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Two More Board Games from the Top 10 List

Two More Board Games from the Top 10 List

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Here are two more games for my GeekList about the top 10 games on my BGG user profile. They are both “old school” games that younger generations might not recognize, but that gamers my age would possibly remember from their youth.

Why am I making this list? Simply put, because I want to dig up my gamer past and put it on the Internet. I have all these artifacts that are like a record of my gaming life: beat-up old copies of games with customized rules and components, and piles of notes and ideas.

Obviously I’m not going to scan and digitize all of that, but I can at least put together some online content that captures that information – frankly, for posterity. Then, when I’m gone, you can still go to my profiles and get an idea of what it was like to be a game enthusiast in the late 1900s and early 2000s, should that interest you.

So, without further ado, two more games from my top 10:

#8 Illuminati

In my teen years, I was one of a certain breed of nerd who obsessively read The Illuminatus! Trilogy, the conspiracy theory novels by Robert Anton Wilson and Robert Shea. You could spot us carrying our dog-eared copies of the big red omnibus edition in the hallways of my high school. We all fancied ourselves fringe intellectuals with a keen understanding of the world denied to our mundane peers. We were resonating with the countercultural vibe of that time period.

How far down the conspiracy rabbit hole I really fell I could not say. Probably I enjoyed the genre with tongue firmly in cheek. But one part of Illuminatus! fandom was playing a card game called Illuminati, published by Steve Jackson Games. I know I played it in high school, because I have a fond memory of playing at one of the old GenCons, where I actually won a copy of the game in a tournament. I wrote about it in this sesson report, where you can see a picture of the copy I won, which I still own: The Gnomes of Zurich Take Over the World Sometime in the Early 1980s.

This was also a popular game at the WarGamers Club in college. The game came with blank cards so you could make up your own, and I still have those in my old copy. Here’s a couple of examples (I have others but they are not in great shape):

In the late 80s one of my friends ran a really cool play by mail (PBM) version of the game. He printed out a set of rules (which I still have) on perforated computer paper, written up as a roleplaying game he called “The Secret Wars.” The way it worked was your PC was the head of a conspiracy (which you could make up and could be anything you wanted) and acted as an agent. You could recruit more agents as NPCs, and build up a conspiracy power structure using rules like in the Illuminati card game.

Each turn, each agent and each group would get an action. All of this was submitted by mail, and after a bit you’d get back the results. What was so great about it was, since it was all done by mail, you actually had no idea how many players were in the game and what the big picture was. You had to slowly figure it out based on your correspondence with the gamemaster.

I don’t think the game ever officially ended, just sort of faded out. I ran my own game in the early 90s with new friends I had made in college, and still have all those notes and papers. It too faded out after a while. It’s hard keeping up with a play by mail game. With permission from my friend who gave me the rules back in the 80s, I’m planning to transcribe them into a digital document and upload them to BoardGameGeek and to my personal web site (it’s a medium term project of mine).

I’m not sure I would want to run another PBM Illuminati game in today’s political climate, with conspiracy thinking actually being an existential threat instead of a mere countercultural affectation. But it sure was fun when I did it before.

In the late 90s/early 00s collectible card games were the rage (I guess they still are), and an Illuminati-themed version was made called Illuminati: New World Order. I briefly got into it, but I never had enough cards to make a really competitive deck. I remember liking it though.

Although it’s been 20 years since I’ve played any version of Illuminati, this game will always have a special place in my heart for all the zany, subversive fun it has provided.

#6 Cosmic Encounter

This is a game that was hugely popular in my college years. It is very chaotic and luck based, unlike the kinds of games that are popular today. It also has a storied history, with many different editions published as the rights passed from game company to game company.

Back in those days, we would have considered this game, and games like Illuminati and Nuclear War, to be “medium weight,” or games to play when you only had a couple of hours, not a whole day. They were all random and chaotic, too, but that was how we liked our games back then.

I first played the original Eon edition with a group of college friends. The game has a goofy space conquest theme, and each player has one or two Alien powers. Each power comes with a matching card called a Flare. In this edition, you didn’t discard the Flares when you played them, which made them more powerful (and also made sense given the name). Later editions made it so that the Flares were one time use.

