Upwords
by Laneia, Executive Editor
Without saying a single negative thing about the game of Scrabble, Upwords is like Scrabble’s friendlier, casually dressed, slightly inebriated cousin. I mean, it’s basically Scrabble and Jenga. UpWords knows you don’t have all night to spell words and add numbers, so it’s not gonna take too long or involve a lot of math. Oh you wanna stack some tiles on an already existing word to make a new word and still get points for the original word underneath your new word? Yeah alright, sure! Hey, you do what you want. You do you, player.
Apples to Apples
by Sebastian, Writer
Are you looking for a game where sobriety is not only unnecessary, but actually sort of annoying? A game that requires no tallying of scores or complicated board maneuvers? In which each round is short enough to hold the attention span of someone 2-4 shots into the night? Well, say hello to Apples to Apples. Certainly you do not have to be drunk to play, but let’s just say every box I’ve ever encountered has at least one stack of cards stuck together from the kid that spilled beer all over them last Monday.
The rules are as follows: every player holds a hand of 7 or 8 cards with nouns and proper nouns on them; each round there is one judge (this role rotates so there is a different judge each round); an adjective card is drawn and placed so everyone can see it; every player but the judge picks a noun or proper noun that best fits that adjective and submits it face down to the judge; the judge picks their favorite.
It’s not so much a game of who can make the best pairs, but one of knowing your opponents’ senses of humor. Jennifer likes irony so I’m going to put down “Public Radio” for “flirtatious” – had a good laugh with that one (because we are nerds). I value realism a bit more so I picked “socks” over “wine tasting” for the “cool” card. Truth be told, if you play at the beginning of a friendship with someone, especially if alcohol is involved, this can make or break yr relationship. You don’t “get” irony?! Last night (when I made – actually made – my roommates take shots and play with me), I got into an argument about whether toasted marshmallows or salads were more arrogant.
There is no definitive end point to the game, though I suggest calling it a night when your roommate is passed out on the floor (I swear to god this photo is not staged).
Carcassone
by Rachel, Senior News Editor
Carcassonne is so far from being even vaguely similar to other games that it is tempting to call it something else completely, like “tile-based friendship experience” or “spiritual empowerment via tiny wooden figures.” The gameplay is simple: each player draws a tile that represents part of the landscape on their turn, which may include features like a road, a pond, a wall of a castle, etc, and they are required to fit it into the larger landscape made up of previous tiles. Having done so, they can have one of their tiny wooden figurines interact with it in some way – for instance, claiming ownership of a castle – in order to gain points. It sounds simple, because it is.
But there’s also so much more, and that comes in the form of SHARED VICTORY. Since the landscape is constantly growing, there’s no way to predict how the point systems will turn out. Will the castle that you’re working on eventually grow to intersect with your friend’s, thus forming a giant castle conglomerate that is somehow always vaguely shaped like a penis? Maybe! Can this phenomenon extend to the point where you may be sharing castles, roads, or farms with ALL of your friends, thereby kind of diminishing the need for points whatsoever and giving you an incentive to hug and laugh together and talk seriously about how beautiful and wonderful you and all your figurines are, and also how castles are great? Yes.
Bonus points: I am 75% sure that at one point we invented a drinking game based on Carcassone, but I can’t remember any of it. Which means that clearly it was a GREAT drinking game, and I encourage you to do the same.
Mall Madness
by Laneia, Executive Editor
There’s a brief space of time between childhood and teenagerness, when you know there’s more going on out there on Friday nights than watching movies with your BFF Jennifer, but you’re not sure what it is and you can’t go anyway. Mall Madness filled that time by satiating a tweens desire to spend shitloads of money with their friends at the mall, unsupervised and without the risk of pedophiles or bankruptcy. The electronic version had a credit card machine and a computerized lady told you where all of the sales were, therefore making you feel very important and rushed. The first to complete their shopping list and make it out to the parking lot won. This is exactly what it’s like to shop with my aunts on Black Friday.
Mall Madness was the perfect sleepover board game, second only to the holy grail of sleepover board games, Girl Talk. I’m not sure what’s going on with this Hannah Mon-freaking-tana version of Mall Madness, but I think you should find an OG version and recreate my tweenhood. For authenticity, you’ll need to play this game while eating raw chocolate chip cookie dough and Doritos and watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer (the movie, duh).
Settlers of Catan
by Carolyn, Contributing Editor
The best part of Settlers is that you make your own board, so you can (um, theoretically) play every single Saturday afternoon for three years straight and never get bored. There are hexagonal tiles with resources on them (e.g., rolling fields give you sheep, which are almost always useless, but never mind that), and numbers that sit on top of the tiles telling you what you have to roll to get those resources, and you can put both of these in almost any order you want. And then you build settlements and roads and cities and trade and get points and win, as if Risk and Monopoly had a less ruthless love-child (Unlike Monopoly, players aren’t ever eliminated until the game is over. Like Monopoly, under-the-table deals can make everything a lot more interesting.).
