of the game. You mark off your three cards and anything you get from anyone else. At a certain point you can start making obvious claims, assuming you’ve been paying attention (the second aspect that points to your friends being idiots).

As with all games, cheating isn’t allowed. But that shouldn’t stop you from cheating. Players must never leave their cards unattended or in a position to be viewed by anyone else. You should constantly be scanning around the table to see if your friends are exposing their status as an idiot by leaving cards exposed. And whenever someone is having his or her suggestion refuted, always make an attempt to see the card as well. You must be sneaky, like that liar Miss Scarlet, otherwise you’ll be beaten by your much smarter friends and learn that you may, in fact, be an idiot.

I think I just love The Simpsons too much.

Cluedo has multiple editions backing it as the years have gone on. It is constantly being updated with facelifts and revisions here and there since it is a classic board game. There are multiple editions based off of some of pop culture’s most noticeable franchises, such as Scooby Doo, The Twilight Zone, Harry Potter, and The Simpsons. The basic gameplay is the same but you get to do it as different characters. Isn’t that exciting?! Of course it is.

Now remember, if you make a deciding claim and open the envelope to discover that you were very much wrong, you are both out of the game and probably an idiot. But never let that stop you from your fun. How do you think I can recognize the symptoms of being an idiot? Sadly, I suffer from the same affliction. Naturally, I blame Miss Scarlet.

No, not "Genius" Edition. "Genus." You just learned something.

If you’re talking Trivial Pursuit, you mean the Genus Edition, the classic edition, the hardcore edition. I’ve never met anyone that can play Trivial Pursuit Genus Edition at a masterful level.

I have found people that know a few things, but no one that destroys lives via their pursuit of the trivial. So should you play Trivial Pursuit, knowing darn well that you may not be very good at it? You’re darn right you should.

Trivial History

Let us go back a few years to 1979, (you remember 1979, right?). One night two Canadian gentlemen by the names of Scott Abbott and Chris Haney wanted to play Scrabble, but they discovered that too many pieces were missing. So they did what anyone else would have done and invented their own game.

Okay, just think of how smart these guys must have been, alright? When you can’t find all the pieces to Clue, do you think to yourself, “You know good chums, I do believe we shall play a game that tests our knowledge at a level beyond the heads of most learned men!” No, you search for Candyland and call it a day. These two guys went ahead and invented a game that made an entire generation feel stupid and STILL people play it. Genius!

Trivial Pursuit Rules

Fun fact: This actually ruins families rather than brings them together.

If you haven’t played Trivial Pursuit in a while here are the rules: Someone asks you a question and you fumble around unless magically you actually know the answer.

Okay, yes, you roll a die to move and when you land on a colored space you must answer a trivia question relating to the category. Blue is Geography, pink is Entertainment, yellow is History, brown is Arts & Literature, green is Science & Nature, and orange is Sports & Leisure, (remember those in case one of the questions is, “What color is History associated with?”).

If somehow you answer a question correctly, you will be given a colored wedge to fit into your marker. When you have one wedge from each category you must move into the center of the board and answer a trivia question selected by the other players before you can win the game.

Naturally, the other players always select the category you know the least from because they aren’t really your friends and don’t really want to see you succeed.

Trivial Editions

Disney equalizes everything.

I am not very good at Trivial Pursuit. I enjoy playing now and then, but I don’t know much about anything (unless I give a recommendation; those are spot-on). I do my best but most of the questions blow right over my head. There is hope for me yet as there are multiple editions geared towards more specific things, such as Lord of the Rings, Saturday Night Live, and the always popular Disney Edition, also known as the Great Equalizer since I stand by my claim that everyone knows enough about Disney to hold their own in a game based around Disney knowledge.

Kids will always have a harder time than most when it comes to Trivial Pursuit, but not to worry as there are editions made specifically for kids, such as the Junior Players Edition or the Kids Nickelodeon Edition. You can and will find a version that suits your needs, but don’t expect a version for absolutely everything like Scene-It? or Monopoly will deliver.

Today, board games are as diverse a form of fun and entertainment as you can find.  Word games, strategy, puzzle games and the ever- present classics are among the types you can find on just about any major store’s shelves.

Not only are people still buying board games “over the counter,” but with the advent of the Internet, if you want to play board games on the computer or online, you will find good company.  Collectors are also coming out of the woodwork to get their hands on vintage examples of early board games, and will pay considerable sums of money for rare examples good condition.

Board games and their online versions come in three basic forms:  Dice based, educational and strategy.

Dice-based Board Games

Dice based games, such as Yahtzee, Backgammon, and a newer favorite, Bunco, all rely on using those most ancient of recognizable game tools, six-sided dice.  Roll the dice, make your move or write down your score, rinse and repeat.

Using dice for basic game rules is an amazingly simple, but very effective method, and opens up too many game ideas to imagine – maybe that is why new dice based games pop up constantly. Even complex games, taking (in some cases) years to finish like Dungeons and Dragons, employ dice as their primary element.

Without the invention of the six-sided die, board games and their variations, would not have developed the way the same way in modern culture. D&D is a shining example of how dice games have converted to online and computer play. What was once a pure dice-rolling adventure game, has been turned into several highly successful computer and online based versions.

Dice based games are also seen in many hybrid board games, such as the popular games Monopoly, Candy Land and Shoots and Ladders.  These games combine dice, cards, play money and in some cases, small toys to pack in the action turn after turn.  They are superb entertainment, at the same time teaching math, cooperative play and even basic accounting.

Educational Board Games

The second type of game is what I would call “educational” style board games.  This category has a ton of favorites in it, including Scrabble, Pictionary and Trivial Pursuit.

The focus on these games is not only (sometimes) hilarious fun, but to challenge the mind and to encourage learning.  Since its final conception in 1948, Scrabble has been an important and fabulously fun example of a game offers challenge and enjoyment for people of all ages.

Scrabble also has a large fan base of collector type players who “scramble for scrabble” on vintage boards.  If you can lay your hands on a pristine example from the late 40’s or early 50’s, be prepared to shell out hundreds of dollars, perhaps more.

Trivial Pursuit’s popularity has also passed a more recent test, becoming one of the best selling games of the late 20th century.  It’s focus on answering questions as the path to victory marks it as one of the great learning games.

Strategy Board Games

The last major category is strategy style games.  Chess and Checkers are two that have been played by Emperors, Kings, commoners and witty professional gamers for a very long time.

Strategy games, also including war games such as Risk and Stratego,  teach odds calculation, mathematics, strategic thinking and cooperative play.  They are considered the most challenging board games for many, and are a category where you find people who play both for fun, and as a career.

Chess and Checkers were the first two complex games that appeared on a computer, and helped to develop processing capabilities for the future.  Chess may be the most played board game on the computer, and is certainly one of the most challenging to beat; however it is without question one of the most exciting games in the world.

If you are a true collector of vintage board games, Chess and Checkers are probably the easiest to find of all, and are certainly more common than early versions of games like Monopoly.  Recently, a late 19th century Baseball board game was discovered in the attic of an old home, and sold for a staggering price of $27,000 – take that Chess!