I know I’ve played the West End version, but the one that I’ve played the most is the Mayfair edition. I own a copy, with all the expansions stuffed into the main box, well worn from many, many plays. Even after I graduated from college, I was able to find players throughout the 1990s.

We had a game group at one my old jobs where we played at lunch time every Wednesday. This was actually at the dawn of the Eurogame era, and we played games like Settlers of Catan as well, but since we were older generation, we were comfortable with a game in the older style. When we played Cosmic, in order to expedite game play we would pick our Alien powers ahead of time. One of the guys in our group created a Unix program that generated random powers. Once we each picked our powers, then he would set the game up, including the Flares, so it would all be ready to go when our lunch break began.

In the 2000s, I haven’t had as much luck getting this game to the table. I played the Fantasy Flight version once but wasn’t thrilled, probably because I only played the base game. The few times that I’ve brought Cosmic to the table in recent years, it hasn’t caught on. I think it is too chaotic for today’s gamers, who are used to games which accomodate sure-footed strategizing. In Cosmic Encounter, the luck of the draw can overwhelmingly favor one player over the others. Some combos are insanely powerful, and others weak and ineffective. But I’ve always loved how frenzied and chaotic this game is, and would gladly play it, with all expansions, any time anyone asked.

A Board Game that Takes All Day to Play: Yes, Please!

A Board Game that Takes All Day to Play: Yes, Please!

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As already noted, I am putting together a GeekList of the top 10 games on my BGG user profile. This next one, Civilization, is #7 on my list, and is the third one mentioned on this blog that comes from game company Avalon Hill (the other two are Titan and Diplomacy). I should note that being #7 on the list does not make this my 7th favorite game; the list is ordered from newest game to oldest game. So it just means it’s a game I’ve been playing for a long time.

I don’t remember if I played Civilization in high school, but I definitely did a lot in college. There was a group of us guys from our gaming club, called the Wargamers Club, that would play all day on Saturday in our dormitory. Yeah, we were a bunch of nerds alright. While our peers were out in the sunshine doing sports or whatever, we would spend 10+ hours focused on a board game. Because that is how long a game of Civilization takes to play. But it’s such a good game, that it is worth the time. At least, to me it is. I actually enjoy playing a game that takes a whole day to finish.

This game, as its title and box art suggest, simulates the rise of ancient civilizations in the old world. The board is a map of the lands around the Mediterranean Sea, as well as the fertile crescent in the modern Middle East. You play one of the well-known civil societies or empires of ancient times, such as Egypt or Assyria. You spread across the world, build cities, trade resources, and develop techonologies. Sometimes you have a little conflict with other civilizations, but there is not much war in this particular game. However, there are calamities like earthquakes and civil disorder that alter the board.

Unlike the other older games on this list, Civilization is one I’ve kept getting back to through my whole life, albeit much less frequently than in college. It seems like once every few years throughout the 2000s, someone would host a game, including me sometimes. I even wrote a helpful post with advice on what was needed for a succesful game, in the form of a review: So you want to play Civilization…

I think a big part of what keeps me coming back to this game is that it is fun to play even if you fall behind and are likely to lose in the end. You know you will lose, and the game has hours left to go, but it’s still enjoyable to do what you can to build up your own civilization. Plus there’s the fun of seeing the calamities come out and reshape the board every turn.

There have been expansions to the game, which extend the map and add resources, as well as reimplementations which slightly alter the rules. Personally, I only own the original, base game, though I have played other versions on occasion. Most recently, when I’ve played, it has been one of these new versions where the map is extended to pretty much cover all of Eurasia and North Africa, and the game can accomodate a huge number of players.

There was a game convention some time in the 2010s where I first learned about these reimplementations. I found out some folks were playing Mega Civilization, and I wanted in! We played on the last day of the convention, a Sunday, for over 12 hours. I did not mind at all using up one entire day of the convention for this purpose.

Mega Civilization can accomodate up to 18 players, but we had about 12 or so, which was still a huge number and just made the game that much more fun, to me. I played again at the same con some years later. Then, after I moved to Pennsylvania in 2018, I played again at a convention in this region.