And there are expansions! Cities and Knights of Catan. Seafarers. That one that is basically just a few more tiles, numbers and playing pieces so you can have six players on the same board. That other one that is not really an expansion at all but just 50 additional board tiles and numbers you picked up on eBay, because who doesn’t love a board game that, if you’re doing it right, barely fits on the table?
Bananagrams
by Carmen, Contributing Editor
I played Bananagrams for the first time in the perfect place with all of these kids who were too cool for board games and liked word games instead. And unlike all other word games that make you feel a little dumb, or like maybe you should take the SAT again, or like maybe we should just say the god- damn word instead of guessing what it is already, Bananagrams is really just a crossword puzzle for every single person in the house waiting to happen in a big ol’ fabric banana. And I actually used to win sometimes! But what really makes Bananagrams better than your grandma’s collectible Scrabble board and your half-deck of Scattegories cards is that when the tiles get covered in alcohol, or an ashtray falls on them, or they become coated in your resentment of people with vocabularies that extend past “sex” and “bras,” you can just put them in a colander and rinse them with water to make them sparkle again.
Pictionary
by Katrina, Writer
Board games make me nervous. Like, they make me really nervous. There’s just a lot of yelling and winning/losing and getting shit-talked by your nine-year-old brother. It’s just a lot. Usually, in my childhood, I would prefer to be reading a book. But my senior year of high school, after 18 years of careful evasion, I was subjected to Pictionary, or, as was known in my AP Spanish class, Pictionario. Some people say that lesbians don’t like Pictionary, but I disagree. Lesbians love deriving profound and abstract meaning from simple words and actions. Pictionary is the way that we live. Plus, Pictionario taught me something about equality. No matter how many years of art class you’ve taken, no matter your cognitive abilities, no matter your ability to speak Spanish, everyone feels equally helpless when handed a marker and asked to draw a stick-figure sketch of “dignity” (Simpsons, eh?). You’re actually forced to laugh at yourself, and that’s what makes the game fun. I once dated a girl who almost got stabbed with a beer bottle over a game of Monopoly. And that’s because board games are too serious. But in Pictionary, we’re all laughing at each other and at ourselves. It’s fun. Let’s play Pictionary. Maybe we can hold hands afterwards.
Cluedo
by Crystal, Music Editor
Cluedo, aka ‘Clue’, is the only board game that has ever appealed to me. For the last two decades I have found great pleasure in racing my friends to figure out which of the guests of Tudor Mansion murdered Dr. Black, and what instrument caused the blunt force trauma. I’ve only now just realised how macabre that is.
I recommend the classic UK version, Cluedo, for an authentic England, 1929, murder-mystery experience. The US version, Clue, is also fine, just a little more family-friendly.
Yahtzee
by Sarah, Contributing Editor
Yahtzee is more of a dice-and-cup game than board game, but it’s still awesome. It’s a lot like poker, in that it incorporates pairs, three-of-a-kind, a full house, straights, etc. And then there’s the game’s namesake hand — six-of-a-kind. Yahtzee is far superior to poker, obvs. For starters, dice games are better than card games, cause who doesn’t want to throw stuff? No one. Secondly, Yahtzee also allows you the chance to yell a catchphrase. If you yell “poker!!” when you win at poker, you just look like an idiot. Thirdly, when I was a kid, I always won Yahtzee and always got my ass kicked at poker, so Yahtzee was the clear favorite for game nights at grandma’s house. Nowadays, I even own a Yahtzee t-shirt. Every single time I wear it, at least three people yell “Yahtzee!” at me on the street. Get a t-shirt and try it some time. It’s pretty fun.
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I will cut a bitch over a game of Scrabble. Yeah, I get pretty competitive. Friendships have been tested over those tiles.
I didn’t play Scrabble for about 10 years because my mother was such a bitch about it when I was a kid.
I will play it with my friends now (still avoid playing it with family) but I am hypercompetitive about it. As I am about most games, actually…
my gf doesn’t play scrabble because of horrible childhood memories, and she finally agreed to play after ten years and my best friend got over competitive and wouldn’t let her use a dictionary, accusing her of cheating because she was nervous and so wanted to check a word before she put it down. I have never been so mad at him. We got over it (he didn’t know about her scrabblephobia), but she hasn’t played scrabble since, sadface.
Do not even get me started on people who use Scrabble cheat generators on the internet. I refuse to play Facebook scrabble with a couple of people because they have violated the spirit of the game, dammit!
this is my family’s attitude about Monopoly. My mom called my nephew “a g-ddamned little cheat” over it when he was like eight. Good times.
We will sit there all night and ruthlessly bankrupt each other if need be.
settlers of catan! favorite board game ever! so far..
yes! cities and knights ftw. i play it online all the time too
SETTLERS OF CATAN IS AMAZING. End of story.
I am currently in my third year of college and all we do is Catan! And I played last night and totally won because of my sheep surplus!
