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Rick Massie
These Ain't Your Grandpa's Board Games
Photo by Rick Massie
2 of 2
Rick Massie
Ticket To Ride Trains Board Game
Photo by Rick Massie
If your experience with board games only goes as far as Monopoly, Scrabble, and Battleship, then there’s a whole new world just waiting for you to discover.
“We needed those original basic board games as a foundation,” explains Shawn Underhill, owner of Titan Gaming & Collectibles. “Board games have evolved and come a long way from there. We have so many more options now.”
“The evolution of the battle game, like Risk for example, is Small World,” says board game enthusiast Guillaume Robert. “It’s way better than Risk —there are no dice, there is no randomness, it doesn’t slow down the way Risk does.”
He adds that in Small World, which is based in the fantasy genre, you need to decide on your race — elves, dwarves, goblins — which further gets divided into sub-sets, like marauding or wealthy.
“This means that the game has really excellent re-playability,” he says. “It’s important that a game can keep its audiences’ attention, and to do that it needs to be different each time you play it.”
Underhill brings up another game holding the attention of many Yukoners — Net Runner.
“It’s actually been around a long time, but it was named Game of the Year in 2012, and it has captured a lot of attention since then,” he says. “It’s a sci-fi card-based game — you get a core box of cards and then each month a set of new cards come out that you can collect, but unlike other games based on card collection, like Magic, everyone gets the same set of cards in Net Runner.”
“I’m a completionist so I really like having all the cards,” says Robert. “It takes away some of the randomness; everyone has the same cards which makes the game play more even, and ultimately more challenging.”
In Net Runner two players face-off—one as a hacker, and one as a corporation. The hacker tries to break into the corporation while the corporation tries to thwart the hacker.
“The game is designed for two players but some friends and I are tinkering with it to make it multi-player,” says Robert. “After all, it’s always nice to be able to include more people in the game.”
Underhill suggests The Settlers of Catan for people making their first forays into the wide world of board games.
“Catan appeals to both men and women, kids can figure it out, it’s relatively quick for people to learn, and it has a huge following in town.”
In fact, there are so many Catan enthusiasts in Whitehorse that Underhill plans to hold a tournament during Yukon ComicCon this August.
For those who are already Catan enthusiasts, Underhill suggests Agricola.
“It evolved out of Catan,” he says. “It’s a resource collection-based game, but with the twist of trying to support a family. It’s my ‘fun stress’ game — you have to make sure that your fields are ploughed, the sheep are fed, there’s just a lot of different elements to look after.”
“The moral being that farming is hard,” laughs Robert.
For those just starting to play board games, Ticket to Ride comes recommended by Underhill. For those already well immersed and looking for a new challenge, Robert offers Residence, Red Dragon Inn, and Formula One.
Robert points to out-of-print games, like Doom and Civilization, for those who really want to push the envelope.
“You can find all the files online, redesigned by fans, and if you’re geek enough you can build your own,” he says. “A friend went so far as to build his board on magnets so that the board wouldn’t get destroyed when someone knocked the table.”