The last time I played was in 2023, though it was yet another reimplementation, Mega Empires: The West. Played for an entire Saturday, just like in the good old days. I was in last place, but still had a great time.

They keep tweaking the original game, but these new versions remain the same in spirit. They evoke the same joy while playing them – as well as requiring the same stamina – that I recall from my gaming youth.

Setting up a game of Mega Civilization at a gaming convention.
Another Avalon Hill Game on the Top 10 List

Another Avalon Hill Game on the Top 10 List

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Among the older games in my top 10 games list are several from the old school game company Avalon Hill. I’ve already posted about one of them on this blog. It was kind of inevitable for any nerdy gamer in the 70s or 80s who was into thoughtful strategy games to get caught up in this particular series. Another Avalon Hill game I played a good bit of in high school was Diplomacy, #9 on my list.

Diplomacy is a game of recreating the Great Power conflicts in Europe of the early 20th century, and had mechanics where you made alliances to support other players’ military campaigns. But the actual moves were written down secretly and simultaneously, which created an opportunity for backstabbing. It was a very tense and fun game for this reason.

In high school, we had a fun “live action” format (like PBEM before email) where one person would act as referee, handing out paper copies of the map’s current state to the players, and collecting everyone’s moves in written form. The moves were due once or twice a week, and if you didn’t turn them in or they were confusing to the ref, they would just revert to your units holding. The ref would calculate the new game state and hand out maps again. Our tools for making the maps were markers and photocopiers.

This was a great format because it meant that during the days when players were plotting their moves, they could easily meet in private to negotiate all their diplomatic shenanigans. Backstabbing was easier too because you could double-deal without the other players having any inkling of what you were doing, though there was always the chance for real life spying and eavesdropping to try to figure out what deals the other players were making. It was exciting and engaging and we got in a few games in my time in high school.

In college, I played with friends in the Wargamers Club, which was the only club I ever joined there. We only played Diplomacy around the table, but in a big room in the student center where people could meander off to the edges for their diplomatic discussions. It’s not as good a format as “live action,” but there were still shenanigans since you could talk to everyone whether or not you were actually coordinating with them, to disguise your true intentions. You could try to outsmart other players with deceitful negotiations, and the tension would build until you got to the glorious moment of a successful betrayal. Or you might suffer the ignominy of being betrayed yourself. Great fun.

One time I played a game that wasn’t so much fun, because some players didn’t seem to get the game. Really, they just played differently than what I was used to. I wrote a session report about it here: A Game without Double-Dealing, or, Don’t These Guys Know How to Play Diplomacy?

After college, I don’t think I ever played Diplomacy again. The closest game to it that I have played since then is A Game of Thrones (yes, based on the familiar series), which also has players coordinating moves and potentially backstabbing one another. I did have one great moment in Game of Thrones, which you can read about here: A Machiavellian Move in a Game of Thrones.

I’m not sure why I never played after school. The spirit of Diplomacy just wasn’t there in my new gaming circles, I guess, but I will always have fond memories of the game from my past.

A Game for Old Grognards

A Game for Old Grognards

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One of my favorite old games is Titan, from Avalon Hill. I have played it since all the way back in high school. I’ve also mentioned it on this blog already. It’s one of my top 10 games on BoardGameGeek; in fact, it’s #10 on the list on my BGG profile, which means that it’s the oldest, not that it’s the least favorite.

It’s both a wargame and a fantasy themed board game, so there’s just no denying its appeal. It combines the delight of building armies of fantastic monsters with the thrill of rolling large amounts of dice in combat.

I played a lot when I was young; it was surely one of the more popular games among my circles as a teenager. I even wrote a BoardGameGeek session report about a game I played back in the early 1980s: Bad Luck in a Long Ago Game of Titan.

As I got older, I found fewer people willing to play. I did have a few friends who played in the late 1990s into the 2000s. That was when I developed a variant I called “Tactical Titan,” where you build a huge map and focus on the combat, ignoring the higher level strategy map. I actually hand made my own maps, coloring in hex paper, but photocopying the existing game components and assembling a map is another way it could work.

