Every game rapidly becomes a taut race against time as players battle against two decks of cards-one of which they have to collect, and the other of which keeps feeding more and more colored cubes-representing infections-on cities around the world. It's simple and compelling: everyone gets a role-medic, scientist, or similar-and jets around the world collecting cures for four relentless diseases that just won't go away on their own.
Sometimes people just want to sit down with the family and save the world once and for all in a 45-minute sitting, and there's not much around to top Pandemic classic as an introduction to the heady world of cooperative games. While Pandemic has been strictly superseded in the quality stakes by its imperiously remastered Legacy version (see above), not everyone wants to play a massive, massively emotional, narratively linked campaign. (It also has a fine app.) PandemicĢ-4 players, 45 minutes, age 8+ / $22 at Amazon, Target This will be a game that no one will be disappointed to see hit the table, even if people can grow out of it. There are loads of versions, covering the US, India, Germany, the UK and elsewhere in various time periods, but we've chosen Europe as the definitive place to start it's a slightly larger, more involved map than the US, and the box comes with a few additional elements that make the game deeper.
But if someone takes the easy route from A to B before you, it becomes a frenzy of sudden recalculation-if you don't complete all your orders, you lose the points. Players take it in turn to draw cards from a deck containing eight different colors of cards as well as wild cards, and once enough have been collected, can use them to lay trains on routes of the same color between cities, hopefully fulfilling hidden orders that score you points by collecting distant areas to one another. Usually, it must be said, this is because it has Monopoly-esque elements: raw capitalism, competition for areas (in this case rail routes between cities), and lots of plastic pieces you use to block your opponents (train carriages). Ticket to Ride is fondly remembered by a considerable number of gamers as their first step into the hobby, a lovely peek at the hinterlands that exist beyond Monopoly. It's also utterly unlike the real Carcassonne, a slightly grimy southern French city also famous for its picturesque castle-a castle that was restored in the 1800s and which in no way resembles any of the authentic structures that previously existed there.Ģ-5 players, 30-60 minutes, age 8+ / $27 at Amazon, Target Many others are, shall we say, less necessary. A few of them are essential and can be acquired with certain versions of the base game.
It famously has scores of expansions, becoming something of a fond joke in the gaming community. The game was first released in 2000, making it positively venerable in board gaming terms, but unlike many titles from that era or afterward, it still stands up to modern scrutiny. It's an initially pleasant and suddenly absolutely cutthroat game of tile-laying, with players gradually building up a high-medieval map of walled cities, churches, pastures, rivers, and other sundries, and scoring points by placing colored meeples to claim areas from the others. 2-5 players, 30-45 minutes, age 8+ / $40 at Amazon, Miniature MarketĬarcassonne is one of the absolutely foundational games of the modern board gaming hobby and a classic to grace any collection, no matter how casually or seriously you take it.
0 kommentar(er)