Catan is awesome. Mostly because the more you play the more passive aggressive and intense it gets, especially with trading. I’ve definitely traded ore for beverages, food, even small amounts of money!
Cluedo looks a lot sexier than Clue. Also, I interpreted the rant on the 20th Anniversary Edition of Trivial Pursuit as a personal challenge but will fight the urge to purchase it. Though I still need to play it at some point.
The second it said “too obscure” I wanted to play that game immediately. The urge to show that I’m a smartypants who can answer impossible trivia is incredibly strong. But I’m holding myself back.
I fucking love board games!
Once, during a game of Scattergories, for L, Song Title, I played “La La La La La La La La La Means I Love You.” One of my proudest moments. Of course, it turns out the song is officially just called “La La Means I Love You”–but still, that’s 3 “L”s.
two things:
did anyone ever play dream phone? i was obsessed with it, and no one i know has any recollection of this game at all and it really bums me out. it was amazing.
also, my super religious parents hated me for buying “ask zandar” with my allowance money. it was really traumatizing and again, no one remembers this game! help me out. these did exist for other people right??
Is Dream Phone the one where you use the fake phone to call up your hunky secret admirer or something? Because I’m pretty sure I remember my cousin having that game. Also, she had Mall Madness. Which I was a little obsessed with. “There’s a sale at the Fashion Boutique!”
“You’re right, I REALLY like you!”
Dream Phone link
http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/6578/electronic-dream-phone
We played Dream Phone recently…still as good as it was! Kids these days are missing out.
Check it – http://www.itonlytakes1.tumblr.com/
Ah yes, inebriated apples to apples! Love pictionary. And scrabble, even though I suck at it. I just love it anyway.
But I am ever so sad no one mentioned Taboo! It’s the one game I totally own at. In real life I am that person who can supply you with that word you are thinking of that’s on the tip of your tongue but you can’t quite get. It’s my skill and therefore allows me to win endless rounds of taboo.
A modified version of taboo can be played with apples to apples red/noun cards, where you pick a time limit (30 seconds, a minute) and then try to get your teammates to guess the red cards you describe to them without being able to say what the noun/proper noun is. At the end of the time limit you switch teams and after however long whichever team has the most cards wins. Bam.
I love Taboo! Not because I’m especially good at it, but because it’s me and my friends’ game, and we’re all extremely competitive about it.
I love playing Taboo drunkenly and using the buzzer to shut people up when they’re talking too loudly and the neighbors are gonna call with a noise complaint.
I love Taboo also because I’m excellent at it. But I hate the idea of shutting people up with the buzzer because I am invariably the one who’s talking loudly enough to warrant a noise complaint. But still. Excellent at Taboo.
We had this game growing up, but since there were only three of us kids we never actually played it. We did, however, play with the buzzer! That thing is entertaining.
Taboo is brilliant, we had epic games in college, we got super competitive about it. One night after the first Pirate of the Caribbean movie came out, I managed to tie every single card/item/word to the movie.
Oh, man, I had a Speech and Debate class in high school where the teacher frequently gave up and played Taboo on warm days. I used to get so frustrated because I was really good at using commercials and movie quotes to my advantage, but nobody knew the stuff I was referencing! Alas, for I was apparently the only kid in the room who’d spent three solid months watching VH1’s “I Love The 80’s” specials.
I am apparently the only person who hates Apples to Apples. Trying to play that game with an alcoholic rules lawyer was a scarring experience.
Update: Played drunk Taboo with friends tonight. Great success.
I’ve only ever played Scattergories in spanish (in my hs spanish class). It’s a lot more challenging when you don’t know tons of spanish nouns and don’t necessarily know what the category is to begin with. Though still very entertaining.
Do you know that there is a boardgame about buying sheep? It’s called Squatter, and is like monopoly except you aim to become a sheep magnate rather than a property magnate, and it’s bush fires and drought instead of income tax and the run from the go directly to jail spot to Go.
Stratego, anyone?
We had this game at my afterschool daycare thing but the instructions were lost years before and no one knew how to play so we made up different rules every time. It was fun, though.
ohhh fuckyeah Stratego!
And Battleship anyone?
i kind of pwn at stratego ducky we should play some time !
Walking Dead boardgame comes out in later summer/early fall. Everyone should buy it. #shamelessselfpromotion
Great list! Except for Risk all of my favourites are included.
I was going through the list thinking ok, where is Risk?? It’s the only missing link to make this list perfect!
Try playing Risk with a bunch of repressed overachieving history nerds. It’s amazing, glorious, and a little scary. “FUCK YOU AND YOUR COMMUNIST ARMY!” “Jealous?” “THE SOUTH WILL RISE AGAIN!” “Yeah? Well, South AMERICA rose first, so eat spear and DIE.”
It was so much fun. I almost got a bloody nose once.
What is it about Risk that makes everyone feel the need to talk smack? It’s like sports for nerds?