I devised scenarios, with special maps that had limited types of terrain and thus limited the monsters used. I came up with magic items that could be seeded on the map and would enhance the monsters in combat. There were some new rules to accomodate the large tactical map, and new monster types. This is similar to variants other Titan fans have come up with.

I managed to rope a few players into this version of the game, and played a lot of two-player games with one particular friend who sadly passed away in the early 2000s.

Later, I developed another variant that got a slight amount of play. It was called “Campaign Titan” and the idea was that your Titan (the leader of your armies) would earn XP from game to game and level up as a character, picking up all kinds of abilities, even spells. Again, I only got a few players into it (I think two total) and this version did not get played much, so the rules I have written around it are largely untested.

The last time I played Titan was probably in 2015. It’s just hard to find people interested in this kind of game, and willing to commit to the long hours it takes to play all the way through.

I have a bunch of pages on my gamer site devoted to the Titan variants I created here: Steve’s Titan Corner. You can also find links there to the content that other Titan fans have created. We old grognards are still out there, showing our devotion to this classic game!

The Next Game on My Top 10 List

The Next Game on My Top 10 List

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My next top 10 game is Axis & Allies, #5 on the top 10 list on my BGG profile. I’m making it my next blog post because I played it around the same time I was playing Magic: The Gathering, which was the first top 10 game I posted about. My preference was to play either the United States or Japan, and focus on the Pacific theater. I much preferred the naval maneuvering to the slog of the two-front war in Europe.

At the time that I played this game extensively, in the 1980s and 1990s, we didn’t have all the new versions available which focus on specific theaters or phases of the war, with all the new units and new rules. There were fan-made expansions available, with pieces that didn’t match the base game, but they were hard to come by.

While we liked Axis & Allies, my friends and I found the game as designed too restrictive. So we invented our own variant, where we played on home made maps, and set up our positions randomly, like you would in a game of Risk. Eventually we mixed in other games, and created a whole slew of new units using pieces from Fortress America and Supremacy. We called our Frankenstein monster of a wargame simply “The Game” and played it obsessively, and partied pretty hard while we did. Games would last all weekend long. Those sure were some great times, in a more carefree phase of my life.

So it was really The Game that I played extensively, not actually Axis & Allies, but that is why I put Axis & Allies on my top 10 list. I created a GeekList which breaks it all down, as best as I can remember it: Games that made up ‘The Game’.

I like that so many reimplementations and expansions to the original game have come out since the days when I played it. I did get a chance to play Axis & Allies: Pacific once (as the United States) and thorougly enjoyed it (possibly because I won). But for the most part I haven’t done much wargaming since the 2000s began. I don’t hang out with my old wargamer buddies any more; we’ve all moved far apart. So it goes in the life of a gamer.

My Top 10 Games, Starting with Magic

My Top 10 Games, Starting with Magic

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Over on BoardGameGeek I have a list of my Top 10 Games. These are the board games that have been my favorites or that I have played the most over the years. I am putting together a GeekList that fills in the details of why I like each game and how it fits into my board game biography, and thought it made sense to share each entry here on the blog as well. They might be likelier to get read coming out one at a time, maybe once a week or so for a while.

So here is the first top 10 game, actually a card game, not a board game. It is #4 on the list on my BGG profile. And that game is…

Magic: The Gathering

This is the first and foremost in a category of games called “collectible card games” which feature a basic rule structure and a large assortment of cards. Players build their own decks out of the cards they buy, and can always get more (hence “collectible”) to enhance or modify their decks. You play games with these decks, with two or more players, though usually four or five is the limit. According to the AI generated search results I just read, as of early 2024 there are over 27,000 distinct Magic cards, so good luck trying to collect them all. You don’t need to do that, though, to have a good deck to play.

Magic: The Gathering debuted at GenCon in 1993, when I was still living in Virginia, prolonging my college party days. I still played lots of Dungeon and Dragons back then, and was only just beginning to be exposed to the new wave of board games coming out of Germany. I remember when Magic was introduced to our gaming circles, and the huge buzz it caused. I attended GenCon in Milwaukee in either 1994 or 1995, and recall the excitement in the air there from all the obsessed players.