TOTALLY sports for nerds. You get to be competitive about your knowledge of history AND competitive about your army’s numbers and your strategy.
My strategy was to be absurdly lucky with dice rolls and revel in naming conquered regions after notable historical Canadians. World domination is an exhilarating and heady feeling.
STRIP Risk?! Details. Now. My twenty-first birthday is in five months and all of my friends are extremely attractive.
This is why my historian-scholar friend is no longer allowed to play RISK. She gets waaay too argumentative and belligerent, like she’s channeling Napoleon or something. “FUCK YOU I’ll invade Russia via Kamchatka if I want to!”
yep, I am one of these assholes. our frustrated little conqueror desires coming to the surface – it’s a history major thing
I love Taboo and am glad others mentioned it. During the holidays, my family always plays the game. Years ago, while playing at Christmas, my dad shouted “titties” to some random clue. I have no idea what the word was supposed to be, but to this day, when we play Taboo, one of use will shout “titties” at random. Good times.
Now I want to organize an Autostraddle meet-up in San Diego where we play board games the whole time. I feel like I should fight this urge, since I have no organization things to speak of and finals to study for.
I am ALWAYS up for board games.
Bananagrams is the best game ever. I would play in my teachers college caf on my breaks between classes and got at least 20 people hooked on it. It was a great plan because eventually there was always someone around who wanted to play with me.
I also love Settlers and Carcassone. I recently got an ipod touch and am loving the Settlers and Carcassone apps.
I also really like Blokus and Sequence (which has the most boring box ever but is really very fun). I’m a board game nerd, clearly.
SEQUENCE! That game saved me from many a boring camping trip
Yesss Bananagrams.
I grew up in a crossword playing family like SERIOUS you guys and we still are at it and just a tad competitive with NY Times Sunday.
That laid back ‘nana yellow bag can’t stop the SERIOUS/competitive nature…but it’s hella cool.
Growing up being the youngest in the family means you always lose every game ever, until you’re grown up and by then you dont care anymore.
BUT I love pictionary because the way people draw things says so much about them and their personality.
For example anything my Dad tries to draw ends up looking like a map. Which is because he studied geography and thats how his brain works and that’s how he views the world. Its great if you need him to draw you a map, not so good if you’re on his at pictionary.
I used to do Bored Day Board Game Sundays with friends and usually they were AWESOME except when it was Settlers of Catan day. Fuck that game with a million knives.
(I’m bitter because I sucked super bad at it)
oh god i tried to play settlers recently and was so miserable through the whole thing. i don’t do strategy and there were so many rules…
It’s EVEN WORSE when there’s intoxicants involved, because now you’re getting all kinds of invaded and you’re confused about how the hell every single other settlement just declared war on your ass.
There may have been a SoC incident that involved tears before my friends agreed that we shouldn’t play that game anymore.
i have such nostalgia for the game of life. i used to refuse to get married and instead say i was going to live with my best friend. while using a blue peg for me and a pink peg for my bff/lifemate.
Screw that, I just had two pink pegs. (No one should have been surprised.)
OMG Settlers of Catan is on this list? I thought it was a board game mirage brought on by too much fondue and white wine at the first party I went to at a “grown-up” apartment.
But seriously people, Cranium needs to be on this list. There is a part of me that comes out during Cranium that is dark and malicious and will angrily hum at you if you don’t know the song I’m angrily humming at you. I think I’ve been banned by 2 circles of friends from playing Cranium. But I don’t care, I love that game.
Also Harry Potter Uno is worth buckets of fun at 24 hour cafes. Just saying.
I also have friends who refuse to play Cranium with me because I’m too competitive. But it’s the best. And so is being competitive.
I’m a huge fan of Cranium as a drinking game (penalty drinks for every loss), but am not sure whether this would decrease or amplify your competitiveness
O.O
I’m seriously going to try this with the next round of friends and Cranium. I’ll report back. My next sculpture out of Cranium Clay will be even more misshapen and strange.
Drinking Cranium is amazing! It should defs be experienced by all…feel free to remove all data head cards.
Check it – http://www.itonlytakes1.tumblr.com/
Oh yes, Cranium. Apparently I can sing great but I suck at humming? Or I change the keys of the songs so no one has a clue what I’m singing. Very dangerous one, but it’s definitely “our game” with a group of friends.
OH MY GOD, THE ANGRY HUMMING. How did I forget about that?
Yes, Cranium! The best is when you get a dream team of a theater/music geek, artist, science/trivia nerd and English major. UNSTOPPABLE.
Also better drunk.
The noise the Yahtzee cup makes when you shake the dice makes me irrationally anxious and upset.
Drunk Apples to Apples 4 lyfe!
yes, the dice/cup thing agitates me, and people yelling YAHTZEE! is startling. Yet, I still would play anytime for which I have no rational explanation.
Maybe it’s the pursuing of the pairs, 3 of a kind, 4 of a kind, Five of a kind, fullhouse? That sounds like a good time. (The small straight and large straight always bored me).
/neverthoughtIwouldpostprocessingthoughtsaboutyahtzee
oh, autostraddle.
CLUEDO. I call Colonel Mustard.
Much like in real life, you are fucked if you are a woman, black, or latino in “Guess Who.” Heaven forbid you’d get Anita, the one black woman, or Maria, the one latina woman.
Good thing there wasn’t sexual orientation on “Guess Who.” “Oh great, I got the lesbian. Game over.”
ha! so fuckin’ true.
Also, one blatant exclusion from the list: PRETTY PRETTY PRINCESS.
oh man, there are some embarrassing facebook photos of me after a particularly drunk game of pretty pretty princess. needless to say, i love it
same.
I would play the shit out of a drunken game of Pretty Pretty Princess.
I have a sudden desire to pull my Scattergories out of the closet, brings back all kinds of good memories…. Not a good game to play when you are plastered however, because the next day you really cannot figure out how those answers ever made sense in your head!
Sorry!
We play sorry for hours and hours in my family. I have all of the distances memorized so I don’t have to waste time counting squares. Like who has time for that?
Chess?
Is this where I admit I’ve never played Scrabble?
I used to play Parcheesi with the last two roommates I had, and Parcheesi is a terrible thing to play with people you like.
One memorable experience was when roommate number 1 said “if you jump my guy one more time, I’m gonna go take a power shower.”
Eventually I did, and he quit. I pointed out politely that he can’t win if he quits, and he said something along the lines of “I WIN BECAUSE I’M NOT STILL PLAYING THIS FUCKING GAME” and then took a PBR in the shower and chugged it. (in case you didn’t know, that’s apparently what a power shower is…)
Like I said above, I’m hypercompetitive…I’m sure that didn’t help.
i once played monopoly while stoned, and the game was SO FUCKING LONG. like, longer than what is normal.
Did you actually finish the game? You should get a trophy for that, seriously.
Monopoly is fucking long regardless of state of mind. I don’t think I ever finished a game. There are not enough ADHD meds in the world to do so.
The original game pieces were cool, though.
i believe i was the shoe and i believe i purposely bankrupted myself so as to finish the game because i was starting to panic.
I would think that the game would last longer than my high
I’ve done this. It didn’t work very well.
I like this post just so much. Especially this sentence: “Life is like the board game version of MASH, which is arguably the best non-board game for daydreamers who dislike the burden of agency.”
APPLES TO APPLES!!! This is the only game I purposely don’t take seriously. Playing Apples to Apples with someone for the first time IS like a friendship judgment day.
One time, while I was playing with my friends and their friends, I played “Anne Frank” for “Dramatic.” My friend picked my card and we started cracking up, but her friend got really upset and started yelling at me. It ended with me claiming to be Jewish. Good times.
We were playing “opposite style.” The card was “Cool” and I put down “Adolf Hitler.” I immediately won.
My friends and I once were judging “Hilarious” and got down to “Homeless Shelters” and “Witch Hunts”. It was then that we realized that we’re terrible people.
how about DnD? too nerdy? im not apologising.
Nor should you!
ive played D&D a couple times, nothing serious though. generally it degrades into people calling commands like “hump” and rolling a success
That’s not a board game!!! I’m an avid and dedicated D&Der, so I’m going to call you out on that.
i always played with a board and miniatures, though we usually drew the board ourselves. so i count it as a board game.
But it’s a pencil-and-paper game!! I’ve had so many friends ask if it’s a board game, which it isn’t! That’s like saying any table-top turn-base game (like Warhammer) is a board game because it’s played on a flat surface!
I WILL CHALLENGE YOU!! …damn, rolled a 3. Okay, fine. *huff*
Scrabble is my life. I live it.
Another fun board game is Encore. It’s a pretty obscure Parker Brothers game. http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/2879/encore
I love Cluedo (even though my brother always cheats). I also love Clue, the movie based on the boardgame, because it has Tim Curry in it and he’s the best.
The question mark in Guess Who? always bothers me because it’s not a question so much as a command. That being said I FUCKING LOVE UPWORDS. In fact, I am taking a break from playing it right now to type this comment.
I LOVE scattegories, apples to apples, and trivial pursuit. I am warming up to scrabble, but I feel like I couldn’t play scrabble as effectively while intoxicated. I’d probably end up just spelling three letter words.
Also, Laneia, while I am seriously impressed with the suggested process of creating gender neutral life people, couldn’t one just paint the ones that come in the box? I have no idea if that’s feasible. I’ve never played Life.
Dude, sometimes it’s all about the three-letter words! This could work to your advantage if you put them in the right spots.
Um, challenge accepted! When am I coming over to drunkenly play scrabble?!