The game was innovative for its time, and was hugely popular in my circles throughout the 1990s. Interestingly, it attracted most of the same people who were into D&D, probably because of the rich fantasy theme. I have many fond memories of late night D&D sessions as well as late night Magic games with the same groups. Even after those old game groups split up as people moved apart to carry on with their lives, we would occasionally get back together for a nostalgic weekend, and usually it was Magic that got played.

I moved around a bit at the turn of the century, and didn’t get to play Magic much for awhile. In the late 2000s I tried getting back into the game by going to game stores, but the vibe had changed. It was more about keeping up with the latest releases, spending the money to get the better cards, and making ruthless decks. The new generation was using new terms and playing by different rules than I remembered. I wrote a session report about one time I entered a tournament and found myself completely in over my head: Magic: The Gathering – My first tournament.

In 2010 I attended GenCon again, for the first time since the 90s. I didn’t play any Magic, but I was flabbergasted by how huge the room was where Magic was being played. Thousands of players dueling in an enormous warehouse type room. Just amazing how far the game had come. And I can tell you why it’s so popular: it’s a really good design. It has nice tension built into it with the way cards are played using mana from lands, and with the way it mixes the luck of the draw and the skill of good deck construction.

Throughout the 2010s I did have a few more gatherings with old friends in which a nice round or two of Magic got played. It was fun to break out the old decks and relive those carefree times. Whenever this would happen, I would get bit by the deckbuilding bug and spend some time on my own retooling my decks, only to stash them all away to wait for the next reunion in a year or two. One funny memory I have is of all us old timers sitting around the table at night playing Magic, but having to put on reading glasses and squint in the dim light to read our cards.

I’m happy to say that I am still playing Magic: The Gathering today. Lucky me, my stepson has recently gotten into it, and pulled his mother in as well. So I get to play with my family and my stepson’s friends. We play a format called Commander, which I personally like a lot. I like it beacuse the games tend to start slowly, so you can relish the build up, but then typically come to a crashing end without dragging on for too long, once the good combos of cards come out. We’ve bought quite a few preconstructed Commander decks, including some from licensed franchises, which we tweak a bit. I have a pretty mean Dalek deck from the Magic: The Gathering Universes Beyond – Doctor Who product line.

I’m sure I will always be into playing Magic: The Gathering. I honestly believe that when my generation reaches old age, you will find us in retirmement homes still playing. We’ll be squinting through our reading glasses at our cards, grumbling about being mana screwed, and staying up way past our bedtimes. We Gen Xers live to have fun, and to indulge our imaginations, which is just what this game provides.

A Little PIZZAZ in My Scrabble Game

A Little PIZZAZ in My Scrabble Game

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A couple of nights ago I was playing Scrabble with the girl, and I got to play a word I have been wanting to play in the game for as long as I can remember! I’m so thrilled by this that I just had to blog about it.

The word is “PIZZAZ” and the reason I have always wanted to play it is the tough requirements – since there is only one Z in Scrabble, and the word has three Zs, you have to use the Z and both blank tiles (which can be any letter) to play it. An unlikely scenario.

So in the game a few nights ago, I got a blank tile early on. Then, amazingly, I got the second blank tile (there are only two in the set). I also had an A, which is a common tile. I resolved not to use these three tiles, in case the Z became available. Then, shortly afterward, I drew the Z! This was the first game I have ever played where I had the three required tiles.

I searched the board for a place where the word might go, and saw that there was an I where the word would fit, and a P could be placed to turn UP into PUP as a connecting word. So if I could just get a P then I would be set.

Now, the girl and I play a very competitive game of Scrabble. The board was already a mess and it was hard to play words on it. The girl expressed her frustration with the set up, and I concurred, which pretty much happens every game we play. I also told her that I was set up for playing a word I had always wanted to play my whole life, and was playing with that goal in mind.

And then, a miracle happened. After taking a long time trying to find a good play, the girl resigned herself to a simple turn. She put a P in place next to the I, to make PI and PUP. She had set up my perfect word.

Thank you, I said, and placed my Z, A and two blanks. I put the real Z next to the triple word score space just to be nice.

There it was! The word of a lifetime!