THAT IS TAKING THE EASY WAY ALICE
My favorite board game is probably Cranium! My brother and I are kind of unstoppable but not in a super obnoxious way; we just really mesh as partners since we grew up playing tons of board games. This annoys my sister-in-law to no end and she always begs to be my partner. In fact I just got off the phone with her and she’s coming to visit me next week and she asked if we could play Cranium and I said yes and that we could be partners since my brother won’t be there. It’s gonna be fun!
I also love Chess, Apples to Apples, Risk, Scattergories, and Scrabble. I’d rather have a board game night than go out on most given nights. Still looking for a boring partner who is into this.
I like chess.
Also, you can take the electronic thing from Mall Madness and rewire it so that it emits random phrases and stream of consciousness word mashups, though I burned up the circuit on mine pretty quickly. You can also do this with a Speak n’ Spell, cards that make sounds when you open them, or any electronic toy that makes noise.
BALDERDASH!!!!
I CALL DASHER
Balderdash is one of my favorites! It capitalizes on both my excessive trivia knowledge and my skill at bullshitting.
i just wanna play frisbee
I loved the “cheating” and “extreme intelligence” bit. That made me LOL. But I have to say when I noticed the topic I groaned inside and then accidentally clicked on it. Then accidentally read it. And now I am fully inspired to get a board game. Possibly play some strip scrabble. Who knows?
This list made me cringe. Mostly because over the last few years I became a board game snob. Before you ask, yes that is possible.
I like my games with a bit more thinking like Airplanes, Stoneage, or Pandemic. Airplanes is based on developing airlines in Europe and buying stock in them. Stoneage is trying to survive early civilization. Pandemic is actually a cooperative game when 5 players try to cure the world of 5 deadly diseases.
If you want to try a fun game with less thinking, I would recommend Bang!. You are either a sheriff, deputy, outlaw, or renegade. You get to shoot and kill everyone else and beer gives you life points back. Even better if you actually drink beer for good measure. Another game for a bunch of people would be the Resistance which is a game when you a trying to overthrow a shady future space government thing.
A bunch of people already pointed out Settlers of Catan. You are all headed toward the correct direction. Now move on to Carcassonne or Alhambra. In conclusion, I spend too much time on BoardGameGeek.
Totally didn’t notice the second page because I was so angry about the choices in the first one. Thanks for including Carcassonne.
agricola anyone?? carcassonne and catan are both awesome. i do prefer the more “involved” types of board games too. have you played starcraft the board game?
I LOVE PANDEMIC OH MY GODDDDDdD
like half my friends are board game snobs so i play EVERYTHING.
i want to know you now. in the most un creepy way possible.
What’s agricola about? Something to do with a farmer.
basically you have your family you need to feed, and you want to expand your farm/house in various ways, such as farming vegetables or having livestock and basically you try to screw over everyone else as much as possible by taking what tasks they want to do that turn before they can.
also bang sounds alot like ca$h n gun$ (which btw to everyone here who enjoys drunk games, this is totally one you can play…FOAM GUNS TO SHOOT YOUR FRIENDS)
I love the foam guns but I like Bang! better. Mostly because I’d rather be a cowboy.
My brother is a board game snob too, and he once said of Monopoly, “Think back. Have you ever played a game of Monopoly in which you’ve felt better after you finished playing than you did when you started?”
I had a group of friends that played Bang every Sunday.
So many dirty jokes involved. I went a few times.
I love the shit out of Scattergories and Trivial Pursuit.
Boggle is not really a board game but it’s the best thing ever to keep in your car. It comes in handy so very often. Like for instance: an hour wait at a restaurant? BOGGLE.
I love me some scrabble but only online. The maths is too hard for my brain parts.
also:
anyone who loves catan, wanna organize online games with some fellow AS’ers? i know a great site: http://games.asobrain.com/
it has both catan and carcasonne. obvs its 4 player games but i am sooo down to play other people, as it usually just involves me against 3 bots which is really anti-social.
I totally would, but it won’t let me register.
oh damn that is weird. have you heard of bretspielwelt?
kids at my school really love catan. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AfAJnf8DHLk
“When you’re a goal-oriented, wannabe over-achieving child” Oh god, that describes me as a kid so well and I loved playing Life on my own so I could rig the game.
Scategories, Taboo and Apples To Apples are my faves!
also, if you guys like pictionary, theres a site called isketch which basically has that online and you can have a bunch of people in a room and its pretty hilarious.
anyone down for organizing summa dat?
Please do this. I just checked it out and it’s hilarious.
http://www.autostraddle.com/groups/online-as-pictionary-group/home/
MADE
Oh god iSketch. I just flashed back to college.
hehe ill make an ASS group cause its 2011 and thats how we roll.
I was wondering when someone else would think of this. I was thinking of making a group to play chess online but I still suck at chess, so. Eh, I’ll do it anyway.
Trouble, which is like Sorry, but way better because it has the pop-o-matic. Pop-o-matic pops the dice. Pop a six, you move twice.
Trouble was my game as a kid. I’ve never even played Sorry. I was all about that little popper thing. It was also a good game to take in the car (we took it to the drive-in theatre) because the dice was contained in the popper and all the pieces went in their own little spaces and didn’t move.
i always played clue with my sister and i never won. ever. but i still wanted to play because i love props.
backgammon is my favorite but i only get to play with my dad and my ipod. any backgammon fans out there?
the most fun I ever had at playing scrabble (because I usually stink at it) was at that lesbo bar in ptown many a summer ago, playing with my friend who I had the hots for, and scoring the word ‘l’chaim’. I felt like the biggest genius on the planet, impressed the other girls who we were hanging out with to boot, and probably had the most fun I ever had at a lesbo bar ever, now that I think about it.
I was reading this while waiting for a friend to go to the Avery Brewing Co. tap house with and got as far as scategories before he got here. We started playing scategories at the tap house… It’s like it was meant to be!
you guys! i had taboo and cranium on the list of board games we needed covered but nobody volunteered. clearly i should’ve just asked y’all on ass
Fail. I should have done Taboo. It’s how I plan to screen potential romantic partners in the future.
Seriously. If you are a good taboo match, you are good life match. It has a lot to do with thought processes.
Cranium has everything anyone could ever want in a board game…it’s like Pictionary, Charades, Celebrities, Hummzinger, Trivial pursuit, and MORE…combined! Something for everyone. (I stick to the blue/creative cat ones as much as possible)
Taboo is awsome too. I’m always up for scattergories, balderdash, pictionary and clue. I’ve only played apples to apples once, but it was a fun party game. My mom tried to throw Guess Who? away in a yard sale, but I wouldn’t let her.
My current obsession is bananagrams though.
I really love reading about everyone’s words here w/r/t their love / appreciation for certain board games..but THIS girl? She is fucking SERIOUS about the game of life: http://data.whicdn.com/images/8492601/game-of-life-tattoo-1_large.jpg?1301870992
(also – i never owned mouse trap but my cousins did & i have never had any success with it at all & i feel like it may be the bane of my existence…)
I love love love board games. My issue is that most people I know won’t play them with me, because apparently my competitive nature makes it ‘not fun’. This is just them being jealous of my board-game-winning skills.
Seriously though, Monopoly – LOVE IT. There’s a great thrill to completely obliterating everyone else on the board (my friends may have a point here).
Scrabble and Trivial Pursuit would be on even-peggings for me, if it weren’t for the fact that the modern Trivial Pursuit questions are ridiculous. A question about Madonna in Science and Technology, WTF. Also, is it not possible to have a trivia game that doesn’t depend on local knowledge of the country you’re in? I’m NEVER in my own country, so I’ve a slight issue with History/Geography or indeed Entertainment.
I had a game, as a kid, called ‘The Game of Knowledge’ – and that bastard was SOLID, I never actually finished the game with my siblings. The questions were difficult, the game was very long – it was one of my favourites, like an odyssey of a sort.
Finally, I love old favourites such as Ludo (do you guys have that in the US). I still have a really tattered old game of Ludo, that my grandad had for about 60 years.
I recommend Small World and, while it’s strictly a card game, Chrononauts. (Because what other game can cause you to say, “I’m going to unkill Hitler now”?)
hahaha smallworld. amazons ftw!
“The movie, duh.”
<3
Oh jeez, Settlers of Catan and Carcassone! So good. So many nights I vaguely remember with a faint glow of joy.
If you are really into games that are just that damn awesome for fucking each other over, try Wiz-War, also known as “best game ever”. Unfortunately it’s out of print right now, but it’s so worth the inflated price. Perfect for those intoxicated evenings when you really feel like pissing someone off.
Trivial Pursuit. I beat my dad 6 pies to none the other day. Take that old man! My family call the pies by food names instead of colours, i.e. when we win a yellow pie, we’re all like “I won a banoffee pie bitches!”
Scattergories! Cranium! I’d like to throw in Lists – it’s an Aussie invention and you get cards which have 5 countries on them and you have to put them in order from largest to smallest.
Moving away from board games, if you really want to test your relationship, play a card game called Racing Demon. It’s like mass solitaire where everyone has their own pack of cards and makes you want to stab your loved ones. I’m getting mad just thinking about it.
Ohhhh man. In my family we have been known to have epic Pounce tournaments. It’s not a board game, more like a modified version of double solitaire that allows you to (theoretically) play with as many people as you want as long as each person has their own deck. It gets really fucking crazy when you play with five or more people- so many aces in the center. Becomes vicious at the drop of a hat, and wicked fast.
Let me introduce y’all to a lil sumin called “What if?” It’s not a board game, but I guess you could use a clipboard…?
Step 1: Get drunk. Continue getting more drunk during the game.
Step 2: Give everyone a sheet of paper and pen. (You need at least 4 people. 8-10 is da bomb.)
Step 3: Everyone writes a “what if” question and then puts the paper in the middle of the group. (example: What if I autostraddled the fuck out of your mom?)