I seriously wonder if the girl played the P because she was hearing my thoughts, and subconsciously aligning with my intentions. She actually consciously helped me play another word once, in a different game. The word was SEQUOIA. In that game, I revealed to her what the word I was going for was, and she made a play to set me up for it. She is such a sweetie.

In the case of PIZZAZ, I did not reveal the word to her, so it was fortuitous that she played the P. But maybe she picked up on my desire subconsciously. I have blogged before about how our intentions can affect what we might expect to be a random outcome.

By the way, if you are wondering about the spelling of pizzaz, usually spelled pizzazz, with four Zs – it is an alternate spelling and it is in Hasbro’s official Scrabble dictionary. The spelling with four Zs would be impossible to play in a standard game of Scrabble, unless you had some truly remarkable mind-bending powers.

Here is the board at end of game. The final score was 287-287, a draw.

This post was also published in modified form as a session report on BGG.

Next Generation Board Gaming

Next Generation Board Gaming

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I saw an article just recently about the release of a new version of Scrabble, friendlier and less competitive than the original. The article title indicated that it was designed to appeal to the young generation, putting ‘less competitive’ and ‘inclusive’ in scare quotes, as though one should wonder why anyone would want such features in a board game. I encountered the article in the context of social media feeds where posters were mocking Gen Z and decrying this as “woke Scrabble.”

I gathered that these posters were Gen Xers, and that the editor who picked the title of the article probably is as well. My generation likes to pick on younger people for not being tough enough. But I don’t see what their problem is; this new Scrabble version, called “Scrabble Together,” seems like a perfectly cromulent game to me. To me, it’s simply part of a trend that’s been going on for years, where cooperative and team play games have grown in popularity. These games are suited for socializing in large groups, and I think they are a good fit for the peer personality of the Millennial generation.

As Neil Howe and William Strauss put it in Millennials Rising, this generation is special, sheltered, and team-oriented. A chiller version of Scrabble is perfect for a generation more interested in fitting in and playing it safe than in standing out and taking chances. In fact, Neil Howe identifies board gaming as one of many pastimes Millennials have favored as they have embraced youthful restraint, in contrast to the wild days of my generation’s youth.

The board gaming hobby has really taken off in the past couple of decades, as I have noted in other posts. I remember the very beginnings of the new wave of board games back in the 1990s, when Millennials were children. As the media caught on to the trend when Millennials became young adults, articles started appearing associating the board game revival with their generation. I’ve certainly enjoyed watching Millennials swarm into gaming conventions and game stores, and even sometimes feeling like the wise old guy teaching them a thing or two as we play a game together.

I would say that the board game revival belongs to both Millennials and Generation X, as this article by a Gen X board gamer describes. And in all fairness, the Boomer generation deserves credit for giving us many of the prominent designers of the tabletop games that are so popular today. But Millennials really have taken board gaming to a new level, folding the hobby in with social media and streaming video platforms, and adapting it to their mode of life.

It’s been quite remarkable to observe, and since board games are something of an obsession for me, I’m glad that it’s happened. I look forward to playing Scrabble Together some day, possibly chilling with some friendly Millennials at a game day hosted by a local craft brewery. ‘Cause all we’re trying to do here is get along and have a little fun.

The Solo Boardgamer

The Solo Boardgamer

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What do you do when you want to play a board game, but your BFF who plays with you has gone away on a trip and left you home alone?

Why, you play board games solo, of course.

And no, I don’t mean playing a board game on your computer. I mean actually breaking out the physical game that comes in a box and setting it up on a table and playing a complete game. Not playing a pretend game where you are taking on the role of more than one player, but rather a single player game, with rules specifically designed for one player.

There are many multiplayer board games that have rules variations for solo play. In some games there is a goal, and you win or lose depending on whether you achieve it. In other games, you just play, calculate your final score, and then get ranked based on that score. Some games come with an “automa,” which is a set of special rules and usually a deck of cards to simulate an opponent taking actions on the board.

Me getting ready to lob an asteroid at Mars in a solo game.

Others, like my favorite, Terraforming Mars, just give you a challenge. You play the game as the only player and try to reach a certain game state within a fixed amount of turns. In the games I’ve played this week, I am trying to reach a certain score within 12 generations, showing how good I am at terraforming.