Step 4: Everyone grabs a paper from the pile and answers the question on it with “Then…” (example: Then my mom would have no fucks to give.)
Step 5: Pick someone to start by reading the question (but not answer) on the paper in front of her/him/etc. The person to her/his/etc left starts next time and so on.
Step 6: The person on the starter’s left (or right, that’s cool, too. Be crazy!) then reads the answer to the question she/he/etc wrote for the question in front of her/him/etc.
Step 7: Everyone laughs! It’s funny because the answer doesn’t match the question but sometimes times it does oh the laughs! There’s probably more drinking at this point.
Step 8: The person who just read the answer then reads the question for which the answer was written. Continue around the circle until the person who started with a question reads her/his/etc answer.
Drink, rinse, repeat.
oh holy shit, the hilarity of this game! seriously. play it.
What happen to the games: Sorry, Trouble, and Operation, I use to love those as a kid and think I still do!
I haven’t played Trivia Pursuit in a while, Ever since Scene It? became popular.
“For starters, dice games are better than card games”
After reading this line, my first thought was, “No, Duke Devlin, Dungeon Dice Monsters is NOT better than Duel Monsters.”
My second was oh my God, it’s been years since I watched Yu-Gi-Oh, WHY IS THIS WHERE MY BRAIN GOES.
Salad is way more arrogant than toasted marshmallows. And that is the beauty of a game like Apples to Apples.
Without a doubt
Apples to apples is great, but to this day am convinced that the last time I ended up throwing up from drinking was because I was the only one who was actually playing by the rules and drinking when they didn’t win the round.
Equally fun as playing while drinking is playing with people whose first language is not English. Played last summer with a friend from school and a couple of his Icelandic friends, and it was awesome, and then we did it again this semester with the Japanese exchange students. More fun than you know. I think next on the list of priorities is playing this as a drinking game with people whose first language is not English…
I discovered Upwords for the first time when I went WWOOF-ing in rural Ireland. My hosts were a mother-daughter lesbian pair (WIN) and they fed me homemade sloe gin during the game :] Which made it very difficult to play haha
harry potter clue.
“which student cast the forbidden spell in which room of the castle?!”
My friend Boris invented a new form of Guess Who? called Guess Horrible. You ask questions like “Does your person look like a kleptomaniac?” or “Does your person still believe that if they masturbate too much, they’ll go blind?” The most terribly, hilariously offensive questions get bonus points. Bonus points are meaningless, though.
Sam Jackson plays with us sometimes
Does anyone know the game syzygy? It’s like banagrams unfortunately worse advertised cousin or something. I’ve been playing it for years and no one knew what was up and then people were like banagrams and I’m all like dude people syzygy. Like you know?
My favourite boardgame ever is ‘Articulate!’. It’s the thing that we would always play with my extended family. Siblings would pair up against siblings and My mum and aunt would always go together and always win cos they know stupid old fashioned words for stuff that we don’t.
‘Balderdash’ is always hilarious; one of my other favourites. Anyone else agree?
My favorite game when I was a kid was The Bionic Woman.
What about 13 Dead End Drive! You mentioned the awesome boobie traps in Mouse Trap… but no one can say they didn’t enjoy knocking the chandelier off the ceiling onto your opponents head!
I got together at christmas with some friends, and we played a whole bunch of boardames from our childhood, including thirteen dead end drive (Which takes longer to set up than it does to play) and this game called “Nightmare” that we used to play at sleepovers when I was ~12 (It involved a playing a tape in your VCR, with a ticking clock and this creepy dude with a rotting face, who yelled and laughed at you, and called you a maggot…any one else remember this?)
god.
monopoly jr all the way, i think my brain is too melted for the big kid version. it had math in it or something.
twister wins, on all accounts, unless truth or day counts as a board game.
or if you can combine truth or dare with twister.
that would be great.
you’re missing QUELF! Honestly play it, most awesome game ever.
lol i used to play guess who with my neighbour as a kid. i usually kicked his butt. :D
my gf and i stopped playing monopoly because it usually ended up in a massive fight. we played both the proper board game version and the ipad version. we also had similar strategies to make it even worse.
my ex and i used to play scrabble a lot online. she usually won, despite english being her 2nd language (greek was her first). i won once… although i think she was mad at me cos i ruined her winning streak against me. lol
Yes! Carcassonne!
Also, Tara. http://www.tailtengames.com/
Also, Forbidden Island. http://www.gamewright.com/
You left off the best game of all time, Scene It!
A game at which I have never, ever been beaten. And sadly no one will play with me anymore.
The best part of Guess Who is playing EXISTENTIAL guess who. Anyone? “Does your person look like the type of person who gets up at 5 a.m. to go running every day?”
This is my new plan in life.
Can I just say that Cranium totally needs to be included on this list? It’s got something for everyone: art, acting, random facts, word abilities…totally fantastic!