Is playing a board game by yourself really any fun? Well, yeah, if you are as much of a game addict as I am. You get the same challenge of figuring out your optimum strategy, the same tension as you’re not sure if the next random card draw will be in your favor or not, or if you’ll be able to achieve the game’s goal by the final turn.

And you get the same visual and tactile pleasure of working with physical components, which is why it is better playing on a tabletop than playing on a computer screen, even though it takes time to set up and break down the game. I feel the same way about multiplayer games, and there you get the bonus of face to face social interaction. And truthfully I would rather play a game with others than play a solo game, if the option is available.

But when it isn’t, a solo game will do. I’m not the only one who enjoys solitary board gaming, either. There’s a whole community out there; you can find them on social media sites and board game forums. It’s enough of a thing that there are articles about it, with recommendations of games to play when it’s just you and some time.

So if you find yourself hankering for a board game when there’s no one else around, see if any of the games on your shelf include solo rules. You just might find yourself enjoying solitary gaming as much as I do.

See how nice Mars looks after a few hundred years worth of terraforming?
Boardgames For Just the Two of Us

Boardgames For Just the Two of Us

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When I lived in North Carolina, I used to go to a lot of game nights at people’s houses or at game stores, and play multiplayer tabletop board games. When Aileen came into my life, my priorities changed – I started traveling more, and going to see shows. But I kept up the gaming when I could, and Aileen joined me sometimes, even going to some of the same game nights and game conventions I was used to attending.

Then I moved to Pennsylvania, into an apartment about halfway between Aileen’s house and where I worked. I made an effort to recreate my gaming lifestyle, by going to a game store nearby that had open boardgaming on Friday evenings. I had only just started to make a habit of it and make friends there, when along came the pandemic.

During lockdown, I moved in with Aileen. There would be no game stores or game conventions for awhile, but we did play a lot of two player games. And still do. I’m very lucky to have a BFF who will play boardgames with me. Shared interests and activities is part of what makes our partnership work.

The games we like to play come in different forms. Many of them are lighter games, for when we have limited time or energy. They take an hour or so to play, and usually are in the modern vein of games that require strategic thinking. They are complicated enough to be challenging but simple enough that we might also bring them with us when traveling and be able to convince others to play with us. They are multiplayer but they play fine with just two players. Here are a few examples:

An old (1980s) photo of me playing Scrabble with Aileen.

A perennial favorite is Scrabble, which is easy to set up, and can even be played when a little unfocused, with the TV on and while socializing. Aileen and I have been playing since we first met as teenagers, long ago.

Scrabble has also always been a popular game in the extended Barrera family, one which we often play at family gatherings. I remember playing with my chain-smoking, hard-drinking aunts when I was growing up; they taught me that the game can be competitive and can be played ruthlessly.

When it’s just the two of us, Aileen and I often play modern-style games that are designed for two players, of which there are many in this Golden Age of boardgames. These also tend to be lighter, with quick set up and small footprints. Here is a short list of specifically two-player games we have played a lot:

Now my favorite kind of strategy board game is one that’s a bit heavier and takes at least a couple of hours to play. These require a more serious commitment of time and energy, as well as ample table space. Luckily for me, there are some of these that Aileen likes and is willing to play. The one we’ve played the most is Castles of Mad King Ludwig, which we call “the castle game.” If you follow me on social media, you have seen me post lots of pictures of the castles I’ve built.

Another one is Grand Austria Hotel, which we call “the hotel game,” and have even played while staying at hotels. This sometimes requires some creativity finding enough surface space to set up the game.

I made a more or less complete list of these kinds of heavier games that we play in two-player mode. I did this on BoardGameGeek using a format called a “GeekList.” I’ve already brought up BoardGameGeek session reports on this blog. A GeekList is another way one can contribute on that site; it can also be a convenient way to track games or even to hold an exchange or auction of some kind.

In the case of this GeekList I made, it’s just a collection of… My Favorite Medium Weight Multiplayer Games to Play with 2 Players. I hope you enjoy looking through it and, if you are lucky enough like me to have someone to play with, I highly recommend the games on this list as suitable for just two players.